Bribes by brewers

Time from another fleeting break from North Britain. We're moving south to the North of England, Manchester to be precise.

Police corruption in nothing new. It's been around since, well, there have been policemen to corrupt. Our cosy nostalgic view of the honest 19th-century copper is far removed from the reality. The police had a strange relationship with public houses. Especially those on the beat. Drawn from the working classes, constables were often reluctant to impose the law on pubs. And quite liked a drink themselves.

Despite it being very much against the rules to drink on duty, it did occur:

"With regard to the police - Any policeman who looks as if he would like it is sure to get it, "there can be no question about that". Doubts if it amounts to very much but it would be better if it were not done. Publicans do it wherever they can because they know they will get help in turning out drunken men more easily if they do. A man who makes a noise drives away trade, therefore the publican is only too anxious to get rid of him. A policeman who takes drink is more likely to be near and to come quickly if he is called. "Well at any rate the publicans think so.""
5th October (1897)
Mr. Bramham. Surveyor and Valuer to the Assessment Committee of the Hackney Union. 115 Bow Road on an introduction from Mr. Young a member of the above committee.
http://booth.lse.ac.uk/notebooks/b347/jpg/221.html

"Policemen sometimes get treated to beer but this is less common than it used to be. Public houses are so much more strictly kept. There is so much money at stake in them that it is not worth the publican´s while to run any risks. Beerhouses are much more likely to offer beer than Publics. He admitted that any man who looked as if he would not mind a drink would get it. He has seen potmen bring it round to constables in the urinal at the side of the Public. But policemen are a more sober lot than they used to be."
Nov 11th. 1897
Interview with Inspector Thresher, retired after 26 years service in the London police corps. of which 12 years were spent in Whitechapel.
He keeps a sweet stuff shop in the Upper Clapton Road. Address Swanley House, The Pond, Upper Clapton Road. (Booth B348, p189-193)
http://booth.lse.ac.uk/notebooks/b348/jpg/189.html

Policemen were also sometimes given money by publicans:

"The first had been in place a year. He is now doing a business of £50-60 a month (13 months to a year). Before he took it the house only did £42 and was very rough in character. He determined to get rid of the rough ones, refused to sell to noisy customers. Got the policeman on his side - gives him about 6d per week so that he should always be there when wanted and more important than that should clear the neighbourhood of his door of loungers and rough characters."
October 1897
Interview with manager of public house, in Red Lion Street, Holborn, public house owned by Truman, Hanbury and Baxton's Brewery , 22 (Booth B348, pp70-73)
http://booth.lse.ac.uk/notebooks/b348/jpg/70.html

"It´s most important that your house should be conducted respectably. Therefore you must serve no drunken man. His potman fetches the police and he turns out anyone they see has had too much. He sends for the police in preference to letting his potman turn them out because of the remarks that would be made. "Look at him turning a man out and treating a man like that after he has made him drunk." The police are not always near. He has tried for years to get a point placed opposite his door but unsuccessfully the Commissioner always says he cannot spare any more men.

Every week he pays 1/- per week to the police as "call money". Nominally it is for calling the servant just before 1 o´clock."
Nov 10th 1897.
Interview with Mr. T. Cox, manager of 5 Public Houses at the Pembury Arms in Hackney, Amhurst Street.
(Booth B348, p179-187)

All relatively small potatoes  - 6d here, a pint of beer there. This was rather more serious:

"BRIBES BY BREWERS.
MANCHESTER POLICE SCANDAL.
Further disclosures in connection with the police administration were made yesterday at a mreeting of the Manchester City Council.- The Chief Constable reported that a deplorable state of affairs had existed in one of the divisions since the appointment of a certain ward superintendeat in 1894. This surperintendent, who had resigned, was frequently seen drunk. and he had allowed alterations to be made to public-houses without permission of the Justices, and had been in receipt of presents from brewery companies, so that it is impossible for him to carry out his duty properly. Depositions from other officers showed that they also had been in receipt of presents, among those who had given these presents being two aldermen now deceased.- The Superintendent's resignation was accepted at a reduced pension, and other officers were censured. A general warning was also issued to the force.- The Chief Constable said he was satisfied that the system of accepting presents had since the disclosures ceased to exist. "
Northern Echo - Thursday 05 October 1899, page 3.

I'm amazed at how lightly everyone got off. Even the main culprit only got early retirement on a reduced pension. Surely this serious case of corruption deserved more severe punishment? The others invoved only got a slap on the wrist. Would they be treated so leniently today? That probably depends on whether it was a national newspaper coughing up the cash and presents.

Competition - the simplified version

"Dad, I want to win the book." "It's not really a very difficult question for you, is it? All you have to do is look in your passport, Lexie."

Lexie wishes to make the following statement:

"For the record, Lexie is not a girl. He is a boy. "

I changed his nappy. No way he's a girl.

Now that's clear, on with the competition. There were many good entries first time around. Some warmed my heart. Others frightened with their insight. And there were those that made up their own answers.

None were correct. And, let's be honest, how many of you are there? I can't expect many more entries. Time for round two.

