ABSTRACT
Never grimmer was a retailer’s life than in the depressed 1930s. Sheffield and Rotherham licensed victuallers, who had defied economic pressures in refusing to abandon tenancies, lost £10,000, forcing six of them into bankruptcy. Nationally, overall gross profits per beer barrels had slumped 30% compared with Edwardian England. Retailers saw rising turnover levels as an index of their impoverishment, a visible, disturbing sign of an ever-deepening, overwhelming occupational crisis. Deteriorating conditions in London, the most prosperous part of the country, naturally provoked disquiet. Wherever looking for evidence—bankruptcies, suicides, turnovers or tenancy agreements—retailers confronted deteriorating trade conditions. Unsympathetic, even haughty, brewers antagonised and enraged retailers. By the mid-1930s, humiliated at asking for “a few more crumbs from the rich man’s table,” they viewed brewers with increasing contempt. Amid the depression standard brewers’ defence of El Dorado, the unflagging queue of candidates awaiting available tenancies was proven as illusory.
