The nearly men

When I used to regularly visit the London metropolitan Archives, as well as brewing records, I used to order up other brewery documents. Often without really knowing what their contents were. Some have turned out to be dead handy.

Like Truman document B/THB/C/256A. Which contains the output of a long list of London brewers. It kicks off with 1758 and 1760, then jumps to 1802. It's the 1758 list that really caught my eye. Dating as it does from the beginnings of the Porter boom.

The names you would expect are there: Whitbread, the two Calverts, Truman and, of course, Thrale (later to become Barclay Perkins). Sixteen brewers were knocking out more than 20,000 barrels annually. I was shocked to see that Thrale was only halfway down the list.

Even more surprising was the number of breweries in the list I'd never heard of. Including a couple - Hucks and Hope - who brewed more than Thrale. What happened to these breweries? Why did Whitbread, Truman, Barclay Perkins, Reid and Combe prosper and others sink without trace?

Largest London brewers in 1758
Brewer	barrels
Whitbread	64,588.75
Calvert & Seward	61,830.75
Truman	55,506.50
Sir Wm. Calvert	55,008
Hope	50,140.50
Gyfford	41,371.50
Hucks	35,672.50
Thrale	32,622.25
Parsons	31,698
Harman	30,776
Dickinson	28,433.50
Collinson	23,867.50
Harwood	21,235.50
Chase	20,323
Godfrey	20,174.50
Hare	20,170.50
Source:
Truman document held at the London Metropolitan Archives, document number B/THB/C/256A.