Abstract
This chapter explores the early careers of Ronald McDougall, Robert Lockhart and John Pearce, three caterers whose companies in different ways shaped the catering revolution in late Victorian London.
Ronald McDougall’s career as the manager of the People’s Cafè Co. is examined in detail because he would later claim to having been “the originator of London tea shops.” Though he had imaginative ideas, various developments in London—profits declined, mass-produced goods arrived and the City’s catering companies faltered—upended him early in the 1880s. These events overwhelmed him, forcing him into bankruptcy in 1882.
Capitalisation, timing, concentration and class, together with gender, all proved decisive in differentiating the catering careers of McDougall, on the one hand, and John Pearce and Lockhart, on the other. Both Lockhart and Pearce arrived early in the 1880s, and cautious expansion protected them from what McDougall had confronted.
Total abstinence, evangelist Dwight L. Moody and commitment to feeding vast numbers of London’s inhabitants—all these united John Pearce with Ronald McDougall and Robert Lockhart. Careers of the last two were shaped by coffee public houses in Liverpool. McDougall’s short-lived catering career in the capital and Lockhart’s premature death in 1880 deprived either of recognition as pre-eminent in London’s emergent mass food catering market.
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Notes
- 1.
Coffee Public-House News, 1 Apr. 1884.
- 2.
Ibid., 1 Jan. 1880 and 1 Apr. 1884.
- 3.
A Manager to the Editor, Coffee Public-House News, 1 Nov. 1882.
- 4.
Coffee Public-House News, 1 May 1883; Caroline Oldcorn Reid, “Middle Class Values and Working Class Culture in Nineteenth Century Sheffield” (Unpublished Ph.D. thesis, Univ. of Sheffield, 1976), p. 477.
- 5.
E. Hepple Hall, Coffee Taverns, Cocoa Houses and Coffee Places: Their Rise, Progress, and Prospects (London: S.W. Partridge, [1878]), pp. 21–4, 39–40.
- 6.
W. Peskett, “Work in Liverpool,” Coffee Public-House News, 1 Aug. 1884.
- 7.
C.C. Smith to Editor, Coffee Public-House News, 1 June 1883.
- 8.
Coffee Public-House News, 1 June 1883.
- 9.
See pp. 79–95.
- 10.
Sunderland Daily Echo, 26 Feb. and 18 Dec. 1878; Salisbury Times, 21 Apr. 1893; P.T. Winskill and Joseph Thomas, History of the Temperance Movement in Liverpool and District, from its Introduction in 1829 Down to the Year 1887 (Liverpool: Joseph Thomas, 1887), p. 76; Coffee Public-House News, 1 May 1883; Refreshment News, 18 Aug. 1888; Temperance Caterer, 20 Aug. 1887.
- 11.
Temperance Caterer, 11 June and 20 Aug. 1887; Kathleen Heasman, Evangelicals in Action: An Appraisal of their Social Work in the Victorian Era (London: Geoffrey Bles, 1962), p. 143; D.J. Richardson, “J. Lyons & Co. Ltd.: Caterers and Food Manufacturers, 1894 to 1939,” in Derek Oddy and Derek Miller (eds.), The Making of the Modern British Diet (London: Croom Helm, 1973), p. 163.
- 12.
Coffee Public-House News, 1 May and 1 Oct. 1883, 1 July and 1 Nov. 1884; Pall Mall Gazette, 21 Nov. 1889; Coffee Tavern Gazette, 22 Jan. 1887; Temperance Caterer, 15 June 1901; John Burnett, England Eats Out: A Social History of Eating Out in England from 1830 to the Present (London: Pearson Longman, 2004), p. 117.
- 13.
Temperance Caterer, 3 Nov. 1888; Kathleen Joan Heasman, “The Influence of the Evangelicals upon the Origin and Development of Voluntary Charitable Institutions in the Second Half of the Nineteenth Century” (Ph.D. thesis, Univ. of London, 1959), pp. 299–300.
- 14.
Coffee Public-House News, 1 May 1883; Helen D. Bosanquet, The Standard of Life and Other Studies, 2nd ed. (London: Macmillan & Co. 1899), p. 17.
- 15.
“Ronald McDougall,” Biograph and Review 5 (1881): 118–19; Western Times, 7 March 1876; Winskill and Thomas, Temperance Movement in Liverpool, p. 75.
- 16.
“No Intoxicants Sold,” Leisure Hour 31 (1882): 116–17; Hartlepool Northern Daily Mail, 15 Jan. 1908.
- 17.
“No Intoxicants Sold,” pp. 116–17.
- 18.
Western Times, 7 March 1876; [McDougall’s interview], “The Originator of London Tea Shops,” published in the Star and reproduced in the Temperance Caterer, 15 Nov. 1912.
- 19.
Winskill and Thomas, Temperance Movement in Liverpool, p. 75; “McDougall,” pp. 119–20.
- 20.
“No Intoxicants Sold,” pp. 116–17.
- 21.
Ibid.
- 22.
Hall, Coffee Taverns, pp. 21–4.
- 23.
“No Intoxicants Sold,” p. 117; Illustrated London News, 15 Nov. 1878.
- 24.
“McDougall,” p. 121; “No Intoxicants Sold,” 117; [Interview with McDougall], “Originator of London Tea Shops.”
- 25.
“No Intoxicants Sold,” p. 117; Shields Daily News, 21 Dec. 1876.
