Fall in on-licences 1905 - 1920

Time for yet more numbers. All culled from my new favourite book, the 1922 Brewers' Almanack.

If you think pub closures are bad currently, you should take a look at what happened just before WW I. The 1904 Licensing Act, introduced by a Liberal government with strong links to the temperance movement, gave Licensing Magistrates powers to refuse the renewal of licences for a vairiety of reasons. For example, if it was thought that there morepubs in an area than necessary. Licences could also be refused if a pub was considered to harbour thieves or if its trade was considered inefficient.

Temperance nutcases were obsessed with pubs providing unnecessary tempatation and loved having them closed down. They were helped by temperance advocates being Licensing Magistrates while members of the pub and brewing trade were prohibited from doing so. It lead to a very large number of pub closuress , as you can see in the table.

Licence holders of pubs deemed superfluous to requirements were usually paid compensation, this being the equivalent to the difference in value of the premises with and without a licence. Ones closed for breaking the rules received none. The compensation was paid from a levy imposed on licences.

Funnily enough, the pace of closures slowed after the outbreak of WW I. For the 15 years covered, an average of just over 1,000 pubs closed annually, with very small numbers of new licences being issued. That's an average of 20 a week. Getting a new licence became extremely difficult. A situation that continued until the 1970s.

For example, if a brewery wanted to build a new pub on an estate, it generally had to surrender one or more licences, usually in inner-city areas considered to have too many pubs.

Fall in on-licences 1905 - 1920
Year ended Dec. 31.	Refused with compensation.	Refused without compensation	Licences lapsed	New licences granted.	Net decrease.
1905	194	80	363	53	584
1906	892	69	435	56	1,340
1907	1,735	48	322	68	2,037
1908	1,236	30	253	47	1,472
1909	1,290	35	286	60	1,561
1910	993	27	250	33	1,237
1911	978	20	444	44	1,398
1912	849	18	296	53	1,110
1913	842	24	265	52	1,079
1914	844	13	225	48	1,034
1915	574	11	177	25	737
1916	383	22	239	28	616
1917	353	34	271	29	629
1918	400	19	195	14	600
1919	498	11	247	54	702
1920	526	11	340	71	806
Totals	12,587	472	4,608	725	16,942
Averages	787	30	288	45	1,059
Source:
Brewers' Almanack 1922, page 100.