ABSTRACT
On a status ladder, managers and beerhouse ranked at the absolute bottom of those who ran licensed premises. With managers, brewers practised an informal apprenticeship system in Edwardian England. Of utmost importance in hiring managers was the individual’s “successful promotion of trade.” Politically, brewers valued managers as offering decisive leverage in controlling their tenants. Rooted in friction between brewers and retailers was how each interpreted the role of protective societies: brewers saw such bodies as solely political in nature, unauthorised to discuss, much less mediate, brewer-tenant grievances, whereas retailers, in a far weaker negotiating position, turned to their associations for protection. In this uneven power relationship, retail societies, which interceded for members against brewers over tenancy disagreements, invariably discovered their annual subsidies from brewers’ associations either reduced or even cancelled altogether. In analysing social mobility, occupation and time period are critical factors. Paul Jennings saw beerhouse keepers as the main source of mobility into licensed victualling, though he never substantiated that their numbers either dominated or loomed large in this development. Nor did he offer evidence of when beerhouse keepers lost primacy as a group in social mobility. Upward movement ended abruptly with the Wine and Beerhouse Act (1869) and subsequent legislation, which extended magisterial authority over beerhouses. Jennings misses this point altogether. He also fails to appreciate the role of managers, who provided at least theoretically a pool of individuals suitable for promotion into licensed victualling once they had served an apprenticeship.
