When I came across the pint inscribed “Post Office Hotel, Church Street, Soho,” I wrote to a Fleet Street friend asking him to find out a likely date for it, and after making enquiries he reported he could find neither the hotel nor Church Street, and that the oldest man he had seen in Soho (a sexton, I think) could tell him nothing about either. The same friend was here one night, and I left him looking at these pewter pots. I heard a Fleet Street exclamation of surprise, and when I enquired the reason he held up the “Baker’s Arms’, Waltham Abbey,” pint, saying, “Why, I was born close to the Baker’s Arms.”
The “Post Office Hotel” brings the post-boy of old to my mind, and I turn to the oldest book I possess, given to me by my father, in which he wrote my name in 1861. “The Sporting Scrap Book,” by Henry Alken, containing fifty plates, designed and engraved by himself, published by Thomas McLean, 26, Haymarket, 1824. I have always treasured this book, and the coloured prints are as good to-day as ever. I was wondering how often the pewter pot appeared in Alken’s drawings, and I find twice. The first is entitled “The Post-Boy,” who with a pair of harnessed horses has just called for drinks for himself and his horses, and no sooner has he got his than he has the pot to his lips. The shape is similar to the “Post Office Hotel” pint, but probably the “Post-Boy” needed a quart, for the pewter pot is as tall as his pot hat. In the second picture Alken shows a pewter pot with almost as much “frill” on the top as there is round the cap of the woman who holds it, and this one is also the same shape, which confirms my impression that the “Post Office Hotel” pint pot is about 100 years old.
I now turn my attention from the handy pints to the capacious quart pots, just the things to wash down a breakfast with; pause and conjecture what “lovely” thirsts they must have had! It was quite the custom to put the landlord’s monogram on the front, and the name of the tavern on the bottom of the mugs; there again is a theme for reflection. As a reason, I think we may assume there were kleptomaniacs, souvenir hunters, and sneak thieves in the far gone times, just as there are to-day, and by marking in this way it would limit the loss to the latter class, who would sell the things for old metal. These big mugs would well set off a table on which were pewter plates anything from nine to twenty inches in diameter. Although I have studied all the books written on old pewter, I have failed to find that it was always a case of “One man, one quart,” and am forced to the conclusion that there may have been odd occasions when more than one shared.
To get back to the pots illustrated, does any living man know where the “Baptist Head,” High Holborn, stood? It is perhaps typical of the country that the largest and heaviest quart comes from Ireland, and from the battered condition it was in when I got it, I surmised it had often been used to add weight to an argument.
My eye now wanders to the fine old loving cup made by John Edwards about 1750. This has a glass bottom to prove to all users how clear were its contents, and I wonder to what extent it has been used at family gatherings for weddings, christenings, and buryings, and the very important part it has played in making them all enjoyable. Glance at that copious lidded jug, and mulled ale at once suggests itself; can you not hear the horn that gives warning of the stage coach, the bustle at the “Queen’s Hotel” (called after Mary, Elizabeth, or Anne, probably), or imagine the anxiety of the passengers to test the brew, and how quickly the jug would be emptied on a cold journey, while on warmer days the flat-bottomed jug, full to the brim with foaming beer, would be equally welcome? Some of the pots are fitted with a strainer at the lip, and this would be most useful in the period of poor lighting and typical practical joking by keeping hops, flies, wasps, cockroaches, or perhaps an odd mouse, out of the mouth of the customer using the mug. It would also be requisite to use the funnel when filling passengers’ flasks, most travellers were no doubt provided with the latter of no mean size. The funnel shown is dated 1698, while a particular flask I illustrate is a fine specimen; probably its original owner was a man of grit, for roughly engraved on one end is “PRO DAOS ET REGE,” a fitting toast when the custom was “The Passing of the Pewter Pot.”
Pewter Pots. Lidded Tankards with makers’ initials “J. C.” (1780), “Y. & B.,” “J. M.” (1825), “T. P.” (1710), “H. I.” (1690), “T. L.,” “T & C.” (1775)
Plate XXIV.
Front and Back of Faked “Alms-Dish.”