Differing Responses to an Industrialising Economy - eTheses ...

exchange of ideas. Throughout the study period the (mainly autumnal) mop fairs
provided an important focus for the labour market, where many labourers and servants of
both sexes were hired until the following Michaelmas.
Most parishes boasted at least one drinking establishment, and Inkberrow as many
as seven at one time. 173
However, concern about workers spending too much money on
drink, caused the suppression of four of Inkberrow’s pubs in the late eighteenth
century. 174
Despite this, probate data suggests a rise in the percentage of the zone’s
publicans over the study period, and baptism data shows their share continuing to rise
from 1813 to 1840; 1.3% of fathers in the 1830s were publicans. 175
As noted elsewhere, many victuallers pursued by-employments, while it was by
no means unusual for women to be in charge of a public house. 176
One village inn in the
1660s had seven rooms in addition to the cheese-chamber and buttery, perhaps enabling
the landlord to offer accommodation. No doubt much of the fare on offer was produced
on the premises, with seven ‘melch cows’ for cheese, two store pigs for meat and an
orchard yielding verjuice, cider and perry. 177
Local records reveal two vintners,
173 Bradbrook, History of the Parish of Inkberrow, p. 57.
174 Rogers, The State of the Poor (by Sir Frederic Morton Eden), p. 350.
175 Tables 6.2 and 6.6. (For some reason few publicans married by licence.) The baptism figures from the
1830s include the new beerhouse-keepers. Table 6.8 (1841 census) also has 1.3% for adult males and 0.7%
for adult females in the pub trade.
176 For example, Richard Biddle was both blacksmith and victualler. (WaRO, QS35/1/2, licensed
victuallers’ returns, 1673. WoRO, probate of Richard Biddle, Aston Cantlow, blacksmith, 1681, £46-8-0.)
Many victuallers farmed, but even in the nineteenth century innkeepers still had other jobs such as
blacksmith and miller. For example, WaRO, QS35/1/1, licensed victuallers’ returns, Oversley, (Arrow),
1661, lists Alice Wakeman, widow.
177 WoRO, probate and miscellaneous probate (796/390) of Edward Holtham, Great Alne, victualler, 1663,
£65-10-6. Verjuice is crab-apple juice used for healing animals and for cooking. The inn may have fronted
the coach-road to London.
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