In the early 18th century a brewery was founded by Robert Westfield in Bethnal Green which would grow into one of the most recognisable brewers in the country. The business would be known by various names over the years as it adopted the surnames of its owners. For our story, it was the joining in 1766 of a man named John Charrington that is relevant. From then the firm began to trade as Westfield, Moss & Charrington from the Anchor Brewery in Stepney. As the years passed the brewery company would simply become known as Charrington & Co., a name that became synonymous with beer and pubs for many years to come. More recently, after being known as Bass Charrington, it finally consigned the second part of its name to history by becoming simply Bass plc. This itself would then become a subsidiary of an international brewing conglomerate and Charrington’s, or very often just the word Charrington, would fade into history as the name of the brewery on a pub sign often associated with the Toby jug.

But a rather surprising fact is that the Charrington name was also deeply connected to teetotalism and one particular member of the brewing family also chose Mile End to be the location where he would build the Great Assembly Hall as his base. A search of the maps on TheGenealogist’s Map Explorer shows that the hall’s location was extremely close to his family’s Anchor Brewery off Mile End Road.

Searching some of the other records on TheGenealogist allows us to find the telephone number for the Anchor Brewery in an early directory (1899–1900). This gives its address as Mile End, even though the map shows us that it was set back from this thoroughfare at the end of a short lane. A further search in the site’s Trades and Street Directories collection, for 1936, locates Mr F.N. Charrington’s Great Assembly Hall, also with Mile End Road listed as its address. This Mr Charrington is also recorded three times in these records as the Honorary Superintendent of the Hall, its associated Book Saloon and its Coffee Bar.

The Great Assembly Hall had been built in 1886 by Frederick Nicholas Charrington, a philanthropist and social reformer and the son of Frederick and Louisa Charrington, as a place for religious meetings as well as a hub for community activities. The hall could hold up to 5,000 people, so was not a small venue by any means. Using the georeferenced maps on Map Explorer allows us to see its location in the 1900s, as well as the plot it once occupied today. The modern Bing satellite map reveals that where it had previously stood are now several different buildings with off-street parking spaces. While the Tower Hamlets Mission occupies the plot today, Charrington’s old Great Assembly Hall is no more. It turns out that this was because it had been destroyed by bombing in 1941 and was then, like much of London, redeveloped.

The first record that we can easily find the young Frederick Nicholas Charrington listed within is the census of 1851. Here the one-year-old son of Frederick Charrington Sr and his wife Louisa are found living at Frederick’s house, St Peter’s Road in Mile End Old Town. The head of the household is 34 years of age and a master brewer employing 101 hands. This gives us the indication that he was a partner in the family brewing business.

A poll book from 1872, found in TheGenealogist’s Polls & Electoral Rolls collection, reveals that Frederick Sr also had a property in Wimbledon and, when he died a couple of years after this date, a report in the Illustrated London News refers to him being of Mile End and of Fernside, Wimbledon when giving details of his will. It would seem that, after making some specific legacies to his widow and his daughters, the residue of his estate was divided between his sons in equal shares.

Searching forward to the 1881 census for Princess Road, Fernside, Wandsworth shows us that F.N. Charrington is now the head of the household at this residence. From this it would appear that Frederick had taken on his father’s house. Also present are Maria Winslow, his sister and the wife of a Church of England vicar, as is his brother-in-law the Reverend John L. Winslow, rector of Hanworth and Frederick’s nieces, the daughters of Maria and the rector. Another unmarried sister, Mary, and also a younger brother, Arthur, make up the Charringtons under this roof on census night, while there are two visitors and 11 staff including a butler. It is intriguing that the younger brother living in the house is recorded as being a brewery pupil as by this time Frederick had broken away from being associated with the alcohol business of his family. One can only wonder at the family discussions that may have taken place behind the door at this house.

