Category: Law

Your Vital Links To Beer News For Wednesday Half-Day

craigbbcTwo days back off holiday and I am already taking an afternoon off. Slacker. Well, there was a need to do so but not really to do anything other than mind the wee one. Fortunately there’s afternoon baseball to watch online and lots of beer news to catch up with.

=> First, the best news of all is that I may have figured out a cure to the spam war. When I was in Maine I opened up the comments page on the admin to find myself facing over 5,000 pending comments needing manual deleting. I rolled up my sleeves and figured out a few new things. Result: no evil bad comments for a few days now. Even though the blog’s FB page has neatly stepped in, I can now state with confidence that the comments will be open… as long as this keeps working.

=> Jordan made an excellent point in passing over of FB which needs repeating: “I hope they take about ten percent market share. They will then be eligible for beer store ownership. That’ll put the cat amongst the pigeons.” He’s talking about SABMiller’s enthusiastic return to the Ontario beer market. While I remain unmoved, the petite reform MOU does state that “ownership of TBS will be open to all brewers with facilities in Ontario.” Get it on, SABMiller. Get it on.

=> I was not able to get my butt back down to Albany after driving through the last two weekends coming and going from Maine. Sad as one of the great leaps forward was held yesterday as the BBC programme “Great American Railway Journeys” was in town filming and included the Albany Ale Project as part of the story of its New York episode. As you can see, Craig aka “Showtime” had as natty a sports jacket as host Michael Portillo. Plus I got an email that read “I have spoken to my Director, Tom, and he doesn’t plan on you being on screen on screen on this occasion..” I should have known partnering with a former hand model would end up like this…

=> Another excellent edition of the “Drinker’s Digest” appeared over at Stonch’s place triggering a rather zesty discussion beginning with: “Tandleman has a point there will be certain people with vested interests who won’t be happy to hear it…” Tandy carried forth himself today. Which is associated with this comment on food blogging’s latest ethical crisis by a noted wine writer. As I mentioned in the alternative format, with all due respect, it isn’t at all just about disclosing receipt of resources and benefit as part of one’s writing. That’s just the entry point for the discussion unless you don’t care or don’t understand how it appears to reasonable people when writers accept resources for what they write from the subject matter of the writing.

=> Maureen speaks for me in relation to 80% of the beer books put out in the last five years: “Routson’s beer primer is no better and no worse than 50 others I’ve read in recent years. The usual suspects parade the pages: beer styles, brewing process, cooking with beer, pairing food and beer, “science-y numbers” with which to impress your pals, and tasting notes aplenty.” Personally, I would have used the line a bit ago when we were all supposed to care which beer went with the chilled shrimp and avacado wrap. Note: Jeff gets special dispensation as his book sat with the publisher for two years for some unknown reason. But we can stop with the identa-texts now, right? Write only original beer books starting… NOW!

That’ll do for now. It’s summer. There’s baseball to watch. And a new beer to try. Not telling which. I paid for it myself. No need to tell you anything about it. Bet it will be great. Not telling why.

Three Mugs Of Beer For The Servant Girl

threemugsI’ve heard you. More tales of Cripplegate crime related to beer from the records of the Old Bailey. And why not? It’s good clean fun, in it? Let’s dissect the trial of Michael Martin and Hannah Farrington for grand larceny held on 15th October 1729. It starts out pretty clearly enough.

Michael Martin, and Hannah Farrington, of St. Giles’s Cripplegate were indicted for feloniously stealing two Gallons of strong Beer, value 2 s. the Property of John Ploughman, the 12th of May last.

Charged with a felony for two gallons of beer? What’s the prosecutor thinking?

It appear’d by the Evidence that the Prosecutor was a Brewer, and the Prisoner, Michael Martin, was his Servant…

Oh, that’s what’s going on. This is a private prosecution. The master, John Ploughman, has filed an information with the court against his own servant, Martin, for stealing the two gallons of beer. Breach of trust situation. The value is a bit of a side point if you think about it.

….that the Prosecutor having a Store-Cellar near Cripplegate , and Hannah Farrington being a Servant to a Customer of the Prosecutor’s, who dwelt hard-by this Store-Cellar…

Uh oh. Boy meets girl. Girl meets boy’s boss’s beer cellar. A story as old as love and beer cellars have been around.

…and having supplied the Prosecutor’s Servants with some Necessaries they wanted when at the Store-Cellar, the Prisoner, Michael Martin, or some other of the Prosecutor’s Servants, had at Times, in Return, given her three Mugs of Beer…

Had at times given her some beer! A bit imprecise for an alleged felony. Not only are the amounts of beer involved tiny but the dates of the supposed offences are sketchy. There must be more going on.

…and that the Prisoner Michael Martin , having given an Information to the Commissioners of the Excise of the Prosecutor’s using Molasses in his brewing Drink, did set on foot this Prosecution;

Ah ha! The truth will let itself be know, won’t it. Martin had ratted out his boss to the tax man for adulterating the beer and there by avoiding paying what was due. Malt tax was a pressing issue. A new tax in 1725 had led to riots in Scotland. Since 1697 In England, 6 pence was paid for every bushel of malt used in brewing. Folk were seeking ways around doing their duty. Bad folk were, that is. Folk like John Cheaterpants Ploughman. The case immediately begins to unravels rather quickly…

…giving the Drink not appearing in the Eye of the Law to be a Felony, and the Prosecution malicious, the Jury acquitted the Prisoners, and the Court granted them a Copy of their Indictment.

