Presenting the Perfect Pint: Drink and Visual Pleasure in Late Nineteenth-Century London

Abstract

In the final quarter of the nineteenth century, London's public houses were transformed in response to a set of intersecting forces of modernization that shaped their spatial, material, and aesthetic development, their commercial organization, and the management and conduct of social life within them. Drawing on the evidence of photographs and descriptions of modernized businesses published in licensed trade journals of the 1890s and on contemporary beer advertisements within which an idealized image of the beer sparkling in its glass emerged, this article explores the ways in which the visual culture of the late nineteenth-century licensed trade communicated its modernity and shaped a new visual experience of consumption.

Keywords:

• English Public House
• Nineteenth-Century Commercial Culture
• Metropolitan Modernity
• Interior Design and Decoration
• Aesthetics of Consumption

Notes

Jonathan Crary, Techniques of the Observer: On Vision and Modernity in the Nineteenth Century (Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, 1992), 14.

The term “licensed trade” incorporates breweries in their capacity as major public house owners.

The eight albums are held at the English Heritage Archives, Swindon, Collection Number: WTY01.

Even so, the public house interior has been identified as one of a number of alarming gaps in London's photographic record. See Ian Leith, “Amateurs, Antiquaries and Tradesmen: A Context for Photographic History in London,” London Topographical Record 28, no. 157 (2001): 105.

J. W. DeForest, “Crumbs of Travel,” Atlantic Monthly (December 1876): 699−700.

Geoff Brandwood, Andrew Davison, and Michael Slaughter, Licensed to Sell: The History and Heritage of the Public House (London: English Heritage in Association with CAMRA, Campaign for Real Ale, 2004), 127.

Recent studies include: Public Interiors: Cafés and Bars—The Architecture of Sociability, Christophe Grafe and Franziska Bollerey, eds. (London: Routledge, 2007); Penny Sparke, The Modern Interior (London: Reaktion Books, 2008); Designing the Modern Interior: From the Victorians to Today, Penny Sparke, Anne Massey, Trevor Keeble, Brenda Martin, eds. (Oxford: Berg, 2009); Fashion, Interior Design and the Contours of Modern Identity, Alla Myzelev and John Potvin, eds. (Farnham: Ashgate, 2010); Performance, Fashion and the Modern Interior: From the Victorians to Today, Fiona Fisher, Trevor Keeble, Patricia Lara-Betancourt, Brenda Martin, eds. (Oxford: Berg, 2011).

The Licensing Act of 1872 prohibited the sale of alcohol without a license and differentiated between businesses licensed for “on” and “off” sales. It imposed penalties for public drunkenness and barred landlords from serving prostitutes, drunken persons, and on-duty policemen. It also prohibited publicans from permitting unlawful gaming. Other measures included the regulation of sale to those under the age of sixteen, changes to opening hours, and the introduction of measures to regulate internal communication between licensed and unlicensed sites. Following the introduction of the Act, political discussion about the licensed trade centered on the question of license reductions and public house reform.

As Robert Elwall has noted in Bricks and Beer: English Pub Architecture, 1830–1939 (London: The British Architectural Library, 1983), 11–12, pressure on licenses stimulated a period of licensed property speculation in the capital.

“Popular Providers. How to Furnish a Public-House. A Visit to Messrs. Bowler Brothers' New Premises in Bishopsgate Street,” Licensed Victuallers' Gazette and Hotel Courier, June 29, 1900, 441.

“Popular Providers,” 441.

“Popular Publicans. Mr. Thomas E. Haynes. The Horn of Plenty, Poplar,” Licensed Victuallers' Gazette and Hotel Courier, September 2, 1898, 628.

Noel Buxton and Walter Hoare, “Temperance Reform,” in The Heart of the Empire: Discussions of Problems of Modern City Life in England, ed. C. F. G. Masterman (London: T. Fisher Unwin, 1901), 172.

“Popular Publicans. Mr. Albert E. Fleming. ‘Fleming's,’ 395, Strand, W.C.,” Licensed Victuallers' Gazette and Hotel Courier, December 16, 1898, 934.

“Popular Publicans. Mr. Jas. W. Cain, of The Edinburgh Castle, 322, Strand, London,” Licensed Victuallers' Gazette and Hotel Courier, May 13, 1898, 308; and quotation, “Houses Worth Visiting. The Edinboro' Castle. Strand, London. Proprietor: Mr. Jas. W. Cain,” Licensed Victuallers' Gazette and Hotel Courier, June 10, 1898, 392.

“Popular Publicans. Mr. A. E. Brett. The White Hart Tavern, New Cross Gate,” Licensed Victuallers' Gazette and Hotel Courier, August 5, 1898, 552.

“Popular Publicans. Mr. John Rumsey. The Albert, Victoria Street, Buckingham Gate, London, S.W.,” Licensed Victuallers' Gazette and Hotel Courier, April 6, 1900, 236.

