Tooth and Co Hotels archive reveals history of NSW pubs
VIDEO: A remarkable new digital archive spanning half a century could reveal your local watering hole as you’ve never seen it. It tells the history of NSW written in beer.
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A remarkable new digital archive tells the history of New South Wales in beer.
The Australian National University Archives has digitised hundreds of historic records from the now defunct Tooth Brewing Company which document the changing fortunes of hotels it supplied from the 1920s until the 1970s.
Hundreds of sales record cards have been scanned at high resolution — including photos which reveal changing fashion, transport, and architecture.
Each card covers roughly a decade, all hand written, but all provide the same basic information.
On the front of the card is usually the hotel name, location, owner, licensee, and a graph showing the number of barrels or dozens of bottles of Tooth’s beer supplied to the hotel, and total trade with the Tooth company.
The back of the card usually has a photograph of the hotel for that decade and information about the building, land, amenities, nearby hotels and local industries.
However, it’s in the detail of the hand written records that the social and cultural changes over half a century are revealed.
Wonderful watering holes
On the NSW Central Coast, for example, pubs from five suburbs are covered by the archive — Gosford, East Gosford, Wyong, Terrigal and Woy Woy. Some no longer exist, others are still trading, and a few have changed name.
The records cover:
■ The Gosford Hotel, the Union Hotel (now Central Coast Hotel, Gosford) and the long since demolished Browadwater Hotel which used to stand on the block next to Central Coast Council in Mann Street.
■ Elanora Hotel, East Gosford
■ Grand Hotel and Royal Hotel at Wyong
■ Terrigal Hotel and Florida Hotel at Terrigal
■ Bayview Hotel and Woy Woy Hotel at Woy Woy.
History through beer
Central Coast Hotel on the corner of Mann Street and Pacific Hwy in Gosford has been a watering hole for decades but started out as the Union Hotel in 1908. A flick through the Tooth records uncovers what might have been influencing the drinking habits of its patrons over five decades.
Scrawled in pencil on one card above the year 1926 are the words “royal visit” marking the year in which then Duke and Duchess of York with their child Elizabeth (who would become Queen Elizabeth II) came to Sydney. There was a small spike in beer sales at the Union Hotel at that time.
A dramatic slump in sales in 1931 reveal the economic disaster of the Great Depression and things would remain flat until sales began to climb steeply again around 1937 and reach a peak at the start of WWII.
The post WWII years from 1949 to 1959 showed steady strong sales with a sharp increase from early in 1955 when the NSW Government allowed hotels to extend trading until 10pm — the end of the “six o'clock swill”.
The moment when Australia switches to decimal currency is neatly stamped into the records farewelling pounds and shillings and welcoming dollars and cents into the data.
Between 1969 and 1979 — bottled beer accounted for more sales than tap beer for the first time.
In 1975, Tooth beer sales at the Union Hotel took a big tumble which coincides with the new Commonwealth Trade Practises Act in 1974 that outlawed “tied hotels”. Under this tied arrangement, Tooth client hotels were bound to sell only Tooth products.
Tooth and Co struggled over following years to weather the changed and changing
circumstances but eventually crumbled and was deregistered by 2013.
Find your local pubs
ANU Archives has brought the history of some of Australia’s oldest pubs into the digital age — including scores of Sydney pubs — through a new online exhibition showcasing the history of pubs around New South Wales.
The Tooth and Company Hotels exhibit is available online with a special interactive map, providing access to valuable historical information, as well as incredible photographs.
It links to all the records located in the ANU Open Research repository, which is an online location for collecting, preserving and sharing research with the wider community.
An ANU spokesman said the resource had been “incredibly popular” among researchers, history buffs, and people in the community.
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