Beer : Health and Nutrition

42 Chapter Two
Temperance pressures
In the closing years of the eighteenth century less beer was brewed at home, with major
brewing companies being spawned to supply beer to the millions employed in the newly
developing industries. Only country folk retained their brewing traditions. The development
of roads and railways provided distribution systems for the big brewers.
By 1810, there were 48,000 alehouses for some 8 million people in Britain (King
1947). Captains of industry were perturbed about wages being ‘wasted’ on excess
drinking. This led to a tightening of licensing laws and many counties declared that
public houses should be closed at 9 PM in winter and 10 PM in summer. Some were not
satis ed even with that and the temperance movement developed. The rst pledge of
‘teetotalism’ was signed in Preston in 1832 (King 1947). [The word teetotal is said to
have originated in an English temperance meeting, when a stammering man said ‘We
can’t keep ‘em sober unless we have the pledge total. Yes, Mr Chairman, tee-tee-total’
(Fleming 1975).]
However, there were those who championed the merits of consuming beer. Savage
(1866) wrote in the United States (where beer was very much the drink of moderation
as compared to the much more prevalent distilled concoctions) that:
The most useful temperance lecturer is he who advocates the temperate use of
beverages which custom has sanctioned and which … man will have. A reform
may, and we trust will be effected in favour of healthful and comparatively mild
drinks; but it is more than doubtful if hard working, energetic and withal social
people, such as form the bone and sinew of the Republic, will or can be induced
to give up all drink which custom, and the large majority of clergymen and physicians,
have sanctioned as refreshing.
Savage reminded the reader that in Bavaria at the time the average frugally drinking
labourer consumed a gallon per day. With reference to England, Savage championed
beer thus:
With an impartial catholicity of palate the votary of the amber ale loves to see its
‘beaded bubbles winking at the brim’ and yet is never forgetful of the darker charms
possessed by porter or stout. Boating men … cricketers, and the whole of the manly
English sporting community, are sensible alike to the charms of the long, thin,
narrow glass, the simple and unassuming tumbler, and the thorough going pewter
pot. The prudent and industrious mechanic prefers the wholesome brew of native
malt and hops to the ery foreign distillations that madden the brain and shatter
the nerves. The statistics of beer drinking are simply stupendous. Mr. Gladstone
… computed that every adult male in England consumed the astounding quantity