Reid tied houses and free trade 1830 - 1875

Still not done with tied houses. This time we're looking at another of the big London Porter breweries: Reid.

I used to think that Reid's brewery had totally disappeared. It was situated on the junction of Clerkenwell Road and Leather Lane. The site is currently occupied by a block of housing. But there was another part of the brewery on the other side of Leather Lane and part of that survives.Though the name Reid lived on for several decades as a Stout brand of Watney's.

I really should do more with the Reid brewing records I have photos of. I've not gone through them all properly yet. Not sure why, as they were the first ones I collected around ten years ago.

Back to their tied houses. If you remember, Barclay Perkins went from 51 owned pubs in 1830 to 29 in 1875. But for a large part of the period inbetween the numbers were quite stable. At Reid, there was a fall pretty much throughout and resulted in them owning less than a third as many pubs as when they started.

It's frustrating that the table doesn't extend a little later. Because I'm sure the trend towards sales rather purchases would have been reversed. I think the trends in pub ownership can be accounted for by licensing legislation.

Why would a brewers start selling off pubs after 1830? It must surely be connected with the Beer Act of that year. The thing that established beer houses and led to a big increase in the number of pubs, especially in London. As a consequence, they were more outlets for a brewer to choose from, meaning there wasn't such a big need to own pubs.

The beer house provisions in the Beer Act were mostly reversed by the 1869 Licensing Act. This made it nigh on impossible to obtain a new pub licence and even actively tried to reduce the number of licensed premises. Making outlets scarcer and more difficult to obtain. Leading to a mad rush to buy pubs.

Here's the table:

Reid tied houses and free trade 1830 - 1875
Year	Owned	%	Loan	%	Free	%	total	barrels brewed	barrels per pub
1830	168	27.3	355	57.7	92	15	615	127,220	206.86
1835	142	23.7	338	56.2	121	21.2	601	181,187	301.48
1840	122	19.7	360	58.3	136	22	618	195,169	315.81
1845	120	18.2	406	61.6	133	20.2	659	227,306	344.93
1850	120	17.2	391	55.9	188	26.9	699	213,345	305.21
1855	107	15.7	378	55.4	197	28.9	682	179,217	262.78
1860	96	12.8	384	51.2	270	36	750	288,597	384.8
1865	76	9.2	394	47.8	355	43	825	277,757	336.68
1870	55	6	407	44.7	438	49.3	900	264,753	294.17
1875	52	6	391	44.8	430	49.2	873	235,596	269.87
Sources:
The British Brewing Industry 1830 - 1980 by T.R. Gourvish and R.G. Wilson, 1994, page 131.
Whitbread brewing log, document LMA/4453/D/09/023
"The British Brewing Industry, 1830-1980" T. R. Gourvish & R.G. Wilson, pages 610-611