Visitors to the great brewery in Brick Lane are shown a hole from which steam issues to the accompaniment of awful rumbling noises. “In there once fell a man,” they are told—“a negro. Nothing but his bones were found when the copper was emptied, and it is said that the beer drawn off was of an extraordinary dark colour. Some say this was the first brew of porter. Oh yes” (this in answer to a question), “we soon learnt how to make it without the negro.” We must confess that we have some doubts as to this account of the origin of porter. We do not believe that brew could have been much darker on account of the accident, though no doubt, under the circumstances, it contained plenty of “body.” A similar tale is told of nearly every London porter brewery, and later on it will be found in verse.
It seems to be to some extent a moot point among the learned how porter obtained its present name, for no record seems to have been kept of its christening. Harwood, no doubt, stood godfather to his interesting infant, but, as we have seen above, he called it “Entire;” and how or when it came to be known as porter is not quite clear. There are several theories on the subject, each more or less plausible. One is that being a hearty, appetizing, and nourishing liquor, it was specially recommended to the notice of the porters, who then, as now, formed a {367} considerable proportion of the Shoreditch population. Pennant, in his London seems, to have held this view; he calls it “a wholesome liquor, which enables the London porter-drinkers to undergo tasks that ten gin-drinkers would sink under.” Another explanation of the origin of the name is that Harwood sent round his men to his customers with the liquor, and that the men would announce their arrival and their business by the cry of “Porter”—meaning, not the beer, but the bearer. Be this how it may, the embodiment of Harwood’s great idea had not attained its majority before it was known far and wide by its present name.
In The Student (1750) is thus related the first appearance of porter at Oxford—. . . “Let us not derogate from the merits of porter—a liquor entirely British—a liquor that pleases equally the mechanic and the peer—a liquor which is the strength of our nation, the scourge of our enemies, and which has given immortality to aldermen. ’Tis with the highest satisfaction that we can inform our Oxford students that Isis herself has taken this divine liquor into her protection, and that the Muses recommend it to their votaries, as being far preferable to Hippocrene, Aganippe, the Castalian spring, or any poetical water whatever. Know, then, that in the middle of the High Street, at the sign of the King’s Arms, opposite to its opposite, Juggins’s Coffee House, lives Captain Jolly; who maugrè the selfish opposition of his brother publicans, out of a pure affection to this University, and regardless of private profit, reduc’d porter from its original price of Sixpence, and in large golden characters generously informs us that he sells
“London Porter At Fourpence a Quart.
“As the Captain is a genius and a choice spirit he meets with the greatest encouragement from the gown, and sends porter to all the common-rooms. He therefore intends shortly (in imitation of the great Ashley, of the Punch House, Ludgate Hill) to have the front of his house new vamp’d up, and decorated with the following inscription:—
“Pro bono academico. Here lives Captain Jolly who first reduced Porter to its’ present price and Brought that liquor into University esteem.”
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Though we fear the great Harwood does not fill the niche in the Temple of Fame to which he is entitled, yet his praises are not entirely unsung. Gutteridge, himself a native of Shoreditch, has commemorated the discovery of porter in these lines:—
Harwood, my townsman, he invented first Porter to rival wine, and quench the thirst: Porter, which spreads its fame half the world o’er, Whose reputation rises more and more; As long as Porter shall preserve its fame, Let all with gratitude our Parish name.