In the 1850's - a period when as we've already seen many were keen on getting soldiers off spirits - "Allen's Indian Mail" has lots of adverts from the East India Company inviting tenders for beer orders. This is a typical one:
Notice anything odd about it? That's right: the order for Porter is more than double that for Pale Ale. OK, that's just one advert. To get a clearer picture, I've collected all the numbers from the adverts I've found and put them into a nice, neat table. This is it:
| East India Company beer tenders (hogsheads) | |||
| Month | Year | Export London Porter | Export Pale Ale |
| Dec | 1849 | 4,322 | |
| Jan | 1850 | 1,420 | |
| Sept | 1850 | 4,010 | |
| Nov | 1850 | 700 | 50 |
| Dec | 1850 | 1,500 | |
| Aug | 1851 | 1,500 | 1,000 |
| Sep | 1851 | 3,300 | 50 |
| Sep | 1851 | 6,892 | |
| Mar | 1852 | 300 | |
| Jun | 1852 | 8,266 | |
| Dec | 1852 | 8,000 | 2,000 |
| Feb | 1853 | 2,526 | 3,289 |
| Mar | 1853 | 2,000 | 2,435 |
| Oct | 1853 | 8,520 | 2,839 |
| Mar | 1854 | 300 | |
| Aug | 1854 | 8,841 | 3,247 |
| Dec | 1855 | 15,407 | 11,131 |
| Jul | 1856 | 11,414 | |
| Oct | 1857 | 10,701 | 9,133 |
| Total | 46,363 | 23,511 | |
| Source: | |||
| "Allen's Indian mail and register of intelligence for British and foreign India" volumes 8,9,10,11,12,13,14 and 15 | |||
Fascinating, isn't it? The amount of Porter requested is about double that of Pale Ale. That's quite a different picture than the one usually painted of Pale Ale swilling expats.
Posts
3 comments:
I'm trying to get my head round some of the figures.There were roughly 60000 British troops in India many of them in inaccessible areas plus about as many civilians.Some months list over 20000 hogsheads which is a mighty lot of beer for those stationed in base camps.
Fascinating to see how proletarian porter has mostly been ignored compared to the toff's pale ale.
Very useful data. The class factor must be the telling one but I am reminded by something I once read of the history of cuisine, that right or wrong, cooking of the high-end type (elaborate preparation and/or choice ingredients) is what influences food culture at large and what is chronicled and remembered. The writer said it more pithily than I, something like, food is developed from the top on down.
Silly and illogical as it is, that is true of drink as well. And this may explain why porter died out in England but pale ale did not.
True, pale ale was (partly) eclipsed by lager, but it is well to remember that pilsener beer had an elite image originally.
Gary
Post a Comment