Salaries at Tennent's, 1944

Any time-travelling brewers out there fancy a new job? Here's what you could expect to earn if you managed to work your way up to being salaried staff at Tennent's in 1944.



There's one name on the sheet I recognise: Stubley, the Head Lager Brewer. Born Spitz, he took the name of his British wife during the First World War to avoid anti-German sentiment. He eventually reached senior management and retired in 1956. A much happier end than his predecessor in the job, Schreiber, who felt himself obliged to resign in 1916, was interned and later deported to Germany. Oddly, although Tennent's management felt unable to ask Schreiber to stay, or at least to offer him his job back after the war, they nonetheless immediately appointed another German, Stubley, as Head Lager Brewer.

So in 1944 Stubley had been in the job for nearly thirty years — perhaps it’s therefore a simple matter of seniority that the Head Lager Brewer was being paid £200 more than the Head Ale & Stout Brewer, or perhaps it indicates how important the lager trade was for Tennent’s even then.

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  1. You might find this tale of another German Lager brewer during WW I interesting:


    "WORK MORE URGENT THAN BEER!
    Curious Decision of the Central Tribunal
    Weekly Dispatch, Feb 11 1917

    The battle which has raged between the military authorities and the Wrexham Lager Beer Company for the the services of Jostus Wilhelm Kolb, a mltster and brewer, has at last reached its final stage.

    Kolb, a naturalised British subject, born in Germany, was formerly a corporal in the Kaiser´s Army. On two occasions an exemption was refused by the Wrexham Tribunal, but an appeal to the County Tribunal was successful, the last decision exempting him until April.

    Eighteen employers contended that he was entirely indispensible to them in the manufacture of lager beer, and that there was no other man in the country with the necessary qualifications for the position.

    On the other hand, the military authorities submitted that it was surely possible to train a substitute, particularly as one of the employers was a trained brewer.

    An appeal was made to the Central Tribunal, from whom a communication has now been received intimating that the military appeal has been upheld

    Kolb will now immediately join a military unit reserved for soldiers of alien birth."

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