ABSTRACT
The term El Dorado originated in a book which Sir Walter Raleigh wrote when well-established in Queen Elizabeth’s court in late sixteenth-century England, entitled the “great and golden city of Manoa (which the Spaniards call El Dorado).” El Dorado was a recurring emblem for those seeking to enter licensed victualling in the century after 1840. Becoming publicans mesmerised numerous ambitious working- and lower-middle class men, who often expressed implicitly the sentiment of El Dorado. Such adulation of publicans’ occupation began in the aftermath of the Restoration. Outside the trade, inexpert and gullible entrants from rural localities reasoned that brewers would only own profitable tied houses. Others viewed running the pub as inevitably lucrative owing to myriad methods of “making it on the side.” Proven success lured the unwary too. A low turnover of pub tenants seemingly provided compelling evidence of brewers’ paternalistic behaviour, a long-standing trait dating from Georgian England. One had to look no further than long queues of candidates seeking a tenancy as confirmation. Promised social mobility enticed the guileless, gullible and gambler. Given limited routes out of slums, running the local offered an alluring exit from oppressive, poorly paid, unrewarding, dead-end jobs in slumland, bleak, miserable and hopeless. So the El Dorado legend steadily gained credibility with time and repetition.
