Introduction

The Mystique of Running the Public House in England explores a neglected topic, relations between wholesalers and retailers in the brewing industry from 1840 to 1939. This study draws on previously overlooked brewers’ accounts evaluating prospective tenants, their pubs and beerhouses. Applications for tenancies, interviews with candidates and comments from directors all survive in some archives. Evidence of royal commissions, especially those heard in Camera, affords further insight. Demographic data on London’s 28 boroughs from the exhaustive inquiries of Charles Booth and Sir Llewellyn Smith establish St. Pancras as the most representative borough. Becoming a publican captivated many ambitious upper working- and lower-middle-class men. Two features—status and income—attracted them especially. Whether as confidant or counsellor to customers, holder of prize theatre seats or leader of the neighbourhood’s fashion, the publican enjoyed immense prestige. El Dorado, the legend which evoked gold and vast treasures almost effortlessly achieved as rewards awaiting neophyte men, naturally enticed ambitious but seldom prosperous men to liquor retailing. Part of its magnetism was the image itself, offering the underclass and petty bourgeoisie a path to unimaginable riches, one to which many aspired but which few attained. Limited paths out of slumland made it a powerful attractor of the uneducated, uninformed and untutored.