Freedom! Freeeeeedommmm! Well, no job and nothing but a piece of paper with the word acquitted on it but at least not transported or hanged by the neck until dead or anything. The latter prospect was cheerily and apparently popularly depicted in the background of that illustration up there showing the Old Bailey in 1735. Moral of the story? If you are going to cheat in 1725 cheat a bigger cheater who’s been cheating the Crown.

Trials Of Ale House Crime In Cripplesgate Without

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Like so many of the digitized records related to beer and brewing through the internet available to us now, Old Bailey Proceedings Online is a fabulous resource. One of the great levelers of the beery discourse is going to be more and more access to open records so that we won’t be subject to the great man theory of beer too much longer. The down side is that the mass of data is going to require a careful eye aware of greater context as well as the skill sets required to receive the information in itself. This post over at The Many Headed Monstergive us a taste. So, it’s just clean fun to come across a data set that one can really get one’s teeth into given the career path to date. What am I talking about? I am talking crime. Crime like this evidence from a case from 1780 in which the evidence of Cornelius Murphy was received:

“I kept a public-house in Golden-lane . On the 7th of June, between six and seven o’clock, a great mob surrounded my house, some with swords and some with bludgeons. They came into the tap-room and had what liquor they wanted. They examined my books and were going off satisfied.“

Was the prisoner among the mob? – “Not at that time. After giving three huzza’s in the house they went down the street some way. One Clark and his wife called the mob back, and said I was a Papist, and they must down with my house. The mob returned immediately, and began pulling down the house.”

When did you see the prisoner? – “About half an hour after they began he was in the bar, drawing the liquor and drinking it.”

Had you ever seen the prisoner before? – “Yes; he had been several times at my house; I am positive he is the man.”

Did you see him do any thing else? – “I saw him break part of the bar down.”

What was the rest of the mob doing? – “Pulling down the house and drinking the liquor.”

Court. Whether the mob were pulling down the house during that hour in which you say the prisoner was in it? – “Yes, they were.”

Be particular in describing what they did to the house, the wainscoting, and window frames? – “They had iron crows beating them down.”

Excellent. An anti-Papist crowd rips apart a public house and someone gets nabbed. The funniest thing is apparently the particular accused was sent into the riot to save the spirits, the hard liquor from being part of the bust up – by the distiller who sold it to the place. The guy got off because he was folloing his boss’s orders: “he desired some of our men might go and assist him to get his liquor from the bar.” Not sure I’ve seen “bar” used for a public house that early but someone will correct me, will be better informed.

That’s what was going on on Golden Lane on one nutty day about 27 years before the image up there of the Golden Lane Brewery was created. You will recall Golden Lane and its ties to hundreds of years of perhaps unremarkable brewing history. It appears to also have associations with hundreds of years of drinks, ale and brewing related crime, too. What else went on there?

• A few generations earlier, one Joseph Towle, was tried for theft on October 10, 1694: “Joseph Towle was Tried for stealing 3 l. in Money, from William Underhill Esq ; at the Three Arrows Brewhouse in Golden-Lane ; the Prisoner was seen to come out of the Counting house, (being Cooper to the Brewhouse) and afterwards the Drawers were found open, and the Money gone; and he being strictly examin’d about it, confest.” Sticky fingered coopers. How often do you see that? He pleaded that he was drunk but was sentenced to a good hand branding anyway.

• Martha Purdew , of St. Giles without Cripplegate was sentenced to death in 1720 for stealing a money bag off someone who offered her a lift en route to Islington when they stopped for a dram of brandy.

• In 1726, Albertus Burnaby, a brewer who formerly lived on Golden Lane was brought before the court to explain himself for defrauding his creditors while being a bankrupt. He was acquitted for a lack of evidence.

• In 1752, Thomas Barnes was sentenced to transportation for stealing a silver tankard while at a public house on Golden Lane: “On the 26th of December, about three o’clock in the morning, two men came in and called for three pints of beer: before the boy could get down into the cellar, one of the men said, I am surprized to see you so dilatory, to be up yourself and have your cellar window open, than opens in the street: immediately the boy, in the cellar called out Aunt! Aunt! here is a thief in the cellar. I ran down, saw the prisoner at the bar, with a silver tankard in his hand…”

• One more. In 1766, Sarah Stanley was sentenced to death for stealing money from her employer, the keeper of a public house. When confronted, a scene ensued: “She equivocated a great deal, and said she knew nothing of it; at last she said, they were at the foot of the bridge; in going, they met them both together accidentally by Cripplegate church; I was not there. They went in at the Ship-ale-house, in Whitecross-street, and I and the constable were sent for. The father used me there in a very abrupt manner; he pushed me down flat on my face, and threw beer over me and another…

It’s all so fabulous. In that last case, the details include one drinker testifying that “I had a pint of beer; I said to the girl, put a bit of toast in it…” while the tavern keeper cried out in despair “I am ruined, I am robbed of all I got; it is not mine, it is the brewer’s money“. Hints about serving options and the business of running a tavern all hidden in the sad tale of the thieving serving lass who met her death. Not to mention the glamorous testimony “I felt a knob in his fob.” Fun stuff. A great source of 18th century low life and public house manners – not to mention Stuart and Georgian sentencing horrors. The otherness of the past laid plain before you.

