Take a look at our latest Trading Stories, Working Lives story – in which we track the working life of publican John George Collis through a series of newspaper clippings.
How I’d love to step back to the late 1870s, nip into the Hinckley Road Brewery – seen here on the right – and request “A pint of your finest ale, Uncle George”. There amongst the tap-room hubbub, John George Collis – always known as George – would regale me with family stories, and maybe a song or two.
I can but dream. Uncle George has long gone, of course. And the Hinckley Road Brewery has also disappeared. But I’m still keen to get a sense of his working life as a licensed victualler in Victorian Leicester. In search of stories, I head for the British Newspaper Archive – a searchable resource, spanning virtually a century’s worth of Leicestershire’s day-to-day history. Who knows what might come to light?
Download the full story here: John George Collis, a publican in the news
You might also like to take a look at the other articles in our Trading Stories, Working Lives series:
John Collins, a Victorian woolcomber and taxidermist
Naomi Cave, a purse-maker, pub landlady and devoted mother
The Caves of Leicester – Tories or Whigs?
William and Samuel Whittle, yeoman farmers and rabbit warreners of Charnwood
Nathaniel Orringe, miller and baker of Shepshed
Tom Crew, football referee and broadcaster
Samuel Taylor, beadle of Loughborough
Thomas Norman, elastic web weaver
John W Barker & Son, painters and decorators
Mary Ann Norman, Victorian laundress of Paradise Place
John Collins, Victorian fishmonger and game dealer
John and George Firn, monumental masons
Polkey boatmen of Loughborough
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