STRANGE LEASE

Taranaki Daily News, 13 December 1932, Page 11

STRANGE LEASE

BEER AND EYE WASH. HEALING WATER IN CELLAR. Within a penny bus ride of Marble Arch, along Edgware Road, is what must be one of London’s queerest publi£houses- For here they give eye lotion over the counter with the beer. Below stairs, in a corner of the beer cellars, is a pump that is no ordinary pump. It is the source of the healing water that has made the publichouse famous all over London. When the cellarman goes down to tap a fresh barrel of beer he has also to' do some work at the pump in. the comer, for three-quarters of a gallon of eye lotion has to be kept in the bar at all times. ' ’The water is pumped up from an ancient well which earned considerable fame for an old herbalist who lived on the site towards the end of the eighteenth century: When he died the custom of dispensing eye lotion was incorporated in the’ lease of the premises. INQUIRY FROM AMERICA. Mr. H. James, the manager of the publichouse, told a pressman: We usually keep fifty bottles of the lotion on a shelf at the back of the bar. We often have to refuse customers on Saturday evening, so great has been the demand. We have to give the lotion under the terras of the lease, so we ask inquirers to call back on Monday. They tell us of remarkable cures. "Some of our customers come every week regularly, bringing their own bottles, because we have to make a charge of a penny if we supply the bottle. There are others- who write to us from all over the country. I have had an inquiry from America and another from Ireland. "We have had the water tested by an analyst, and he reported that it contained zinc deposits, which made it soothing to the eye, and probably also accounted for its healing powers. I have never tasted the water myself, nor have I tested its powers; but I am frequently asked to settle bets in the bar between people who have come a long way to see if the story of our giving the water away is true.”