Image #1 for Note #5 below in the first comment:

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Legal Customs In Three Sorts Of Brewing Cases

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More law. And why not? Beer is largely a function of law being a rich source of revenue for the crowd and a rich source of discord within the community. And with 178 volumes of court rulings in the English Reports covering the years from 1220 to 1866, there’s likely years’ worth of content to be examined. I am trying to wrap my head around it all. The court dealing with claims of ancient or at least established custom appear as a recurring theme. Two of the hops cases in the post from a couple of weeks ago were about a form of custom, the tithe to be paid to the church by the hop growers in a parish. Local rules. There are other customs to be identified as set out in cases like these:

• In the 1817 case Gard v. Callard [1817] EngR 255; (1817) 6 M & S 69; 105 ER 1169, the following claim was brought to the court in Devon.

… the plaintiff declared upon the custom that all the inhabitants within the borough of Modbury brewing in their houses there any ale or beer for sale, ought to grind at his mills in the parish of Modbury, all the malt used or spent ground by them in their said houses, in the brewing of ale or beer for sale, and to pay him a certain toll for the grinding thereof ; and alleged that the defendant was an inhabitant, &e. and that on the 1st January 1803, and on divers other days between that and the day of exhibiting the bill, he ground at other mills.

See the odd thing? The case is heard fourteen years after the wrong is alleged to have started occurring. The defendant, Callard, had not gotten his malt processed at Gard’s mill in all that time. The fee to be paid for the grinding was ” a toll of six quarts and a pint out of every bag of twenty gallons.” If there are four quarts in a gallon I make the fee 6.5 quarts out of every 80 or 8.125% of the malt. That is a hell of a toll for just milling the malt. No wonder they wanted to go elsewhere. But the toll was upheld. The lord of the manor was to be paid because “doubtless long usage and acquiescence in one uniform payment was cogent evidence that it was reasonable.” Because the internet is wonderful, here is more information on the manorial charter as well as the mills of Modbury. I wonder how much later it was until modernity hit, how long it was before beer was being brought in by train from somewhere else, undermining the manorial toll.

• Another sort of custom was claimed in Bosworth (Chamberlain of London) against Hearne [1791] EngR 130; (1791) Andr 91; 95 ER 312:

…that anno 1663 order was made by the mayor, aldermen and commonalty reciting, that the streets of the said city were much annoyed by brewers carts and drays, and therefore it was ordained thereby, that no brewer, drayman or brewers servants, shall work or be abroad in the streets with any cart or dray from Michaelmas to Lady-Day after one of the clock in the afternoon, or from Lady-Day to Michaelmas after eleven in the morning, upon the pain of forfeiting 20 s. for every time…

I am not sure why the annoyance of the City could be put up with for two hours more from Michaelmas to Lady-Day than in the rest of the year. For those of you who do not know, Lady Day is 25 March while Michaelmas falls on 29 September. The “Lady” is the Virgin Mary and the date on the calendar goes back to before the English Church split away from Roman Catholicism. Like the long standing civic holiday, the City of London’s order of 1663 was upheld as still good law in 1791. The fine for late deliveries was still good local law.

• The next case, Greene versus Cole, is harder to follow but it is laced with references to “custom” and “brew” which in itself qualifies it. The dispute relates to a will. A lot of these cases about breweries relate to a dispute in a will. But this one has a particularly spicy aspect – a charge of waste (perhaps as against the custom of the City of London) as set out in the ruling:

… the said Henry did make waste, sale, and destruction in the said house and messuage, that is to say, by prostrating a brew-house parcel of the said messuage of the price of 1000 [pounds], and taking away and selling the timber and roof thereof; and also by pulling down, pulling oft, and carrying away four ale-tuns fixed to the said brew-house, each of them of the price of 5 [pounds], a copper of brass covered with lead likewise fixed to the said brew-house, of the price of 200 [pounds], a mash-tun likewise fixed to the said brew-house, of the price of 20 [pounds], a pump erected in the said brewhouse, of the price of 5 [pounds], six brewing vessels called coolers made of timber likewise fixed to the said brew-house, each of them of the price of 6 [pounds], a malt-mill with a small millstone belonging to the said mill fixed in the ground in the said brew-house, of the price of 20 [pounds], and a cistern made of a cement called plaster of Paris, and fixed in the ground in the said brew-house, of the price of 10 [pounds], to the disinheriting of the said William, and against the form of the provision in such case provided ; wherefore he says that he is injured, and has damage to the value of 1000 [pounds] and therefore he brings suit…

Short version: the tenant (of a sort) tore down the brewery. The owner (of a sort) got upset. The brewery itself was “commonly called or known by the name or sign of the Flower de Luce” and was on Golding Lane (later Golden Lane) in the parish of St. Giles without Cripplegate, London. [See more about the brewery here.] There are two versions of the case that I see: Greene versus Cole [1845] EngR 97; (1845) 2 Wms Saund 228; 85 ER 1022 as well as Greene versus Cole [1845] EngR 98; (1845) 2 Wms Saund 252; 85 ER 1037. As you can see, the two cases were published in the same year, the second appearing to be a form of appeal. The passage set out above is from the first of the two. The second one explains what is going on a bit better. The first court hearing is before the “hustings,” a court of the city of London, held before the Lord Mayor, the sheriffs and aldermen. It handled matters related to land, common pleas, appeals from sheriffs and probate – or disputes over wills like in this case. Beadles are called in. Jurors are rounded up from the wards around the location of the brewery to advise what they think was going on. The hearing was held in the still standing Guildhall, illustrated above in the 1750s. The custom in this case is all about local municipal process. But the cases are not from 1845. They are from the 20th year of Charlies II, republished to illustrate the point being made in law. As a result, they also illustrate the value and the elements of a brewery from the 1680s. It had a cement cistern. Who knew? Again… neato.

