Samuel Smith's Strange Patriarch Has Died at 81
Standing where I was when I took this photo, you can almost miss the brewery, especially if your eye is attracted to the huge plant a two blocks to the right where a relative started a rival brewery (John Smith’s, owned by Heineken).
Humphrey Smith is dead, ending one of the strangest brewing regimes in the world. If you scan the obituaries, you get a sense of his eccentricities, which started with secrecy. None of the obits I’ve seen mention a single fact about the man’s personal life. One posted an image from his wedding back in the 80s, and a caption for another mentioned he was educated at Eton. But absent are the typical contours of the obit, tracing a life’s trajectory from youth onward. It left the stories to comment on Humphrey Smith’s decisions, which hinted at the man while leaving him a ghostly presence. The BBC’s story is typical:
“A number of the firm's pubs have also been closed, often at short notice, and, in some cases, left standing empty for many years…. In 2024, The Shoulder of Mutton in the centre of Bradford also shut unexpectedly, with the brewery refusing to share the reason why. At the time, Bradford's CAMRA branch secretary Kate Ahern said that the closure was part of a "pattern" of unexplained losses of Samuel Smith's licensed premises.”
As if to emphasize Smith’s essential unknowability, Tadcaster’s mayor Richard Sweeting told the Beeb, “Mr Smith was also a man of principle and there would have been a reason for regulations in the pubs.” Indeed, there would have been. What it is goes to the grave with him.
I’ve written about the brewery in the past, and I toured it in 2011. One of the things that struck me was not the giant pile of coal that fueled the copper’s fires (and probably still does), but the coal burning in the fireplace at the pub next to the brewery. Humphrey Smith was a man who lived in the ‘70s—the 1870s. In his later years, his “traditional” approach, lauded in the newspaper pieces, curdled into something darker—and weirder. Here’s part of what I wrote four years ago, and nothing much has changed:
Humphrey Smith runs his empire like a gilded-age industrialist. He treats his employees badly and, not occasionally, illegally, famous for capriciously firing pub managers for infractions as petty as failing to serve his favorite dessert. He is constantly at war with municipalities who either impede his ability to run pubs his own way, or want to run their towns their way over his objections.
He wants to create a preserve of his pubs for Victorian values, which means no screens, no kids, and no profanity. Patrons scrolling through their phonesor dropping an F-bomb may be 86ed. If you want to avoid the crowds watching England play at the World Cup, his TV-free pubs are the place to be. I suspect he’s on the fence with regard to women, but he’s made it clear gay patrons are not welcome. In the North, Smith’s pubs require cash payment. Of course, he was against Covid restrictions.
His reputation around Tadcaster was also poor, despite the praise you read in the newspapers today. He controlled a lot of the property there and enraged locals by refusing to develop it. In one famous instance, when a flood destroyed a river bridge critical to the smooth flow of traffic and commerce in the city, Smith wouldn’t let the town build a temporary bridge on his land.
Weirdly enough, Humphrey was surprisingly far-sighted in some areas. Back in the ‘80s, Smith’s began an impressive export business, one that helped kick-start craft brewing in the US. Smith’s has always been available far more reliably in the US than any other UK brand, and the early fascination with porters, oatmeal stouts, and brown ales was largely a result of Smith’s presence here. Beyond that, the brewery was early to develop an organic line as well as a chocolate/pastryish stout, fruit beers, and ciders. As a part of his legacy, we also have to remember those decisions.
You can’t stop time, however, and with his passing, we will see changes at Samuel Smith, big ones, and probably sooner rather than later. In recent years, Smith’s son has overseen the London pubs. If we wanted a vision of a post-Humphrey world, they may offer a clue. Smith’s pubs are famous for offering incredibly cheap pints, which helped keep people coming in despite his draconian bans on phones, televisions, or anything that smacked of the 21st century. That didn’t fly in London, however, where the pubs had to allow patrons to behave like normal drinkers in one of the largest and most modern cities in the world. Surely the brewery will relax the rules as they did further south to boost sales.
Dozens of wonderful old properties remain boarded up because Smith couldn’t countenance the impertinence of his landlords who allowed the occasional profane remark to pass without immediate banishment, among the many banned activities. As Humphrey got more dictatorial, fewer landlords were willing to take over his pubs, which now sit empty. That’s not a way to run a business, and his son or whoever takes over the brewery will surely allow changes. I would expect changes at the brewery as well. Probably not in major ways—is any piece of equipment more sacred than the old Yorkshire squares?—but drip-chillers, coal fuel, wooden casks, and horse-delivery may get a close look. A man can stop change while he’s around, but eventually, time moves on.
It is the end of an era, in more ways than one. Brewing has always attracted characters, and as Humphrey passes from the world, we can say he was one of the most characterful. RIP.