John Gorevan

With the majority of pubs closing on New Year’s Day in 1890, one of the pubs on Argyle Street decided to ignore the ‘advice’ and stayed open. Much to the publican’s delight, it was mobbed! The snippet reads:

One of our subscribers in Argyle Street, Glasgow, informs us that on New Year’s Day his premises were visited by over 4000 customers. The stream of visitors was continuous and in not over 20 instances was a whole glass of spirits ordered. Ober 1200 twopenny pies in addition to piles of sandwiches were consumed, and the principal liquors ordered were beer and aerated waters. The great bulk of people were evidently from the country.

Staying open on New Year’s day certainly paid off for this publican!

In the National Guardian in January of 1890, we see a small article that mentions Bovril wine. Bovril was heavily advertised in the National Guardian and other publications at the time, but I wasn’t aware that they created a wine. Here is the article:

The organ of the Permissive Bill Association, The Reformer , “has no quarrel” with Bovril, but it damns “bovril wine,” the new preparation, because – horror of horrors! – it contains “selected port wine and other ingredients.” This is hard on Bovril, Ltd., and the “powers that be” out to see that their advertisement is not allowed to appear in the columns of a journal which gives them such a back-handed “puff.”

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I have come across the term ‘Grogging’ a few times and thought I would note down an article from the National Guardian in 1890, that tells us what grogging is and why Inland Revenue wanted it to stop.

In connection with the case above referred to by “A Victim” it has been stated that this is the season when “grogging” is a source of comparative affluence. You ask what “grogging” is, and probably suspect it has something to do with standing at a public-house bar, and sending streams of various liquids coursing down the ill-used “thrapple.” Nothing of the kind, sweet sir. To “grog” in the proper sense, says a correspondent, is to buy up a stock of empty spirit casks, and, by steaming or any other convenient process, squeeze from the sodden staves their last drop of alcohol laden moisture. This moisture, collected and “doctored,” becomes in the grogger’s hands a very inferior and decidedly very dangerous whisky, of the shebeen or “kill the carter” class. The Inland Revenue discourage, this enterprise, of course, and a Glasgow “trigger” (As was reported in the Guardian of Wednesday last) has just caught it smartly over the fingers,

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