by Albert Jack
The Maltings
PREPARING THE VITAL INGREDIENT FOR THE VITAL INGREDIENT OF EVERY PUB
The Maltings is a pub name that refers to the making of every pub’s most popular drink, malted grain being the vital ingredient in beer. Malting – thought to have evolved from the word ‘melt’ – consists of the controlled germination and drying of cereal grains, generally barley (see THE JOHN BARLEYCORN and THE WHEATSHEAF). In a process that goes back over four thousand years, grain is spread out, traditionally over a stone floor, and left to soak in water for anywhere between five and ten days until it begins to sprout. As soon as it does, it is then quickly dried in kilns to prevent further germination, and then the grain is ready to be used.
The first step of brewing is to add hot water to the malted grain, which then ferments as the starches in the grain change into sugars. This increasingly alcoholic liquid provides the basis for beer.
The maltings, another term for the ‘malting floor’ or the ‘malt house’, would in some cases have been vast warehouses. Falling into disuse over the years, many have since been converted into pubs, hotels, theatres and even shopping centres, often still bearing the name the Maltings or the Malt House, to show their past connection with the brewing industry.
The Marquis of Granby
THE BALD BULLY WITH A SOFT HEART COMMEMORATED BY PUBS ALL OVER BRITAIN
The Marquess of Granby (usually rendered ‘Marquis’ in the pub name) is the traditional title of the eldest son of the Duke of Rutland, so there have been many Marquesses of Granby, but the ubiquitous pub of that name is called after just one, another fondly remembered, flawed British hero.
Dismissed by George II as a drunkard and bully, John Manners, Marquess of Granby, only came into his own during the Seven Years’ War (1756–63), in which he was appointed Colonel of the Royal Horse Guards, later promoted to lieutenant general. All the major European powers of the time were involved in the fighting, 1.5 million soldiers dying in a conflict later described by Winston Churchill as the ‘real first world war’. The marquess may have liked a drink (or three) but he wasn’t lacking in courage. On 31 July 1760 he led the cavalry on a daring charge against the French at the Battle of Warburg, capturing nearly 2,000 enemy soldiers and many much needed guns. Granby had been bald since his early twenties but in a time where most people wore wigs, he saw no need to. During the charge he lost his hat but he kept charging at the enemy, giving rise, it is believed, to the expression ‘going at it bald headed’.
Yet despite being such an inspiring soldier that one of his opponents even commissioned a portrait of him after the war, the marquess lacked administrative skills and was often criticized by his fellow officers for the leniency he showed his men. This was seen as weakness at the time, conducive to a lack of discipline among the rank and file, which some thought made him unfit for command. The public loved him, however, and his popularity is reflected in a contemporary painting by Edward Penny, The Marquess of Granby Relieving a Sick Soldier, showing the general’s compassion for his fellow man rather than portraying him, more conventionally, as the conquering hero. Prints of the picture were displayed proudly in many Georgian homes.
After the war was over, Granby turned his attention to politics, at which he proved somewhat less successful. His hot temper and hard drinking were less suited to diplomacy and led to a series of disastrous mistakes. But he always remained available to any man who had served under his command during the war. It has been reported that on many occasions he helped members of his old regiment establish themselves as innkeepers, many of whom would honour their former general by calling their establishments after him.
Molly Maguires
HOW IRELAND’S TRANVESTITE TERRORISTS INFILTRATED AMERICA
There are Molly Maguires pubs and restaurants all along the east coast of America and throughout Britain, especially in Scotland and Ireland. Molly Maguire sounds like a completely innocuous generic female name, but that’s what it supposed to sound like. The story behind the name is much darker.
Ireland in the late eighteenth century and throughout the nineteenth was full of secret societies with names such as Whiteboys or Peep O’Day Boys; in Donegal it was the Molly Maguires. Bound to secrecy, they acted to protect the interests of the smallholders and peasants whose land was being seized by unsympathetic landlords. Their resistance often took the form of destructive acts such as breaking fences, ploughing up pasture land and killing, maiming or driving off livestock. According to historian Kevin Kenny in his book Making Sense of the Molly Maguires, the Mollies believed that they were carrying out ‘a just law of their own in opposition to the inequities of landlord law, the police and court system, and the transgressions of land-grabbers’.
Local businesses were threatened or attacked if their prices were too high, while landlords’ agents could be beaten or even killed. New tenants occupying land from which the previous tenants had been evicted were also targeted. Leaders of the Molly Maguires were known to have dressed as women in order to surprise their adversaries. They might enter a shop, for instance, and demand groceries or other supplies. If their demands were not met, they would take what they wanted, threatening reprisals if their actions were reported. This was a world many Irish immigrants to America were more than happy to have left behind.
In the mid nineteenth century, industry was growing quickly in America along the east coast. The infrastructure was supported almost entirely by migrant Irish workers, who flooded into the New World looking for a new life. Sadly, for many of them this turned out to be just as bad as the one they had left behind.