That is enough for today. This ain’t easy reading.

The British Ale Brewery, A Joint Stock Company In 1807

bab1807In 1807, a correspondent who went by the name “The Plain Dealer” wrote a letter to the editor of The Morning Chronicle on the topic of joint stock companies:

SINCE my last letter a number of new projects have been announced to the public, and some of them of great magnitude…. Let us begin with the Breweries. No fewer than five companies have been established, to rescue the public from bad beer at an increased price. This was a most tempting proposal. There was, after the series of unfavourable harvests, which we suffered at the beginning of the new century, an universal complaint against the beer. It was not merely lowered in quality, but composed of substitutes for hops and malt, which were thought to be pernicious; and to add to the evil, it was said to be the practice of all the great brewers, both in town and country, to buy up the leases of ale-houses, so as to deprive the publican of the freedom of going to the best brewery for his liquor. If this statement be true, it was a crying evil; but it was, and is, capable of an easy remedy. It depends entirely on the Magistrates; for if, instead of the reluctance which they now feel at the licensing of new houses, they would make it a rule, whenever a public tap was known to be the property of a brewer, and that bad beer was the consequence, to license a free house, in the immediate neighbourhood; the competition would be renewed, and the people would be served with a wholesome, palatable, and strengthening beverage. We know that the worthy Chief Magistrate of a city in the county of Kent has announced this to be his determination, and the inhabitants have already reason to be grateful to him for his device.

Competition. That was the promise of the joint stock companies. Too much wealth had gravitated into too few hands through the reactionary period after the loss of thirteen of the fifteen American colonies and then the French Revolution. The quality of beer crashed as prices climbed. But this new cure by joint stock companies was not trusted. In the string of letters to the editor in which this one is found, complaints about “sleeping partners” and “middle men” are set out. The sorts of things that people who distrust big faceless corporations floating mid-air in the stock markets still raise today. Yet there was an argument that these were tools to break the monopolies of the fantastically well connected and landed, the means to introduce competition into a status based economy. Competition was a new idea. Distrust hovered.

There is another reason folk were concerned other than the shock of the new. 1720. Ever since 1720, the joint stock idea was cursed. See, from the mid-1500s to 1720 there was a system of chartered companies approved and given blessing by the Crown. The most famous in Canada is the Hudson Bay Company that continues today. In our book Ontario Beer, Jordan and I describe how in the 1670s beer was being brewed in Ontario’s Arctic north by staff of the HBC over-wintering in trading posts set up to supply the firm with furs and other goods from the exotic north. A number of these were set up to encourage trade with lands as far away as Russia and Turkey… and then in the first quarter of the 1700s the South Seas. Careful readers will recall a few days ago when in the 1760 case Hunter v. Sheppard the Court described the hop buying fraudulent scheme in this way: “…trade was at that time very particularly circumstanced, hops being in 1764, like South Sea stock in 1720, or India stock in 1767…” Frauds. Bubbles. Money going in but never a hope of return coming out. The disastrous South Sea Company was the last of these companies to be chartered. And for a hundred years they remained highly suspect.

By the new century, new problems with the economy demanded a return to the concept.Unincorporated and unlisted subscription joint stock companies were forming when large groups of people subscribed into what essentially was a extremely large partnership. Described as “associations of gentlemen” they formed to break the grip of the established and wealthy in the context of the new commercial liberties and the new industrial era. One of these new enterprises was the British Ale Brewery. In an 1809 edition of The Monthly Magazine in the listings of commodity prices, one aspect of the British Ale Brewery is described: you can purchase a share in the firm for a 4 pound premium. Trading in company shares was an innovation and one that caused distrust.

But what was the British Ale Brewery? Apparently, it operated. The formation of the company was described in the 1815 court case Davies v. Hawkins:

…in 1807 a number of persons, about 600, associated together as a company, and made subscriptions, which subscriptions were divided into shares of 50 pounds each, for the purpose of establishing a brewery for ale, &c. under the name of the British Brewery. The subscribers entered into a deed which contained, among others, these provisions: that the shares should be transferable, &c. the purchaser executing the deed, and binding himself to observe the regulations, etc. contained therein; that a committee to be appointed should have power to make rules, orders, and bye-laws, subject to confirmation by a majority of the proprietors at a general meeting; that the conduct of the business of the brewery should be confided to two persons who should be styled brewers, and the trade should be carried on in their names…

The two assigned to act as brewers 1807 were Begbie and Murray. Their British Ale Brewery along with the Golden Lane Brewery were the only two breweries to complete their share subscriptions and enter trading in Britain’s early 1800s stock markets. How did it fair? In the 1808 ruling in Buck v. Buck, counsel for the firm pleaded that the intentions of the brewing enterprise were the purest:

The object of The British Ale Brewery was to carry on a lawful trade in a lawful manner, and to furnish to the public at a cheap rate, and of a good quality, an article of the first necessity It was a public benefit, therefore, instead of a nuisance, and was no more illegal than any other partnership comprehending a great many members.

