The Eubarist: Cool (hi)story, bro

I love history because it has lots of great stories, all of which are more enjoyable because they're actually true. I came across a story this week that is quite inspiring and very relevant to this blog. It also has the advantage of taking place in Elizabethan England, where "speakarse" was an insult and people said things like "a pox take thee!" This story is not about a pox though. On the contrary, it is about all of the good that beer did for a particular town in 1622.

Back in the early 1600's there were some hardcore Christians in England who were trying to reform the national Church. These people were called Puritans and there were a bunch of them in the town of Dorchester. Now, Puritans get a bad reputation as super strict fun-killers. This is kind of true, but they were also really charitable and very fair people. In fact, the Puritans of Dorchester were so charitable that in the 1620s they gave more money than the charities of their town could handle.

The town of Dorchester

They had been trying to build a few schools and a hospital and, mostly through offerings at the town's Churches, had gotten together all of the money. Unfortunately, back then there was no banking system so they had nowhere to put the money where it could gain interest. They had tried lending the money to local businessmen, who would then give them a return on their investment, but this seemed a little odd. It's kind of asking for corruption. But still, what to do with all this money?

The answer? Beer! That's right, in 1622 the town found an ingenious solution: they took the money and built a town brewery. All of the hard-earned charitable contributions were invested in the brewery so that it could then donate all of its profits to the charitable causes. In the years to follow, the brewery was able to pay for all of the hospitals' operations, the salary of the schoolteacher, street repairs in town, and other public works. Beyond that, the brewhouse distributed money to the poor every Christmas and even helped to fund the local Churches. Eventually, the brewhouse served as a kind of bank, providing much needed financial services to the town's citizens.

All of this came from the collective investment and good will of the local congregations. Alcohol is always a solid investment and these prudent, apparently not so prudish, Puritans knew that. As a result, the Churches of Dorchester built a crowd-funded brewery whose operations financed the town's charitable causes for decades. Beer does tend to bring people together and make awesome stuff happen. So does the Church. That's probably why they made (make) such a great team.