Copyright © 2005 the Brewery History Society

As a long-time reader of this journal, I have been struck by the fact that much of the research published here could have broader appeal to other members of the Society as well as academics if certain guidelines were followed in researching and writing the articles. This is especially critical because the surviving records of the brewing industry represent only a fraction of what once existed. Many large and medium sized breweries - Julia Hanson & Sons, Hewitt Brothers, Hull Brewing Co., James Deuchar, John J. Hunt, Leeds & Wakefield Breweries, Leicester Brewing & Malting Co., the Lion Brewery Co. among others - have virtually no archival material at all. Researchers working at the local level with newspapers, census material and other primary sources could help fill these gaps, making a contribution that would transcend the purpose of the initial article. When I was trying to trace the pubs that breweries built or rebuilt in interwar England for my book on the improved public house movement, some studies did provide information that I could find nowhere else. But unfortunately numerous other authors might have known the information, but did not grasp its importance. It is precisely this lack of awareness of a wider reader audience that I want to address in this article.

Some years ago now in these pages I followed an animated debate among members on whether citations were in fact necessary. As I recall, the preponderance of replies was in the negative. One of the basic rules about academic research is that another scholar must be able to replicate, at least in theory, from the references the findings that support a conclusion. In some cases, this may prove virtually impossible, except in a general sense. I ultimately identified thousands of pubs that brewers built or rebuilt, preventing any detailed list of sources for each of the premises. But even here, should someone request information, I can cite specific records containing the data. Quotations, statistics not commonly available, and obituaries deserve documentation. Sources for information drawn from books, articles, pamphlets, newspapers, corporate records, legal and government documents, census returns, reference guides (such as Who was Who or the Dictionary of National Biography), and privately printed or unpublished material likewise must be identified clearly in citations. The reference itself should be specific (author and title) and where possible include pagination. Here is one example: F. Goldsbrough, 'The Modern Public House,' Journal of the Incorporated Brewers' Guild 21 (1935): 195-202. When using archival material, the reference number and date of the record ought to be included: Barclay, Perkins, & Co., Estate Report Book, Courage Archives, AI/E/15, 25 July 1932, p. 7. Because many records of the biggest breweries have been recently dispersed to several repositories, it is especially critical to identify where the records are located to assist the reader. Records of the Courage Brewery, Dartford Brewery, Nicholson & Sons, Royal Brewery (Brentford), and Watney, Combe & Reid, for example, are held by both the Courage Archives (Bristol) and the London Metropolitan Library.

Some kinds of information need no references: names, dates, locations, the weather, and commonly known events (such as the King's coronation). As a rule of thumb, where the general reader would be unable to locate some material the researcher should provide documentation.

Researchers should not, as my colleague says, reinvent the wheel. Before beginning research, a check should be made of existing research to avoid needless duplication. I can recall reading an article in this journal that was perfectly splendid, save for the fact that I had already published an article on the subject covering the same ground a decade earlier. With so many other topics awaiting research, this is not, as one of my friends would have observed, the best way of spending one's time. There are ways to determine quickly if the topic has drawn previous scholarship. In 1996 I published a guide to the literature, Alcohol in the British Isles from Roman Times to 1996: An Annotated Bibliography, containing some 2200 references (including numerous articles from the JBHS) with separate chapters devoted to the brewing industry, beverages, licensed premises, biographies, autobiographies and memoirs. ¹ To facilitate its use, I compiled detailed author and index subject indexes spanning 22 pages. For the intervening years, the researcher should consult bibliographies published in each issue of The Social History of Alcohol Review (now Alcohol and Drugs History), together with this journal.

Bar, Leeds Canteen, near Masham, Yorkshire, ca. 1900. Gothenburg pubs promoted food, non-alcoholic beverages and sobriety, sometimes as here in an aggressive way amid an austere environment.

When engaged in investigating a topic, the researcher ought to have framed specific questions on which to gather information. Otherwise, everything seemingly has equal importance, and the writing of any history is in danger of becoming a collection of unrelated facts, or, as one famous British historian remarked, a record of 'one damn thing after another.' Being mindful of key subjects for research can unearth material of enormous use to others interested in related topics. Below is a list of possible research topics that could be approached at the local level:

