Moorhead Brewery run by Berry & Co Ltd. Thomas Berry was buried in the General Cemetery. Source: Noted Breweries of Great Britain and Ireland 1891.
Bygone Breweries of Sheffield describes the thriving brewing industry in Sheffield with 30 breweries operating in the last twenty years of Queen Victoria’s reign. Seven of Sheffield’s breweries featured in the The Noted Brewers of Great Britain and Ireland published in the early 1890s which was more than any other town except Burton-on Trent.
Breweries often changed hands and towards the end of the nineteenth century and early twentieth century smaller breweries were often taken over and merged into larger concerns. By 1933 there were 18 breweries listed in Kelly’s Directory of Sheffield, and 13 listed in the 1954 directory, which included John Smiths of Tadcaster and Canadian Breweries International.
1935 advert from the Brewers’ Society
The Brewers’ Society was formed in 1904 to promote the interests of the brewing trade and to counter temperance campaigning. In the early 1920s the Society issued a series of anti-Prohibition leaflets with themes such as American interference with British liberties, the risk of unemployment for those working in alcohol industries, and risk of increased taxation to compensate for lost revenues from alcohol sales.The failure of US Prohibition also gave a boost to the alcohol industries, and in 1933, the Brewers’ Society launched another extensive advertising campaign ‘Beer is Best’.
You can read more about people who worked in the alcohol trades and who are buried in the Cemetery in the Sheffield General Cemetery Trust’s publication The Demon Drink.
