1833 Francis Glover was licensee as she was charged with illegal opening..No 29 on the South East side which is recorded in 1839, as being described as a most notorious house owned by the Garner family. William – the victualler, Elizabeth – the matriarch, together with her son Henry, were often before the courts. Francis Garner April 1835 was charged with assaulting Mary Cooke, the Mayor allowed them to settle themselves.
In August 1846, Henry was remanded and charged with receiving and harbouring stolen goods, the White Lion being headlined as ‘A Storehouse for stolen goods’. Five hundred pounds in gold and silver were found by the police when the pub was raided, banknotes and money in every coat pocket, a list of stolen goods as long as your arm, from ham to silk cloth.
Henry was committed to trial. Elizabeth Garner, who was then in her nineties, was fined on many occasions for licensing offences, including having gambling on the premises.
The White Lion’s brew house was described in a newspaper article on 29th May 1854: ‘The Brew house was in a filthy state, as bad as a pigsty, not fit for Christians.’
The Leicester Chronicle report came from ‘militia men to whom proper accommodation had been refused by the landlord’. Elizabeth and Henry were both fined for refusing to billet the militia men. At court the militia men told of the indignities offered to them. Henry Garner actually allowed some persons in the beer house to commit improprieties in the cooking vessel that they used.
Within a year or so son John Garner had taken over as licensee, he was up before the bench in 1862 for illegal hours drinking. It was the fifth offence of its kind although the last one was in his mother Elizabeth’s name. Seems as though they took it in turns. There was confusion since John’s sister was also named Elizabeth. This beer house must have been one hell of a den of inequity.
A more lighthearted event concerned some lodgers:
The Garners were again in court for what the press described in 1868 as
MUSIC AT NIGHTFALL – a disturbance by music and singing coming from the White Lion early hours of the morning. For once, the Garners were acquitted as the music came from five German musicians who were lodging at the pub whilst touring with the Maus Circus, who were performing in Leicester. One of them – James Gross claimed they were practicing.
As well as the court case of 1868, the 1861 census tells us musician’s names who were lodging at the White Lion at the time, Peter Kloer, Daniel Andrack, John Herther, Frederick Gross and Ludwig Wolf, presumably from the same circus, so they must have made the White Lion their lodging of choice when in the area.
Photo above: Victorian postcard of Maus Circus, and later poster advertising the German Circus.
July 1870, the White Lion’s license transfers from the Garner family to William Eames, now listed as No 72 Bedford St. This was on the North West side, opposite side to the original address of no. 29. William Eames is also recorded as living in Arthur St as a publican in 1871, all rather confusing.
Two separate beer houses with the same name. No 72 seems to show after the demise of no 29 (must be a story or connection in this). Did Bedford St change numbers or was the ‘old’ White Lion transferred to the ‘new’? There doesn’t seem any overlap of two at the same time.
The licensee of the White Lion at no 72 is William Eames from 1870-1882 (a William Eames crops up as victualler of quite a few beer houses, confusing the issue even more.)
In May of 1880, he was fined 14/- plus 6/- costs for employing a thirteen-year-old girl.
On William’s death in 1882 the license passed to his wife Susan.
Other landlords were Joseph Timperly from 1883-1895, who was also a coal dealer.
Harry Miles c.1895.
1897 Orson Wright, who now seemed to own the White Lion, also the Carlton Hotel in Granby St. amongst other. He wanted to build a new hotel on the site of the Carlton (To be the Grand Hotel). The White Lion was one of the licenses to be given up in exchange for the new hotel. The license was allowed to lapse, by September 1898 it was no longer trading.