Differing Responses to an Industrialising Economy - eTheses ...

and a half years’ wages (£6-15-0) and his maid for half a year (£1-2-6). 257
Malting
remained an important part of Alcester’s economy throughout the study period. 258
If dual occupations are associated with maltsters, this is also the case with the
town’s licensed victuallers, who turned their hand to a score of other jobs. Of some
twenty-one victuallers advertising in 1792 eleven also practised another occupation. 259
Alcester was well-blessed with inns, and sources suggest that the number grew over the
two centuries. 260
Though some victuallers were of fairly low status, others ranked
amongst the higher status townsfolk with wider horizons. 261
Women played a significant (albeit often hidden) part in retailing and
innkeeping. 262
Women do appear in the licensed victuallers’ lists, especially widows
who took over their husbands’ businesses. In reality many women must have run the pub
while their husbands were busy in their alternative occupations. 263
257 WoRO, probate of Thomas Laugher, Alcester, maltster, 1754, £574-5-3.
258 Numbers of those described as maltsters include in probate: Period A: 5, Period B: 6, Period C: 10,
Period D: 5. UBD 1792: 5, Pigot 1835: 7. WaRO, Alcester 1841 census lists 3. TNA, IR23/91, Alcester
land tax return, lists 3 malthouses, although there may have been others not listed separately in the return.
259 UBD 1792. Trades combined with victualling are: mason, glazier, baker, peruke maker, miller, butcher,
shopkeeper, timber merchant, dealer, salt dealer and blacksmith.
260 In probate we find Period A: 5 victuallers, Period B: 8, Period C: 8, Period D 12. In WaRO, QS35/1/2,
licensed victuallers’ recognisances, 1673, there were 26 victuallers (including 4 women). TNA, WO30/48
also lists 27 guest beds and stabling for 150 horses in Alcester at this period. In 1735 there were 27
(WaRO, QS35/1/4). UBD 1792 lists 21, Pigot 1835 lists 19 and 4 beer retailers. WaRO, Alcester 1841
census, lists 19 male publicans and 5 female publicans.
261 WaRO, QS35/1/2, licensed victuallers’ returns , 1673, mention Thomas and Maria Round. A token was
also issued ‘Stephen Round at the Grayhounds Head in Alssester’, cited in G. E. Saville, ‘A history of the
public houses of Alcester’, ADLHS, OP25, (1981), p. 9. Often members of this family were referred to as
‘gentlemen’. WoRO probate of John Farr, Alcester, victualler, 1788, shows that he had a £100 share in the
turnpike road from Birmingham to Spernall Ash.
262 C. Wiskin in J. Stobart and N. Raven, eds., Towns, Regions and Industries, (Manchester, MUP, 2005),
pp. 63-79.
263 The role of women as publicans may be exemplified by Mary Perks. John Bovey passed the Swan on to
his daughter Mary, wife of Henry Perks. Mary continued at the helm even after the death of her husband
(WoRO, probate of John Bovey, Alcester, innholder, 1730, £41-10-0, and of Henry Perks, Alcester,
innholder, 1733/4, £228-0-0. WaRO, QS35/1/4, licensed victuallers, 1735-40.) Six of the twenty-two
victuallers licensed in the parish in 1772 were women. (WaRO, QS35/2/Box20, licensed victuallers’
returns, 1772.)
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