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Monday 12 March 2018

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.

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