• the origins, evolution and extent of the tied house system in Victorian England. Studies of the growth of tied houses in Halifax, Newcastle on Tyne and London provide models for further research. ²
• the rise of gin palaces, a surprisingly neglected subject. More needs to be known about their origins, customers, interiors and evolution. When did they first appear, and when was the term itself first commonly used? Ideas for researching this topic can be derived from Paul Jennings' study of Bradford. ³
• the nature of beerhouses: their owners, tenants, customers and location require extensive investigation. Did beerhouse keepers save sufficient capital to become publicans? Was it common for beerhouse keepers to run more than one premise? Was the turnover level in beerhouses generally higher than in pubs? A starting place is a lengthy pamphlet, R.C. Riley and Phillip Eley, and two articles by Paul Jennings. ⁴
• statistics about the growth of tied house ownerships. There are no statistics whatsoever for leading breweries, much less the entire industry, before the merger mania of the 1950s. Some information exists: Richard Wilson's history of Greene King and John Baxter's unpublished dissertation. ⁵
• the flotation of breweries in the 1880- 90s. We know remarkably little about whether owners commonly sold the bulk of their holdings to the public. The Allsopps sale of virtually all their stock, as Ray Anderson has shown, serves as an example of one response to flotation. How many other breweries resembled Allsopps? Limited data published in the Brewers' Journal in 1894-95 points to large breweries selling preference, though not ordinary, stock. ⁶
• the development of Gothenburg pubs - informally called 'Goths' - in Scotland in the 1890s and early 1900s. They have been studied in England, but not (save for one lengthy pamphlet) in Scotland. ⁷
• brewers' employment of agents who canvassed working-class neighbourhoods for sales of bottled beer before 1914. The practice was commonly but inaccurately called 'beer hawking.' More precisely, it was known as the domestic delivery of (bottled) beer, and caused escalating friction between brewers and retailers in Edwardian England as I have discussed in an earlier book. ⁸
• the growth of bottled and keg beers at specific breweries. How did consumers respond to the introduction of keg beers?
• statistics of the total sales of differing types of beers. Some breweries with a historical perspective such as Hydes' Anvil Brewery provide data of inestimable value about production figures. ⁹
• changes over a lengthy period in catering at pubs
• industrial relations at Whitbread's shortlived Luton brewery. Further north at the Runcorn brewery, I have written an article about this topic. ¹⁰
• the impact of unionization on brewers' employees by the Transport and General Workers' Union. David Waddington's study of Ansells 1981 strike affords a good example of how to study a specific brewery.
• how were alcoholic beverages advertised, and how much money annually was spent. Popular accounts offer some insights, while Ken Thomas suggested the topic's potential years ago in this journal. ¹¹
• the emergence of architectural and building departments in breweries. Little is known about these subjects. By the interwar years, I discovered that very few breweries had the staff to undertake an internal building or rebuilding of pubs. Instead they put the projects out to open tenders, and listed the results in corporate records. This procedure meant I could track the cost of such projects over the country for two decades. ¹²
• the recruitment of tenants by breweries. Much more needs to be known about their ages, educational and ethnic backgrounds, the amount of capital needed for the ingoing, and the typical length of tenancies. In his monograph, The Public House in Bradford, Paul Jennings suggests how to combine this material to draw a vivid portrait of the lives of retailers.
• the operation of the brewers' lobby from 1914. What MPs were connected with the industry or more broadly the trade? How did they co-operate with existing trade organizations? These subjects are discussed in my first book and in an article for the years before 1914. ¹³
• the relationship between magistrates and breweries, focusing on licensing reduction, licensing hours, requests for enlarged licensed premises or improved public houses, and the introduction of catering. These issues loomed large in the pre-war debate on 'fewer and better' pubs in Birmingham. ¹⁴
• · brewers' attitudes towards women as part of the pub's clientele, an important but generally overlooked topic. ¹⁵
• the factors inducing breweries to sell out to larger competitors.

Remember to resist the temptation to record excessive detail about a subject. It is entirely unnecessary, for instance, to list the names of all directors, managers or licensees. In an appendix, it might be useful to identify when a brewery acquired pubs, but not without some further information, such as the cost, date and former owner. The historian's role is to analyze causation, impact and significance. Where possible, comparisons and contrasts should be drawn with other breweries or regions, and then explanations provided for differences. The question often posed to historians is 'so what?' In other words, the researcher must justify why information is discussed, which entails explaining how the topic relates to broader themes and other research. It is not an unreasonable point of which to be mindful.

In writing the history of a specific brewery, the following might be recurring themes:

• information about the acquisition of tied houses
• the social and political status of brewers
• the relationship between brewers, on one hand, and magistrates, the police and other local authorities, on the other. How and why did this change over time?
• the nature of competition with other breweries. Where breweries known for specific beers?
• trends in profits and losses
• the reasons why sales rose or fell
• expenditure on public house maintenance, improvement and advertising. How much did it cost to build a new pub?
• comparisons with other local and national breweries
• what motivated the takeover of rivals
• what induced the owners to sell out
• the reasons for the introduction of new beverages and their impact
• who were the brewery's chief customers, and what did they buy?

Working Men's Dining Hall, Craufurd Arms, Woverton, Buckinghamshire, ca. 1900. In attempts to reform the pub with Gothenburg principles, food sales loom large as an antidote to drunkenness. Efforts to promote food sales in state managed pubs during World War I owed much to the earlier success of Gothenburg pubs.

Not all of these questions can be answered, but their posing makes the researcher conscious of collecting certain types of material, while ignoring other facts. Some members of the society have written first-rate histories. Undoubtedly, the most comprehensive, detailed and analytical is Paul Jennings' The Public House in Bradford, 1770-1970 (1995), a full-length book which draws on diverse material to explore numerous themes over two centuries. Another model book is Birmingham Pubs, 1880-1939 (1986), by Alan Crawford, Michael Dunn and Robert Thorne. Though written on a smaller scale and based on one city, the book explores key themes over half a century. Two academic historians, Richard Wilson and Terry Gourvish, have exploited archival and published material to write impressive histories of Greene, King & Sons and Steward, Patteson & Co. ¹⁶

Members of the Society have demonstrated a commendable keenness to devote astonishing amounts of time to researching topics for publication in this journal. With some additional forethought and preparation, the historical value of what appears could reach a wider audience. Numerous topics await the researcher. With the recent dispersal of the huge archives at Whitbreads and Punch Taverns, county record offices now offer local researchers greater opportunity to consult archival material. There are other historical sources, too, that could be exploited, a topic which I shall be exploring in a subsequent article.

References