- 26.
“McDougall,” p. 121; Hartlepool Northern Daily Mail, 1 Jan. 1908; [Interview with McDougall], “Originator of London Tea Shops.”
- 27.
Hall, Coffee Taverns, pp. 21–4; Coffee Public-House News, 1 Nov. 1878; “No Intoxicants Sold,” p. 117; Daily News, 30 March 1878; “McDougall,” p. 121.
- 28.
Daily News, 30 March 1878; Antony Clayton, London’s Coffee Houses: A Stimulating Story (London: Historical Publications, 2003), pp. 130–31; “McDougall,” p. 121; “No Intoxicants Sold,” p. 117; [McDougall’s interview], “Originator of London Tea Shop”; Heasman, Evangelicals in Action, p. 143.
- 29.
Coffee Public-House News, 1 Nov. 1878 and 1 Apr. 1882; Heasman, Evangelicals in Action, p. 143; Bellhouse, “Coffee-House Movement,” p. 120.
- 30.
See pp. 49–50.
- 31.
Hall, Coffee Taverns, p. 22; “No Intoxicants Sold,” p. 117.
- 32.
[Interview with McDougall], “Originator of London Tea Shops.”
- 33.
Ibid.
- 34.
“No Intoxicants Sold,” p. 117; [Interview with McDougall], “Originator of London Tea Shops.”
- 35.
[Interview with McDougall], “Originator of London Tea Shops”; Heasman, Evangelicals in Action, p. 143.
- 36.
In reconstructing the Palace at New Brighton as a winter garden in 1886, he failed and lost his entire investment of £30,000. Through the British Traders’ Guild, he acted as a promoter of the Honey Bread and Flour Company before it went into liquidation in 1899 (Hartlepool Northern Daily Mail, 15 Jan. 1908; Derby Daily Telegraph, 16 Jan. 1906).
- 37.
Hall, Coffee Taverns, p. 23; Hartlepool Northern Daily Mail, 15 Jan. 1908; Derby Daily Telegraph, 16 Jan. 1906.
- 38.
See pp. 9–10.
- 39.
A.E. Dingle, “Drink and Working-Class Living Standards in Britain, 1870–1914,” Economic History Review 25 (1972): 608–22.
- 40.
Robert Thorne, “Places of Refreshment in the Nineteenth-Century City,” in Anthony D. King (ed.), Buildings and Society: Essays on the Social Development of the Built Environment (London: Routledge & Kegan Paul, 1980), p. 245; Bellhouse, “Coffee-House Movement,” p. 119; Leicester Chronicle, 11 June 1881; Liverpool Mercury, 17 Nov. 1879; Coffee Public-House News, 1 May 1884.
- 41.
Coffee Public-House News, 1 July 1882, 1 Feb. 1883, 1 May 1884, and 22 Feb. 1887; Bellhouse, “Coffee–House Movement,” p. 119.
- 42.
C.C. Smith, “The Coffee House Movement in Provincial Towns,” Coffee Public-House News, 1 May 1884; Coffee Public-House News, 1 Nov. 1886.
- 43.
Thomas Hogben, “Causes of Failure in London,” Coffee and Public-House News, 1 Aug. 1882; Coffee Public-House News, 1 Feb. 1883 and 1 May 1884; C.C. Smith’s untitled paper, National Temperance Congress, 1884, p. 195.
- 44.
Leicester Chronicle, 11 March 1876; Norwood News, 11 Aug. 1877; Glasgow Herald, 25 Sept. 1879; York Herald, 16 Aug. 1881; Caterer & Hotel Proprietor’s Gazette, 1 May 1880; Letter to the Editor, 27 July 1876, Temperance Caterer, 15 Dec. 1912.
- 45.
“McDougall,” p. 121; “No Intoxicants Sold,” p. 117.
- 46.
Coffee Public-House News, 1 Nov. 1878 and 1 Feb. 1884; Hampshire Telegraph, 22 Nov. 1882; Derby Daily Telegraph, 16 Jan. 1906; Hartlepool Northern Daily Mail, 15 Jan. 1908.
- 47.
Depot then described a place where meals were prepared and served. Adding to the confusion was that depots and coffee bars were used interchangeably, eventually being replaced by the term “restaurant.”
- 48.
See p. 52.
- 49.
Financial Times, 30 July 1895.
- 50.
Temperance Caterer, 3 Nov. 1888 and 15 June 1902.
- 51.
There was one exception. At the working-class shop on Drummond Street, a press account said it catered to 800 customers daily (Coffee Public-House News, 1 Nov. 1878).
- 52.
Coffee Tavern Gazette, 22 Jan. 1887; Financial Times, 30 May 1902.
- 53.
Temperance Caterer, 11 June and 20 Aug. 1887.
- 54.
Coffee Public-House News, 1 Nov. 1878.
- 55.
[Interview with McDougall], “Originator of London Tea Shops.”
- 56.
“No Intoxicants Sold,” pp. 116–17. Compartments, common in the early nineteenth century, were abandoned in the 1850s–1860s as the prelude to the introduction of the restaurant (Thorne, “Places of Refreshment,” pp. 237–38).
- 57.
Temperance Caterer, 15 Nov. 1912.
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Gutzke, D.W. (2019). From Philanthropy to Profits in London. In: John Pearce and the Rise of the Mass Food Market in London, 1870–1930. Palgrave Macmillan, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-27095-7_3
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