Charrington and his Damascene moment
Frederick Nicholas Charrington was an evangelical Christian from the age of 19 and by the next year he had left the Charrington’s business after having witnessed a drink-fuelled domestic incident in which he intervened and was set to the ground for his troubles. Charrington had been walking through Whitechapel when he saw a poor woman with her children pleading with what appeared to be her husband at a pub door. The woman was trying to persuade the man to leave the public house and spend his money on buying food for his family. Furious with her, the man knocked her down to the ground and Charrington went to her aid but was also punched off his feet. Looking up from where he had fallen, Charrington saw that it was his family’s name that was written on the sign above the pub – it was one of his own company’s premises. He was later to write, ‘When I saw that sign, I was stricken just as surely as Paul on the Damascus Road. Here was the source of my family wealth, and it was producing untold human misery before my own eyes. Then and there I pledged to God that not another penny of that money should come to me.’

Charrington abandoned the family business to devote his life to helping the poor in the East End. He opened a school, led a fight to clean up the music halls, campaigned against the brothels in his area and became an ardent worker for the temperance movement. In 1870 he founded the Tower Hamlets Mission and made the Great Assembly Hall in the Mile End Road, a centre of Christian work in the East End of London. We can use the census collection on TheGenealogist to see that by 1891 he was living at 41 Stepney Green, next door to a Jewish home. He was now only sharing his house with a border and two servants both named Salt. Moving forward to 1911 and it is an eight-roomed flat in the Great Assembly Hall at 31 Mile End Road where he has two visitors staying, both of whom are evangelists, plus one female servant. We may also use the Lloyd George Domesday Survey to see more about his premises on the Mile End Road, including that it was freehold and that adjacent to it was a piece of land used in the summer to erect a tent for religious worship.

The Education Records on TheGenealogist allows us to find Frederick Charrington in the Marlborough College Register and as well as corroborating what we have already discovered about him it reveals that he became a member of the London County Council between 1889 and 1895. There is mention of him carrying out a protest for the cause of temperance when he moved the mace from its place in the House of Commons in May 1915. This is an interesting indication of his frustration with the establishment and that he, not having been a Member of Parliament, was willing to disrupt its proceedings in order to draw attention to the cause that he felt so deeply about.

While this incident is not reported in the Newspaper & Magazine records on TheGenealogist, there are plenty of other mentions of Charrington that can be used to build up his story.

In the 22 February 1873 edition of the Illustrated London News, it was reported, ‘There was a crowded gathering of the United Kingdom Band of Hope Union in Exeter Hall on Tuesday night. Mr F.N. Charrington, late of the firm of Charrington, Head, and Co., brewers, presided.’ This use of the family firm’s name suggests that he had not completely freed himself from his association to the alcohol trade. In a piece run by the Illustrated London News on 13 February 1886, about the opening of the new Assembly Hall, we can read that Charrington had some high-profile support. It had been the Duke and Duchess of Westminster who had laid the foundation stone of his institution in Mile End.

Frederick Charrington had entered local politics, as the education records we looked at earlier had pointed us towards. An edition of the ILN published on 26 January 1889 contains a list of successful candidates for the London County Council Elections in which Frederick’s name is included. During the First World War Frederick is mentioned in a newspaper that reports on his campaigning to have football stopped in wartime. From TheGenealogist’s Newspapers & Magazines we are able to discover that on 16 January 1915 he wrote to the patron of the Football Association, H.M. King George V, to appeal for professional football to be stopped. The reply he received indicates that the FA were concerned not to break the contracts with their professional players; but this article reveals to us that our campaigner was not in any way a pacifist.

Only recently I walked into a pub and saw a Charrington’s Toby jug advertising sign screwed to the wall. It immediately reminded me of this story of the temperance movement campaigner and how, having been knocked to the ground by a drunken man, this member of the Charrington family turned his back on the family business and put his effort into his community. Using multiple online records available on TheGenealogist has enabled us to piece something of this intriguing man’s story together.