The court was not moved. It held the business to be outside the law. The brewery was supposedly located in 1810 on Church Street just south of Lambeth Palace in London between Pratt Street and Norfolk Row as shown in that 1818 map up there. Bits of those streets by those names still seem to exist near the Thames. Its twin, the Golden Lane, died off as a joint stock company in 1826. Hmm. In 1808, the same Begbie and Murray appear to take out an insurance policy for the Caledonian Brewery on Church Street in Lambeth. The equipment and the lease for the Caledonian Brewery of Lambeth are auctioned in 1824 and in 1831, one Thomas Begbie testifies before a committee on the state of the brewing trade. By 1844, the law of Britain required all joint stock companies to be incorporated and listed. Whatever happened, the brewery and the era appear to have been wound up by then.

Three 1700s English Court Cases About Hops

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Have you even noticed I particularly like beer related stuff from before 1800. Have you noticed I like beer related stuff related to the law? Imagine then my joy when I came across a searchable database for the English Reports, the law reports series from the Magna Carta in 1215 to the Judicature Act of the 1870s… or so. The first word I put in the database was “hops” and then “hoppes” just like I did when I cam across this early modern print aggregator tool a few months back. Why hops? Something of value worth arguing over, something with a relatively clear entry point into English culture. Plunk it into the English Reports and, right off the top, three court cases pooped up from the second half of the 1700s. A perfect moment to pull out the image I tucked away for just this situation, the mid-1700s hop picking scene “Hop Pickers Outside a Cottage” by George Smith (1714 – 1776). Notice how in the image, the hop polls are brought into the yard and then are picked by hand there. It’s not without relevance.

The first case has the best narrative. In the ruling in Tyers v. Walton T. 1753. 7 Bro. P.C. 18, there is a dispute between Rev. Walton, rector of Mickleham in Surrey and vicar of Dorking, and Mr Tyers who had a certain acreage of hops within those parishes. The dispute arose because the good vicar had the right to be paid a tithe of the hops in all these two parishes. In 1745, Tyers paid the tithe in the form of 20 guineas. from 1746 to 1750, he provided a tenth of the crop after the hops were picked. 1751, however, was a bumper year and great quantities of hops grew upon the 28 acres that Tyers controlled. Tyers got greedy. He offered a maximum of 20 shillings an acre. This was refused. In response, Tyers seems to have cut the bines on every tenth hill, did not pick the hops and told the vicar to gather them himself. The law was not amused. At trial the court held that “that hops ought to be picked and gathered from the binds before they are titheable” meaning, pick ’em then divide out the 1/10th share. At the appeal hearing, the court held “the appellant had not made the least proof that the tithe of hops were ever set out before they were picked from the bind or stem.” Not the sort of thing an appellant like to hear. 1-0 vicar.

In the second case, Hunter v. Sheppard and others 1769 IV Brown 210, there is no vicar. Just a hop merchant and his purchasing agent. London-based James Hunter is described as being “one of the one of the most considerable dealers in hops in England.” His agent, named Rye, worked in the Cantebury area for years had been well known as Hunter’s man. But in 1764… there was another good year with hops bearing top price. Rye set out to make deals as an independent – without telling Hunter or anyone else. The case gets quite involved. There is much unraveling of what each landowner knew, which agent was working for which buyer and what the prices were. The Court took the matter seriously as Hunter’s purchases for that one autumn in just the Canterbury area were worth a total of 30,000 pounds. In current UK currency, that is worth £394,200,000! Money. At trial, Mr Hunter did not win the day. The judge ordered an elaborate sharing of the proceeds among a number of parties. Hunter appealed and at the appeal the Court made a wonderful observation on the nature of Hunter’s business:

The trade was at that time very particularly circumstanced, hops being in 1764, like South Sea stock in 1720, or India stock in 1767, and it required great precaution to deal in them with safety and advantage; in all which cases, the great art is to conceal the real intention; and the appellant being the most considerable dealer in England, was not obliged to let into the secret every man who pleased to speak to him on the subject, whether upon the road or elsewhere.

The panel hearing the appeal was not impressed with Hunter. One is never encouraged in court when being compared to the South Sea Bubble. The Court held Hunter sought to seriously play the Canterbury hops market and “to support these propositions he had entangled himself in a series of contradictions; and the assertions in both the answers were in many respects falsified by the evidence for the respondents.” The word fraud is then used. Too bad for you, Mr. Hunter.

