ABSTRACT

In a recent article, Alistair Mutch suggests that twin concepts – ‘control’ and ‘interpretation’ – explain the evolution of the public house over a century of dramatic changes between 1850 and 1950. This article argues that these concepts are confusing, ambiguous and misleading. It was not regulatory pressures, the temperance movement, local politicians, pressure groups or magistrates that most shaped the history of drinking premises, but developments outside the brewing industry, most notably Progressivism. Emerging in the late nineteenth century, Progressives set out to reform drinkers and drink premises, first in the trust house movement, and then in the Liquor Traffic Central Control Board during the First World War. Appropriating their ideas and philosophy immediately following the war, England's foremost brewers launched the public house improvement movement, the most far-reaching attempt to transform the nature of public drinking in the twentieth century.