All Change? Happen not.

The news broke late yesterday morning that Humphrey Smith had passed away. The doyen of Samuel Smith Brewery was only 81 - though to some he had been around forever - and seemingly had been in poor health for some time though details are, as you'd expect rather scarce. Some insiders refer to him having been in palliative care for a short while, but whatever the circumstances, he is no more, so let's look back a little before looking forward.The brewery was established by his predecessors in 1758 and Humphrey took over in the early 1980s. Until then the brewery had run its 300 or so pubs as mainly tenancies, where the business was let out to individual landlords, while still tied to the brewery. Over a relatively short period all were converted to managed houses, which allowed Humphrey free reign to set his own rules and impose them on his managers. This slowly but surely resulted in his somewhat idiosyncratic ways of enforcing the banning of mobile phones, music, televisions, laptops…