What is the most interesting occupation in your family tree? (#2)

[sue23]

I thnk someone has been conning you.  They used an instrument which looked like a wooden ruler with a lead weight on one end.  They read the strength of the beer (actually its specific gravity) from how deep it sank.
I wonder if they called it a con rod !!!

Thanks David. Can you provide me with your point of reference on this for my notes? It's certainly not unfeasible as Archimedes had been around well before then, and it's not too far off the mark with his displacement theory with buoyancy being dependent on a object's volume and density of surrounding fluid. Apart from the breeches, I found no other means by which they tested the ale in the 15 - 16th century.
Cheers,
Sue

[Arranroots]

Hi All

I have certainly heard of the Ale-Conner with the moleskin breeches before.  I wondered whether I had myself been "conned"  but there are references to be found to it, viz:

This passage from Frederick W. Hackwood's Inns, Ales and Drinking Customs of Old England, recounts this supposed tradition:
" The official ale-tester”, we are informed by an authority, “wore leather breaches. He would enter an inn unexpectedly, draw a glass of ale, pour it on a wooden bench, and then sit down in the little puddle he had made. There he would sit for thirty minutes by the clock. He would converse, he would smoke, he would drink with all who asked him to, but he would be very careful not to change his position any way. At the end of the half-hour he would make as if to rise, and this was the test of the ale; for, if the ale was impure, if it had sugar in it, the tester’s leather breaches would stick fast to the bench, but if there was no sugar in the liquor no impression would be present—in other words, the tester would not stick to the seat.”

Unless we have all been fooled?

kind regards, Arranroots 

[behindthefrogs]

I remember seeing this early hydrometer in the museum of a brewery many years ago.  I am sorry I can't remember where as brewery trips were a regular pastime when I was at University.  I do remember that it was in the section about brewing in the public house before breweries really existed. This was in the part of the tour just before the sampling.

David

[millymcb]

My great grandfather was some kind of delivery man (with horse and cart) and in one census he puts himself down as a "van man".  I wonder if he was as much of a terror on the road as his modern day counterparts?

 

[PaulaToo]

Gosh! Was he a White Van Man, milly?

[millymcb]

Actually he was a bit of a hero (where his horses were concerned) .....  apparently when they needed his horses to send out to the front in WW1 he didn't want them to go without him so he signed up too.  But they were all killed in the first few weeks  - not him, his horses - and then he obviously stayed for the rest of the war without them.  He survived though fortunately.

[PaulaToo]

Oh, milly, what a lovely man. You must be proud of him.

[julianb]

While I have a Venetian Blind Maker, an Umbrella Maker, a Gunmaker, and a Professional Cricketer (through marriage), my most interesting occupation is a Lime Burner.  In fact quite a few of them. 

My Surrys of Great Chesterford Essex were mostly Lime Burners.  Many Surry children died young, and some of them did not produce their own children, and the Great Chesterford line died out early in the 20th century.  I have always wondered if the Lime Burning affected the men's reproductive capabilities, but I have not found anything yet to back up this hunch.

JULIAN

[Q.]

I have a Salvation Army Officer, a "Street Missionary", an Estate Agent, a Hird, a few police officers and a number of Shipwrights.

An eclectic collection.