Most workers and their families were required to live in company-owned houses in company-owned towns, and were forced to buy everything they needed from company-owned stores that often overcharged for their goods. Working conditions for the immigrant labour force in the coal mines and on the railways were so bad that hundreds were killed and thousands seriously injured in accidents that could have been easily avoided. The families of those who were no longer able to work due to death or injury were often forced out of their houses to beg or starve. Enormous resentment started to grow and action began to be taken.
In 1868 John Siney, an Irishman with experience of working in the English mines, was inspired to form the Workingmen’s Benevolent Association (WBA) to demand an improvement in both pay and working conditions. The following year, on 6 September 1869, 110 coal miners died in a fire at the Avondale Mine in Pennsylvania. As the charred bodies of the miners were brought up, Siney climbed on to a wagon and shouted to the crowds below: ‘Men, if you must die with your boots on, die for your families, your homes, your country, but do not consent to die, like rats in a trap, for those who have no more interest in you than the pick you use to dig with.’ In an instant, thousands of miners had joined Siney’s union.
Plutocrats love profit and they hate unions. The company owners responded by hiring the Pinkerton Agency, the famous detective agency whose use of an eye as their company logo led to the expression ‘private eye’ becoming synonymous with the private detective. They sent an agent to infiltrate the newly formed union, one James McParlan, an Irish immigrant himself. He joined the WBA and, in the process of investigating the union, discovered that many unionists were also members of the Molly Maguires, responsible for much of the violence being committed at that time against the mine and its owners.
Becoming suspicious of McParlan, the Molly Maguires in turn started to investigate him, but the detective was tipped off and fled the area, taking with him evidence about the murders of over fifty mine managers across the region. A well-publicized show trial followed in 1876 and McParlan was the star witness. Many believed that the evidence had been fabricated and that none of the accused men received a fair trial. Whether that is true or not, the resulting execution on 21 June 1877 of twenty members of the Molly Maguires instantly turned them into martyrs and the name has been associated ever since with the struggle against labour injustice.
While th
ere is no doubt that it is the controversial freedom fighters after which the eponymous pubs and hotels are named, it’s not known who the real Molly Maguire was, although there are various theories. Some historians insist the name evolved from the practice of the men disguising themselves as women when committing crimes. Others believe Molly owned the drinking den where the members met and planned their secret operations, or that Molly herself was a member and bravely led the men on night-time raids. But the story I prefer is that the original Molly Maguire was a wife and mother who was turned out of her house after her husband had been killed in an accident. A group of peasants, calling themselves after her, were finally inspired to take decisive action when poor Molly died in poverty before they could help her.
Molly Malone’s
THE TRUE STORY OF THE TROLLOP WITH THE SCALLOPS
Hundreds of Irish pubs worldwide are called Molly Malone’s. But let’s make one thing clear: there’s no such thing as an Irish pub outside of Ireland. Imagine the disappointment I felt on my first visit to Dubai only to find the bar right next to the beautiful hotel I was staying in was called Molly Malone’s. At least I could sink a cold beer in there, but it felt like Woking during a heat-wave. There are lots of pubs with an Irish name, painted green and with the Guinness logo prominently displayed, but that doesn’t make them Irish; they are just pubs with an Irish theme. The only proper Irish pubs are in Ireland. However, I digress. Who was Molly Malone and why is her name so popular as a choice of (Irish) pub name?
‘The Ballad of Molly Malone’ is one of the best-known songs in Ireland and the unofficial anthem of the Irish capital, Dublin. While it’s not known when the song was originally written, it was first published in 1883 in Cambridge, Massachusetts. In the song Molly is portrayed as the pretty young daughter of a Dublin fishmonger who used to wheel her father’s market barrow up and down Grafton Street, calling out ‘Cockles and mussels’ to advertise her wares.
In Dublin’s fair city,
Where the girls are so pretty,
I first set my eyes on sweet Molly Malone,
As she wheeled her wheelbarrow,
Through streets broad and narrow,
Crying, ‘Cockles and mussels alive, alive, oh!’
She was a fishmonger,
And sure ’twas no wonder,
For so were her father and mother before,
And they each wheeled their barrow,
Through streets broad and narrow,
Crying, ‘Cockles and mussels alive, alive, oh!’
She died of a fever,
And no one could save her,
And that was the end of sweet Molly Malone.
Now her ghost wheels her barrow,
Through streets broad and narrow,
Crying, ‘Cockles and mussels alive, alive, oh!’
One school of thought suggests that Molly was a prostitute by night, while another argues she was the only lady street hawker of the time who wasn’t. ‘Cockles and mussels’ was a common fishmonger’s cry of the time, but as it was also used as slang for the female private parts, Molly could have been selling her own ‘wares’ at the same time. Women involved in the fish trade were notorious for their loose morals and foul mouths – hence the expression ‘swearing like a fishwife’ and London’s famous fish market, Billingsgate, becoming a byword for crude and vulgar language. The fever that Molly dies from is deliberately unspecified; it could have easily been some kind of sexually transmitted disease. But you can choose for yourselves which version you want to believe.