Christopher Breward, “Aestheticism in the Marketplace: Fashion, Lifestyle and Popular Taste,” in The Cult of Beauty, The Aesthetic Movement, 1860–1900, Stephen Calloway and Lynn Federle Orr, eds. (London: V&A Publishing, 2011), 199.

Mark Girouard, Victorian Pubs, rev. ed. (New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 1984), 115 and quotation, 120.

Hugh Maguire, “The Victorian Theatre as a Home from Home,” Journal of Design History 13, no. 2 (2000): 107–21.

Thorstein Veblen, The Theory of the Leisure Class: An Economic Study in the Evolution of Institutions (New York: Macmillan Co., 1899); Georg Simmel, The Philosophy of Money, trans. T. Bottomore and D. Frisby (1900; London: Routledge, 1978).

Crary, Techniques of the Observer, 14.

Crary, Techniques of the Observer, 7.

George Augustus Sala, Gaslight and Daylight, With Some London Scenes They Shine Upon (Chapman and Hall, 1859), 127–28.

T. R. Gourvish and R. G. Wilson, The British Brewing Industry, 1830–1980 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1994), 139–40.

For a summary of legislation on adulteration, see S. Sumar and H. Ismail, “Adulteration of Foods—Past and Present,” Nutrition & Food Science 95, no.4 (July/August 1995): 11–12.

Government inspectors noted a steady decline in adulterated beer samples over the course of the 1870s, with a national figure of 3.6 percent recorded for 1879 and only one London sample of ninety-eight examined found to be adulterated. See “The Sale of Food and Drugs Act,” The British Medical Journal, October 9, 1880, 598.

On the Pure Beer Campaign, see Jim Phillips and Michael French, “The Pure Beer Campaign and Arsenic Poisoning, 1896–1903,” Rural History 9, no.2 (1998): 195–209.

Phillips and French, “The Pure Beer Campaign,” 195–209.

Girouard, Victorian Pubs, 89.

Thirty-one notebooks recording walks taken by Charles Booth's assistants with London policemen in the 1890s were used to update earlier Maps Descriptive of London Poverty. The digitized notebooks form part of the Charles Booth Online Archive, hosted by the London School of Economics and Political Science: http://booth.lse.ac.uk. Citations are to the police notebook and page number. The Charles Booth Online Archive, Police Notebook B348: 179.

“Popular Publicans. Mr. Albert Mathams,” Licensed Victuallers' Gazette and Hotel Courier, July 22, 1898, 512.

“Popular Publicans. Mr. Tom J. Mackness, of The Dog and Fox Hotel, Wimbledon,” Licensed Victuallers' Gazette and Hotel Courier, May 6, 1898, 288.

William Moyle, “Inspecting London,” in Living London: Its Work and Its Play, Its Humour and Its Pathos, Its Sights and Its Scenes, vol. 3, ed. George R. Sims (Cassell & Co, 1901–1903), 237.

“The King of the Pot Stealers,” Licensing World and Licensed Trade Review, January 3, 1896, 9.

Edward Callow, Old London Taverns: Historical, Descriptive and Reminiscent with Some Account of the Coffee Houses, Clubs, etc. (London: Downey & Co., 1899), 294.

“Popular Publicans. Mr. Charles Henry Alexander. The Old Ship, Ivy Lane, Newgate Street, E. C.,” Licensed Victuallers' Gazette and Hotel Courier, March 29, 1901, 202-03, quotation, 203.

“Houses Worth Visiting. The Edinboro' Castle, 392.

“The Self-Measuring Tap,” Licensed Victuallers' Gazette and Hotel Courier, June 5, 1896, 359; advertisement for The “Self” Measuring Tap Company, 95, Hatton Garden, London, E. C., January 8, 1897, 18.

“The Self-Measuring Tap,” 359.

The Charles Booth Online Archive, Police Notebook B348:183.

On the “long pull,” see “Important Decision as to Illegal Measures,” Licensed Victuallers' Gazette and Hotel Courier, August 7, 1896, 506. On bowlers, see The Charles Booth Online Archive, Police Notebook B352: 42.

Elaine S. Abelson, When Ladies Go A-Thieving: Middle-Class Shoplifters in the Victorian Department Store (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1992), 95.

E. Sigsworth, “Science and the Brewing Industry, 1850–1900,” Economic History Review 17, no. 3, n.s. (1965): 544.

Sigsworth, “Science and the Brewing Industry,” 545–46.

The Times, May 12, 1908, 4.

Roy Church, “Advertising Consumer Goods in Nineteenth-Century Britain: Reinterpretations,” Economic History Review 53, no. 4, n.s. (2000): 621–45, see pp. 640 and 641.

Western Mail, May 24, 1888, 4.

Crary, Techniques of the Observer, 5.

The late Ian Calvert's extensive online collection of historical beer mats contains a number of pre-1939 examples. See: http://www.calvert-beermats.com. See also, Ian Calvert, A Guide to Collecting Beer Mats (Edinburgh: Ian Calvert, 2006).