Robert and Charlotte Way (née Plumridge) were both born in Marlow. He was baptised in 1820 to Richard (a farmer) and Rebecca and she in 1822 to William and Mary.
Robert Way is on the 1851 census as a brewer's labourer, and as a journeyman maltster in 1861. But he also ran the Wheatsheaf by 1853. The premises were first granted a licence in 1841. This probably wasn't for Robert Way himself back then as he was only 21 at the time but well you never know! It was built, along with the adjoining cottages by William Plumridge, one time landlord of the White Hart and father to the builder of the Duke of Cambridge, another William.
In 1860 he made an unsuccessful attempt to get the beer house a spirit licence. The magistrates refused saying Marlow needed no more spirit sellers. He tried again equally unsuccessfully two years later. Why he does not call himself a beer retailer in 1851 and 1861 is uncertain, perhaps because Charlotte was the one effectively running things, though her occupation is down as dressmaker 1861. Many beer sellers started out in a small way, using it to supplement other income so it may reflect the fact the Way family didn't at this time consider beer selling to be their main source of income.
Many Marlow beersellers had additional occupations. Carpentry and shoemaking were especially common occupations for male beersellers.
In 1862 Robert was fined for serving alcohol during illegal hours.
Robert's untimely death in his 40s in 1865 meant Charlotte's name was officially on the licence. Interestingly she owned the premises herself by 1872, a rare thing amongst local beersellers. Whether she had bought them herself or had inherited them from Robert is not yet known to me. She ran the beer house without incident until her own death in March 1886 when her son Thomas took over. He was on the census as a teenager as an apprentice whitesmith (who would have worked mostly with tin) so his taking over the pub doesn't seem to have been considered inevitable by his family. He lived at the Wheatsheaf with his wife Eliza and their children. One of those, Thomas junior (Thomas Edward) took over the licence upon Thomas senior's official retirement in 1905. In 1909 Thomas found himself summoned for what to our eyes seems the unusual offence of "serving an underage child with less than a pint of beer". Six year old Frederick North had gone to the Wheatsheaf to fetch a bottle of beer to take back home for his father. This was quite normal, but the offence was committed because Thomas had only sold the boy a sealed 1/2 pint bottle. The law dealing with the sale of alcohol to minors at an off licence specified that it was permissable to sell them sealed bottles of a pint and had not allowed for the sale of a smaller quantity. The magistrates bench recognised the absurdity of the situation, and decided that the Way families very long unblemished record as beer sellers should not be marked as a result. They dismissed the case but made Thomas pay the costs.
Thomas senior and Eliza continued to live in Marlow.
I believe another son of Robert and Charlotte's, Robert junior may have been the man of that name who was briefly the landlord of the Black Horse Little Marlow (1887).
Robert and Charlotte's daughter Charlotte became an assistant school teacher and lived with her widowed mother at the Wheatsheaf all of her short life. She died in 1884.
To read about the late Victorian and Edwardian floods that affected the Ways at the Wheatsheaf see here
I have pictures of Charlotte's grave. See here.
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