Here's a simplified list. Sorry. Shortened list:

E. Mild
F. Porter
G. Barclay
H. Perkins
I. Burton
K. Ale
L. Pilsen
M. Tarquin
O. Stout
P. Affrikka
R. Elmo
S. Rimmer
T. Brian
U. Artwodeetwo
V. Vodka
X. Candelent
Y. Crumpet
Z. Emergencypint


There will be multiple prizes. Honest. Christmas is around the corner*, and I've been filled with the spirit of giving.


*That's what it felt like in Bexleyheath last Saturday.

Cowsheds

No, I haven't switched to an agricultural theme. I'll let Charles Booth explain:

• Ida street has 5 public houses three of which are fully licensed: many rough women about and many women in the pubs. Monday is recognised as ladies day: in Carr Street it is known as "cowshed" day and probably here also; poor women being known by their husbands and male neighbours as "cows". Monday is their drinking day because they still have a little pocket money left: they drink in public houses which become in consequence "cowsheds".
  

Wags, eh, those cheeky, chirpy cockneys. Very Alf Garnett.

"Who is this Charles Booth?" That's a good question. He was a socilogist who undertook an enormous survey of ordinary life in London during the 1890's. Hi interviewed hundreds of people with different trades and asked them about their work. Images of his original handwritten notebooks are on the web. Don't worry about trying to write some academic's crappy handwriting, because I've transcribed the most interesting bits. Strange taste I have in reading matter, eh?

Here's some more of what he has to say about cowsheds:

• Speaking of women´s drinking Flanagan said that the King´s Arms was the "cowshed" par excellence of the district. The King´s Arms is in the High Street, it is an old establihed house and has lately been done up. This was confirmed by Mr. Young one of the guardians for the parish who has a perambulator shop nearly opposite. He said 11 AM and between 6 and 8 PM were the great hours for women´s drinking. All classes go in, no one seems in the least to mind being seen. Their tipple is gin. He has watched a butchers stall just opposite and noticed that every buyer of a joint was taken off there for a drink. Monday is the chief cowshed day. Sometimes in a poor street you will hear an old woman say to a young married woman "Come along my dear, you just put your husbands clothes away, he will never find it out, besides every one does it." That is how the women of the lower classes begin drinking. As factory girls they don´t indulge themselves at all regularly in this way.
  
  In the lower middle classes he thinks the drinking habit is started in the courting days. A young man now always takes his young woman into a public house, so does the young married man. Young married couples will often spend many hours of the evening at the public house, it is dull at home but bright and amusing out. Then the taste is acquired which afterwards becomes a habit. (Flanagan was a police inspector interviewd by Booth. The pub still exists: 18 Kingsland High Street, Dalston, E8 2JP)
  
• 
  Women´s drinking has certainly increased whereas men´s has if anything has diminished. Men drink beer but women more often spirits. It is beer upon which the working man gets drunk. Factory girls drink but it is more often the young married woman and middle aged women who indulge too much. It is in these latter that Flanagan has noticed the increase; not by any means only among the women of the poor, it is more noticeable among what would be the "middle class of a district like this". They have no shame at going into a public house either during or after their shopping, between 4 and 6 of an afternoon are their hours. Grocers licenses have not had much to do with it because it is away from home that the women indulge. In this district there is nothing in the allegation that women buy spirits and charge them to groceries to their husbands accounts. "Why should they? It is the immediate stimulus they want and they have no shame at going into a public house."
  

The Victorians and Edwardians didn't half get in a tizzy about women of the lower orders drinking. At least the "respectable" members of society - politicians, clegymen, magistrates and the like - did. Not that it bothered the member of the lower orders themselves. They saw nothing wrong with their womenfolk indulging in the odd nip of gin. Which illustrates how much our view of Victorian society - seen through the eyes of the higher classes - is a distortion of the reality. The attitudes of the London poor seem remarkably modern, compared to the pompous, often hypocritical morality of their "betters".

London as usual, was ahead of the game in social change. In other parts of the country, entering a pub was tantamount to proof of being a fallen woman.

• I remember too that we had visits from some Chief Constables from towns in the North of England, including Newcatle and Durham, who had come to tell the Control Board of a serious increase in drinking among wome in their towns, which was, they emphasized, a growing evil one non-existent before the war. . . . In the old days few decent women would go into a public house at all, and now they were walking in "bold as brass", putting their money down and calling for beer . . . they feared that it might continue after the war. I had, of course, known that women in ordinary times used public houses much less up north than in the London district, but I was not aware until then how wide was the difference. It seemed to me strange that leading police officials ahould be so troubled at what in the south was a quite normal custom. (From page 106 of "70 Rolling Years" the autobiography of Sydney Nevile, who worked in the brewing industry between 1888 and 1958)
  

What are things coming to, when women can walk ito pubs and ask for beer? Is it any wonder the world is in such a mess?

You can find more transcripts from Booth here. London pubs were already making enormous prices in the 1890's and paying the local plod standard practice for publicans. And why did pubs really swap over from pewter tankards to glasses?