Agriculture and Drink !!!!Question !

[GRACELAND]

Hello,

    Came across this in A little book at a Boot sale ‘the book is Called

                               The Country Man

       And this Copy is Dated Autumn 1955 and was 2s 6d Post-free!!

                       But this is An Advert in side,
           

                          Success to the Harvest,

      By one of the oldest of all country traditions –as old as agriculture itself –the hard work of the harvesting is linked with copious liquid refreshment. In his Rural Economy (1790) Farmer Marshall tells us –
       
     “In hay and corn harvest, the customary daily allowance is a Gallon of beer (in hot weather they drank more) and besides this, mowers expect two quarts of ale, and never less than one….
     During the winter months the quantity of small beer drank is not much less than in harvest Mr William Mow of Thorpe a leading man in this neighbourhood, allows his labourers a Gallon a day the year round!!

ICI was the Advertiser Advertising fertilizers!

************************************************
 
But now one wonders,

 How many were drunk on the Job?

How many died of Drink related Diseases??
 
How many were injured or killed because of drink or too much in the field  ??

How strong was this drink then??

 Interesting!!   With water the Way it was then Beer was probably better to drink !! 

 

I like a glass of Cider My self but not a Gallon 

[Sylviaann]

Ah but Beer and tea saved many a life.  Water was not always fit to drink.

I don't think the beer was very strong.  Many people made their own

Sylviaann

[GRACELAND]

Ah but Beer and tea saved many a life.  Water was not always fit to drink.

I don't think the beer was very strong.  Many people made their own

Sylviaann

Many people made their own

So have i Made Beer .cider  and some of it might kill you 




Yes i believe It was safer than the water !!
And probably a food as well ,As there is Goodness in Beer 
 Bit like complan 

[Nick Carver]

Beer in those days was much stronger than it is today. Many rural villages will have a Malting Lane or Maltings where the beer for large landowners was brewed. There were many people in my village whose occupation was 'Maltster'.

All the comments about water quality are correct, but what we should also bear in mind is that in drinking a gallon a day over many years, the body would be more able to cope with the alcohol levels. I recall those distant student days where my own alcohol consumption was far greater than I could manage nowadays.

You should take a look at contemporary accounts of the quantities of gin that were drunk. They were routinely  in volumes that even the most hardened alcoholic of today would find impressive.

[GRACELAND]

Thanks for that Nick Carver its most interesting 

[Su]

Nick T sent for our great great great (a few more greats in Nick's case) Death Cert.  He died in 1860
from 'Dislocation of the neck in falling from a cart load of hay'.  Say no more 

Hopefully he had had his gallon of beer and didn't feel a thing.

Su

[AngelFish]

I've been told a photograph exists of my Great Grandfarther taking beer to his workers on a farm in Lincolnshire, at harvest.  I've been lead to believe he was well known for it.  This would have been in the late 1800's.  I'd love to see the picture!

I wish someone would bring me beer at work... but I might fall off my chair... 

Angelfish

[RJ_Paton]

One school of thought has it that the beer drank on a day to day basis was not as strong as it could have been

It is usually noted that the beer or wine drunk on a day-to-day basis was generally much weaker than the beer or wine we drink today, although recipes exist for stronger ales. These have been recreated and found to have the strength of modern wine.  This strong beer was not drunk on a day-to-day basis, primarily due to economic factors – it takes twice as much grain to produce the same amount of the stronger beer.

[Nick Carver]

Of course one good reason for the strength of beer to decline is that the duty that is levied has over the course of time been related to the alcohol content. An excellent illustration of that is the difference in price between a cask strength malt whisky (yum) and a standard strength malt whisky which might just be the diluted version of the former.

It may also be that when opening hours were introduced during WWI, that the strength went down as well.

I've noticed that the lighter the colour of real ale, the stronger it seems to be. I don't think I have consumed enough variety of ale to put that forward as a hypothesis, but it is certainly my observation. Anyone else noticed the same?