It is suggested that Molly was a real woman who lived some time in the seventeenth century, but there is no evidence for this. Molly was a common nickname for Mary or Margaret (see also THE MOLLY PITCHER). And while many Molly Malones would have been born in Dublin over the centuries, there is nothing to connect any of them with the events in the song. Nevertheless, in 1988 the Dublin Millennium Commission endorsed claims concerning a Molly Malone who died on 13 June 1699, and proclaimed 13 June to be Molly Malone Day.
A year earlier, in 1987, a statue of Molly was unveiled at the top end of Grafton Street, to mark the city’s millennium, portraying her as a beautiful young lady wearing an extremely low-cut seventeenth-century gown. This was justified by city officials on the grounds of breastfeeding in public being common in Dublin during Molly’s day: ‘breasts popped out all over the place’. The now famous statue is known locally as the ‘trollop with the scallops’, the ‘dish with the fish’, or the ‘tart with the cart’, and Molly has become something of a tourist attraction over the years – one of the most photographed in the entire city. Now, why doesn’t that surprise me?
The Molly Pitcher
THE ORIGINAL CANNONBALL RUN…
America is littered with bars and taverns called the Molly Pitcher, which at first glance appears to be the perfect name for yet another chain of Irish theme pubs. But there is no connection between the Molly Pitcher Highway leading to the Maryland state line and the Molly Pitcher Inn on the New Jersey Turnpike, or the Molly Pitcher Waffle House in Chambersburg, Pennsylvania, and there is nothing Irish about any of them. Indeed, they’re not named after an Irish girl but an American one.
Molly Pitcher was a generic name given to women who participated in the War of Independence (1775–83), fought against the British (see also THE ADDISON ARMS and THE JOHN PAUL JONES). Molly was a nickname for Mary or Margaret (see also MOLLY MALONE’S), both very common names. The surname ‘Pitcher’ refers to the way in which these women bravely carried pitchers of water and tended to wounded soldiers on the battlefield, often carrying ammunition to the front line and, in some cases, even manning the guns. Molly Pitchers were wives, sweethearts and even mothers (presumably in some cases all three) and their back-up was crucial to the eventual success of the American cause.
Although ‘Molly Pitcher’ rapidly became synonymous with all the women helping on the battlefield, it appears there was one woman who inspired the nickname. Mary Ludwig was born on 13 October 1754 near Philadelphia in the state of Pennsylvania. She grew up and married a young barber called William Hays, who, in 1775, at the start of the American War of Independence, volunteered for the first Pennsylvania Artillery Regiment, training as a gunner. On 28 June 1778 the regiment, under the overall command of George Washington, engaged the British in New Jersey in what became known as the Battle of Monmouth. What seems unthinkable today is how the great and the good of American society rushed with enormous excitement to take up prime positions close to the battlefield in order to witness the unfolding events for themselves. Wives, mothers and other family members of the soldiers also travelled with the army, hoping for a ringside seat.
As expected, when the battle began, many were unprepared for the horrors of war and were sickened to witness friends and family being cut to pieces by the British artillery. The sight of the soldiers lying dying and wounded, scattered around the battlefield in the hundred-degree heat, was too much for one young woman to bear. Grabbing a pitcher of water, Mary rushed out to tend to the troops, her actions inspiring others to brave the war zone and carry water, bandages and other supplies to their fallen friends. Some say that Mary went even further and manned her husband’s gun after he too became a casualty.
Joseph Plumb Martin (1760–1850), a soldier whose war memoirs were later published, noted of Mary:
While in the act of reaching a cartridge and having one of her feet as far before the other as she could step, a cannon shot from the enemy passed directly between her legs without doing any damage other than carrying away all the lower part of her petticoat. Looking at it with apparent unconcern, she observed that it was lucky it did not pass a little higher, for in that case it might have carried away something else, and ended her and her occupation.
Whether that was what she really said, Mary clearly had great presence of mind. Indeed, after the battle she was presented to George Washington, who was so impressed with her courage that he made her a non-commissioned officer, after which she became k
nown by the affectionate title of ‘Sergeant Molly’.
For many years after the war, the standard artillery regimental toast was: ‘Drunk in a beverage richer and stronger than was poured that day from Molly Pitcher’s pitcher.’ It’s easy to see why Molly Pitcher has become such a popular name for pubs and bars, offering, as they do, a welcome cooling drink to the tired, weary and battle-scarred, just as Mary did.
After her husband’s death in about 1789, Mary married George McCauley and became known as Mary Hays McCauley, although it is by her nickname of Molly Pitcher that she will for ever be remembered. Mary died on 22 January 1832 and is buried next to the Molly Pitcher Monument in Carlisle, Pennsylvania. She sounds like my sister to me: you wouldn’t want to confront her on a battlefield either.
The Nag’s Head
A TRICK BY PIRATES, HORSE FOR HIRE OR WOMAN TO AVOID?