In the final case, Knight v. Halsey 1797 7 T.R. 88, we find ourselves thirty years in the future but back to the question of tithes. Unlike the previous two cases, the interesting thing is not the narrative tale like something of a distant backstory employed by a Victorian novelist to establish why two families in the 1860s hate each other. The interesting thing is the recitation of the law. Knight is described as “the occupier of a certain close in the parish and rectory of Farnham” while Halsey grew hops. The dispute arose in the manner in which the hops were to be picked and divided. The Court considered the 1753 case of Tyers v. Walton discussed above but reached back farther in time to a case called Chitty v. Reeves in the Court of Exchequer, from Michaermas term 1686 brought by Ann Chitty, the widow and executrix of C. Chitty, against Reeves of the parish of Farnham. It quickly gets even better as in that case, the Court relied on even earlier evidence and held:

It fully appearing to the Court that the custom, usage, or practice of paying tithe hops in the parish of Farnham, in the county of Surrey, for above sixty years past, hath been that the impropriator or his lessee hath had for their tithe the tenth row when equal, or else the tenth hill; that the same have been left standing with the hop binds uncut, and that the impropriators, &c. have always had convenient time to come and cut the said binds the hops upon the grounds…

Fabulous. This means that in the 1797 case, the court is relying on a finding of fact based on evidence from the 1620s that people, like those in the painting above, could take their time to gather the hops owed to the church when it suited them. Boom! That is law as good clean fun. The court reviews a heck of a lot of tithe law but keeps coming back to dear widow Chitty from the time of Charles I. It also points out, conversely, that a custom which is against reason cannot prevail and is, accordingly, legally void. We gotta move on. At a time of transition into the next century’s looming industrial era, it is quite extraordinary – and Lord Kenyon, the Chief Justice admits as such when he states “[w]hether tithes be or be not a proper mode of providing for a numerous class of persons of great respectability, the clergy, I will not presume to say…” In the end, Kenyon throws up his hands at all the information before him and, I understand, orders a new trial to get to the bottom of this claim of a long standing custom versus commercial common sense.

Wow. Such drama. The good widow Chitty and the mercenary Mr. Hunter all jump out off the page, all in the name of their share of the value of the hops crop as England is balancing its rural traditional past and its modern commercial future. Neato!

Your Saturday Morning News Not From Boak And Bailey

Six thirty Ay Hem. That’s what you get when you go to bed early on a Friday. After having a nap around supper time. That’s how I think of myself on this sort of Saturday. Okocimiski.

Three elections in a row this week plus, you know, the life of a desk jockey did me in. The first election last Monday in my former tiny jurisdiction of PEI saw my old law school prof get in as Premier. The next on Tuesday in the western Canadian home of the conservative puritans saw a landslide by the socialist hoard. And in the Old Country Thursday the nationalist lefties beat out the unionist pinkos to send the aysmetrical quasi-federation into a dither. The combined effect of many split votes in the last one caused the astounding “great victory of no more votes” – quite an accomplishment. What’s this got to do with beer? Not that much. But I work in governance so am aware that some things do actually matter. What else has been going on?

=> Jim Koch is cashing in some of his shares. Note that his balance of equity seems to be worth around 63.4 million. Sure, it’s a small brewery. Sure it is.

=> In one post, Ron has explained the point of Asheville NC far more clearly than the output of 1,000 subsidized junkets. That he got there via a milk run back country bus was a deft bit of contextualization even if he had to sit on his luggage… no, his actual luggage.

=> It’s been three weeks since beer retailing in Ontario was reformed and absolutely not one thing has actually changed. Classic boondoggling. And no one is complaining. Classic Ontario. Perhaps by 2028 we’ll be allowed to hold our beer bottles with our left hands in public. After all, what really matters is the posing. Like calling something “a game changer”, Toronto has a wee problem calling itself “world class” like the needy kid back in kindergarten who told you his uncle went to space. The phenomenon is described by the term world classy.

=> Go read BB. And then do it again. Where don’t their tentacles reach? It’s like they are becoming a vast industrial complex. [Thankfully, we can trust they did not write “here’s how to unearth the ‘ultimate’ session beer” in that header.] Note: their post on May Day celebrations at Padstow in North Cornwall is one of their best ever.

=> This is funny. In far western British Columbia:

The final report of the B.C. Liquor Policy Review recommends the government consider establishing a quality assurance program for craft beer and artisan-distilled spirits, similar to the VQA, or Vintners Quality Alliance, program — which currently guarantees wines are made in B.C., with 100 per cent B.C. ingredients.

Trouble is no one checked that “local” and “craft” in beer bear scant relationship to wine so… they are left with the same sort of fibs and platitudes we always see – which led to the refreshingly honest admission: “that’s kind of thrown a wrench into the ability to focus on what the next level would be.“

=> Just realized that if I started my own periodical I could name it “Al About Beer.” I would have to work on my ra-ra superlatives so maybe not.

=> Might I suggest unless one is extreeeeemely certain that a surprise beer and brunch pairing for Mother’s Day is only one thing: a quick route to the dog house. Don’t be stupid. Just because the love of your life puts up with your dependency / “hobby” it does not mean she likes it. Not at all.

Saturday. And maybe a stinking hot one as well. It was +25C¹ after deep into dusk last night. That means gardening. Letting more lettuce seed buried. Or drinks in the yard. Might get a bit Okocimiski. Jest Sobota Okocimiska? Może. Or I could just go get a growler. You have to remember that they sell lettuce at the grocery store in July, too, you know. Enjoy your Saturday. 7:45 am. People are starting to get up. Better make coffee.

¹ Disclosure: in Canada in spring there are a few days when you have to still make clear you are talking about +25C and not -25C.

