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From: <>
Subject: News from the Pubs, Inns and Taverns Index for England, 1801-1900 - June
Date: Thu, 03 Jun 1999 16:03:24 GMT

Hi Listers,

The June news posting is a little late due to a brush with Mother
Nature over the weekend. During a thunder storm here in SE London, our
main computer's motherboard died and it has taken several days to get
a replacment installed.

All of our accumulated data was safe however, since we are great
believers in the "art" of the back-up.

We have received quite a lot of new entries which is reflected in some
changes at the top of the Top Ten Counties but sadlly the same old
names remain at the bottom. Consequently, this month we are listing
the bottom 5 as well, in the hope that someone out there will take
pity and find us some more entries for these counties.

The overall total number of entries for the whole of England
(including London) now stands at 219,844:

1. Kent29594
2. Derbyshire 11298
3. Norfolk10152
4. Suffolk 9760
5. Surrey 8850
6. Lancashire 8828
7. Essex 6944
8. Yorkshire 6742
9. Lincolnshire 5350
10. Cumberland 4812

36. Rutland 134
37. Northants. 86
38. Worcestershire 50
39 Herefordshire 42
40. Huntingdonshire 34

Once again we extend our thanks to all those of you who have submitted
entries and to those of you who will as a result of reading this
message.

We've now been compiling the Index for 8 months and perhaps now would
be a good time to re-state our aims and objectives:

The Index was conceived and was always intended to be a non
profit-making venture. The object is to create a searchable database
of the licensees and keepers of every pub, inn, tavern, hotel and
coffee house in ENGLAND only, between 1801 and 1900.

When we commenced, in our naievete, we imagined that it would be
possible to put the finished database on-line. We very quickly came up
against reality.

There were estimated to be 60,000+ licensed premises (or at least,
those in which we're interested) in 1900. That expands to
approximately 6,500,000 entries for the century on the basis of one
entry per premises, per year, per event. The finished database will
take up approximately 2.5 gigabytes - the equivalent of a 5 CD-ROM
set. The only Internet IPs we have found willing to host such a
database require us to pay commercial rates for the space, the
cheapest of which is £250 per month, plus £250 set-up fees. We don't
have financial resources of that level ...

Consequently, when the number of entries reaches a point where there
is a realistic chance of a search having some success, we shall be
announcing this and inviting interested parties to write in.

In the meantime, we answer e-mail enquiries and hope for your
continued patience. Remember, at present we have the equivalent of
about 3% of the potential total and thus searches outside London and
Kent are very hit-or-miss.

On the subject of entries in London, we are pleased to announce that
we have completed the indexing of the 19th century estate of Young &
Co's brewery of Wandsworth. We are very grateful to them for their
help and encouragement.

Finally, at the risk of preaching to the converted, may we request
anyone who has any information about ANY premises, anywhere in England
to please send it to us, preferably by e-mail. The quicker you do, the
quicker the total goes up and the closer we get to being able to offer
searches ..... (Nag, nag, nag!!) :-))

Good luck with your researches

Stan Gooch Rob Sones
East of London FHS Oxfordshire &
Berkshire FHSs

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