“Selling Beer and Keeping Houses of Rendezvous”

barrie2One of the good things about being in my job is the records one comes across or co-workers with an interest in history share with you. I got this tidbit below in my email last week. That’s from the first document I came across in a larger scanned file called “Tavern Inspectors Records 1849-1853“.

To the Honourable the Municipal Council of the Township of Pittsburgh in Session aforementioned, We the Undersigned Tavern Keepers of the Village of Barriefield humbly and respectfully sheweth – whereas that there are persons residing in the said Village or premises adjoining Selling Beer and Keeping Houses of Rendezvous against the Law and to the great Desparagement of Her Majesty her [maybe “Crown”?] and Dignity seeing that we have to pay to the [?] the sum of Eight pounds with additions whereas these are paying [odd symbol for “zippo”] therefore we humbly beg your Honours will be pleased to look into the prayer of this our petition and dispell all such Houses unless they pay the same apportioned as in the City of Kingston vis [?] and we humbly beg that if such is granted that this shall be [?] for seeing that if such is not stopped we Your Petitioners will not be able to pay the Monies apportioned. But trusting that Your Honours will be pleased to looking into the prayer of this Petition and as In duty bound.

Barriefield is a small village in a largely rural township that was amalgamated into the City of Kingston in 1998. It was originally set up in the War of 1812 as an officer’s residence area associated with nearby Fort Henry. The document seems to be dated from 18 April 1850. It’s title on the back page is blurry and ink blot messy but seems to state Petition of [blah, blob, blur] for Beer Shops. It looks like the Tavern Keepers of Barriefield were not happy with the informal competition. I like the suggested threat, too: shut them down or we will maybe not pay our fees. That is the “zippo” emoticon circa 165 years ago in question up there, by the way. Click on it for a bigger bit of the document. I would also attach the whole file but it’s an 80 page pdf. Oh, what the hell. Have a look. By the way, a notation in the petition states that the matter was referred to the next Session and a bylaw was to be prepared… in case you are keeping track.

The beginning of the well regulated marketplace. What follows in those 80 pages is the licensing of all sorts of establishments in the community over the next few years. Afrirmations that the applicant is an honest, steady and sober man. The Township of Pittsburgh hadn’t been long in existence on the date of that first petition of April 1850. In the emails I was sent, there was also another file with the Minutes of the Midland District Municipal Council, a larger regional jurisdiction that was only abolished in 1849. So, one of the first things the new government has to deal with is the standardizing of licensing of the taverns and beer shops. Maybe it was just the fact of a thirsty British military base down the road. Or maybe it was the need to provide regulation as the Georgian ways of the century’s first have gave way to new Victorian expectations.

The Process Of Reforming Ontario’s Beer Sales

Well, the members of the editorial board of The Globe and Mail are not impressed. At least that is reassuring:

Politicians will be, more than ever, deciding who gets to sell beer and who does not, and which beer, where, when, how and at what price. Competition will still be largely forbidden. But, good news: If you are unhappy about anything, please write to the new Beer Ombudsman. He’s there to listen.

Ah, the Beer Ombudsman. What a silly idea. I eat a lot of toast and sometimes it doesn’t turn out. I want a toast ombud, too. It’ll never happen. But so might any number of bits of the policy… plan… ideas set out in the announcement. We all remember what happened to the LCBO Express stores idea. What exactly did happen yesterday anyway? As the Toronto Sun reported, the Premier put it this way:

“The days of monopoly are done,” Wynne said Thursday. “This is the biggest shake up to the sale of beer in Ontario since we repealed prohibition in this province and that was in 1927.”

Well, not exactly. Ontario never had much of a prohibition and the final centralization of retail stores happened more like in 1940 or so through the actions of Mr. E.P. Taylor in his gathering up of many of small breweries and their wholesale and retail divisions into what would become Carling-O’Keefe, one of Canada’s largest breweries until Moslon snapped it up in the 1980s. And Ontario was never really dry as humourist Stephen Leacock lampooned in his 1917 essay “In Dry Toronto“:

“…will you please tell me what is the meaning of this other crowd of drays coming in the opposite direction? Surely, those are beer barrels, are they not?” “In a sense they are,” admitted Mr. Narrowpath. “That is, they are import beer. It comes in from some other province. It was, I imagine, made in this city (our breweries, sir, are second to none), but the sin of selling it”—here Mr. Narrowpath raised his hat from his head and stood for a moment in a reverential attitude—”rests on the heads of others.”

See, when I was researching and writing the section for from 1900 to 1980 in our cult classic Ontario Beer, I came to see that Ontario went through a number of very intense shifts in its beer retailing rules and restrictions in little over a decade mainly starting in the middle of WWI, even though smaller changes had been coming for decades. What Leacock was lampooning was the situation in the early part of the regulatory temperance experiment in which Ontario brewed at a large scale for export only but then imported beer came in from intra-provincially brewers direct to the drinker through a process of individual purchases and delayed deliveries that – on paper – occurred outside of the province. The law literally allowed that the sin was only in the local sale of local beer.

And even when the rules were tweeked to stop that nonsense, there was still plenty of drinking going on. A Federal Royal Commission did the rounds on the question of tax evasionduring the years of official temperance and found out masses of beer was going out the back door of the “exporting” breweries for local consumption. As we stated in the book, in the spring of 1927, Labatt was implicated in kickbacks to customs officers in testimony before the Federal Royal Commission on Customs and Excise as it took evidence in hearings across Canada. When a shipping clerk called Aikens admitted he sold strong ale in London and vicinity, he explained that he only sold to people that he knew. He was congratulated for having such a host of friends. Labatt did, however, insist to the Commission that it had stopped shipping by camouflaged rail car in 1924 and, unlike most of its competition, had accounted for all taxes due. Such honesty.

All was forgiven as what replaced the process of tight control through regulatory temperance (and its really light ales along with some Ontario wine unless you had a cousin in the distillery in which case you got rye) was a succession of market control systems, laws and agencies which will be continued under the next new system announced this week. Don’t think so? Consider these aspects to the process leading up to the report issued by the Premier’s Advisory Council on Government Assets (the rather gutturally acronymed “PAC-OGA”) yesterday:

1. In the original announcement starting up this project in April 2014 it was stated that “will recommend how to maximize the potential of these government enterprises to ensure that Ontarians receive the value they deserve.” Note recommendation to the Premier is the goal.

2. An interim report is presented by PAC-OGA in November 2014 which explains how stakeholder (but not public) consultation had taken place:

We structured our review in two phases. Phase I, the results of which are included in this report, incorporated detailed reviews of the subject entities, stakeholder consultation and the development of our initial thinking on proposals for the future direction of each company. Phase II will incorporate further discussion and consultation on the proposals. This will further our goal of reaching agreement among the appropriate parties, leading to definitive recommendations to government for consideration in the 2015 Provincial Budget.

Note that discussion and consultation was to occur in Phase II.

3. But when the final report is announced yesterday, a deal has been struck. It even has at page 47 an “execution copy” of a document titled “Modernizing the Distribution of Beer in Ontario Framework of Key Principles” which has been worked out by Brewers Retail Inc. Molson Canada 2005, Labatt Brewing Company Limited, Sleeman Breweries Ltd., the Premier’s Advisory Council on Government Assets and the Ontario Ministry of Finance. It is also more of a transitional agreement than a simple non-binding memo of understanding. At section 10(c) it states that the parties agree to ” to negotiate the New Beer Agreements on terms acceptable to TBS and the Province, with the view to entering into the New Beer Agreements between the relevant parties as soon as possible and in any event before June 30, 2015.” Done deal. Recommendations and consultations finished. Working out the fine print as we speak. We are well on our way.

But to what? We’ll find out sometime in July, I suppose. Sure, the wish list has been published and will likely fall in place roughly as outlined but it is still a control system. The interests of big beer have been protected for at least a decade as have been enhanced revenue streams to the province’s coffers. There is lip service to concepts of “social responsibility” but no explanation of what that really means in this new world. Good reason. It means the same old thing as the same old structure still sits at the heart of the deal. If you have any doubt that that is not the case, that this is somehow a great leap forward for liberty, have a look at page 31 of the final report where it actually states:

The Ontario taxpayer is better off because they enjoy the same low prices as the Quebec taxpayer, but substantially more revenues go to the government.

Let that sink in for a minutes. No public discussion and locked in for a decade or more PLUS the report explains away how Quebec prices are the same as Ontario’s even with their 8,000 outlets because distribution costs are higher. See, Ontario is better off because instead of spending that money on beer delivery truck fleets – and instead of enjoying lower actual retail prices – all that money is scooped up by Ontario’s Ministry of Finance. Wonderful. Surreal but wonderful. What would Leacock have said about this sort of reform?

“To Search For What Is Best For The People Of Ontario”

I am not thrilled. Not really all that moved. The cornerstone of the big beer retail reform announcement that by two years from now there may be 150 grocery store licenses to sell beer to 13,000,000 Ontarians can quickly be boiled down. The reality is that as my town represents 1% of the provinces population that is an average allocation of 1.5 licenses for this city. On average.

If you have a look at the report issued by the Premier’s Advisory Council on Government Assets chaired by Ed Clark you see the other problem. At page 33 we see that licences “will be granted in urban areas”; “will be granted in a manner to ensure a fair representation of privately owned grocers”; and most importantly “will be issued through a competitive process based on the discount off the retail price at which grocers will purchase the beer from the LCBO.” So, there are no rural stores getting anything, it’s an auction that everyone gets a shot at but those with the deepest pockets will win. So most will end up in Toronto and maybe Ottawa because that’s where the best return will be made for the few holders of these licences. I am expecting little local change from the grocery store in initiative. Your grocery list is not “about to get a whole new look.”

But that is only one element of the whole. If you look at that headline up there, it is a quote from the introduction from last November’s interim report from the Advisory Council. It literally smacks of paternalism given there was no real public input in the process – but, despite that, there are still there are other other new initiatives that will create more interesting change. I think I will look at those bit by bit. There is a lot to look at. First, however, I think I am going to look at the process, how we got here – including how historically only the temperance movement from the 1870s to the 1920s triggered actual broad public input in the reform of alcohol sales. That was the only time that our betters were not firmly in control. Those times of referendum after referendum were very unOntarian. Ontarians actually like being controlled by their betters. And that won’t be changing anytime soon from the look of yesterday’s announcement.