Cast your mind back 43 years. It was the summer of 1982, and most of London’s clubs were in the doldrums. In few areas was this more obvious than in their food offering.
There were numerous reasons for this: years of high inflation through the 1960s and 1970s while subscriptions and menu prices failed to keep up; constant economies in the kitchen; Victorian catering infrastructure that had not been updated in decades; and an ageing membership whose ideas of culinary norms were formed in the days of food rationing in the 1940s and 1950s. (“But I like powdered eggs...”) And British food had not always had the highest reputation to begin with.
And there was another problem. Anthony O’Connor, Secretary of the old Cavalry Club from 1953-76, recalled in his memoirs how vermin could be the scourge of clubhouses:
“The glittering facade is the important thing...Unfortunately, it is only too true that very old club buildings are popular havens for the persistent parasites, rats, mice, beetles and cockroaches.
“It could be that parsimonious expenditure on maintenance enables them to lead an undisturbed existence behind ancient hot water pipes and forgotten cubby holes free from the poisons, powders and sprays of pest control experts...
“Mice are very precocious little chaps. I remember one afternoon while I was having tea in the lounge of the St. James's Club [on Piccadilly] watching one run across the carpet, in full view of ten members, climb on top of the tea trolley and perch on the cherry cake to clean his front paws. One member tucked his feet up and held tight to the bottom of his trousers while another member shouted to the waiter to run and get his twelve bore!
“In my own club I got very annoyed with a deathwatch beetle who gnawed his way around the hinges of a large mahoganay door until one afternoon it - the door - fell forward on the head of a sleeping committee member who got terribly cross and told me that I should employ a maintenance man to ensure that everything in the Club was screwed up or down.
Indeed, the long, slow decline of Clubland kitchens was not a recent development, it had stretched through much of the first three-quarters of the 20th century. Gone were the days of gastronomic innovation under celebrity French 19th century club chefs like Louis-Eustache Ude and Alexis Soyer.
By the post-war era, club kitchens could be in grim shape. Brian Staley wrote in his memoir of his first inspection of the National Liberal Club building, as its new Membership Director in 1976:
“The kitchen was an absolute disgrace with a thick layer of fat and grease that would have been immediately closed down if a health inspector was to see it.”
This was far from being an isolated example, and of course, clubs were not unique in this respect, with many London hospitality businesses of the era having similar problems. By the early 1980s, Westminster City Council was taking food hygiene very seriously, with high-profile cases like a fashionable high-end nightclub in Mayfair where environmental health officers testified to Westminster Magistrates’ Court that they had found “Thick stalagtites of grease” on the kitchen ceiling.
And so by the summer of 1982, council officials on behalf of Westminster began to swoop in on many of the borough’s private members’ clubs.
What happened next made headlines around the world. As the Sydney Morning Herald reported:
“In July 1982, health officers for the Westminster Council went around some of the clubs, including Brooks’s, the Travellers’, the Athenaeum, and the Reform, as a prelude to the ten-yearly renewal of the liquor licences. Irregularities in hygiene were found and most were given until October 1982 to rectify deficiencies.
“Brooks’s, however, was found to be in such bad shape that the council felt obliged to launch a prosecution.”
The Westminster & Pimlico News reported on 14 January 1983:
“The summonses, issued by the Bow Street Magistrates Court on the application of the Westminster City Council, accuse the management of carrying on a food business under unhygienic conditions.
“The charges result from visits to the club by environmental health inspectors in June and July last year. The inspectors allegedly found mice and cockroaches and a lack of cleanliness in the kitchens of the club, which was founded in 1764.
“Club secretary, Gordon Irving, and the chairman of the management committee, Andrew Hugh Smith, who is a City stockbroker, each face 30 summonses. The alleged offences include:
Carrying on a food business under conditions exposing food to risk of contamination.
Permitting food to be kept at a temperature higher than the prescribed level of 10 degrees centigrade.
Failure to ensure that the refrigerator was kept clean.
Providing insufficient ventilation in the larder.
Failure to ensure that the sinks for washing food and utensils were kept clean.
Failure to provide enough soap and towels for food-handling staff to wash their hands.
Failure to provide sufficient bandages, dressings and antiseptic for first-aid treatment of kitchen staff.
“Irving and Smith also face three summonses under the 1974 Health and Safety at Work Act and one under the 1963 Offices, Shops and Factory Premises Act, relating to a food-mixing machine and other equipment and alleged lack of ventilation in the kitchen.
“Both have been summoned to appear at Bow Street magistrates court on Tuesday, February 15, to answer the charges. They face a possible total of £10,000 in fines.
“A Westminster Council spokesman said ‘The food hygiene regulations make no distinction between a “top people's club” and a hot dog stall. The same standard of hygiene is expected in both.’”
At the subsequent trial in May 1983, it was reported:
“a court heard evidence that the kitchens at Brooks’ contained ‘hundreds of thousands’ of mice droppings and remains of cockroaches. The shelves, it was alleged, were covered in grease and there were heavy deposits of fat, grease, and dust on the walls and ceilings. The kitchen floor was dirty, and had broken tiles, and some of the cutting knives and pots and pans had heavy deposits of grease.”
The Times reported the case in more detail:
“A senior environmental health officer from Westminster City Council also found evidence of fruit fly infestations and saw dirty walls, ovens and kitchen utensils at the 218-year-old club's premises in St James's Street...
“At Bow Street magistrates' court Mr Hugh Smith, chairman of the club's management committee, and Mr Gordon Irving, the club secretary, each pleaded guilty to four summonses brought under food and hygiene regulations. Mr Smith also pleaded guilty to two summonses brought under health and safety at work laws, but denied two others.
“They each pleaded not guilty to a further 26 summonses alleging contravention of food and hygiene regulations, five of which were later dismissed by the magistrate.
“Mr [Donal] Kerrigan [for the prosecution] said the inspection of Brooks's - ‘perhaps one of the more well-known clubs in London’ - was carried out last July in relation to the renewal of the club's licence. The visit to the premises caused Mr Alexander Parker-Brown, the environmental health official, ‘considerable concern and alarm’.
“Mr Parker-Brown told the court yesterday: ‘I found several adult cockroaches. I also found evidence of nymphs and egg cases which gave evidence that they were breeding within the premises.’
“He also said that he saw thousands of mouse droppings spread around the kitchen floor and in the larder and pantry.
“Shelves and seals in some refrigerators were dirty, greasy and contained food debris.
“Cross-examined by Mr Richard Rundell, counsel for Brooks's, Mr Parker-Brown agreed that a large amount of work had been carried out at the club since his inspection, and at considerable cost.
“Mr Stephen Howell, the club's chef, agreed that there had been some evidence of mice infestation but said that to talk about hundreds of mouse droppings was ‘very much an exaggeration’.
“The kitchen floor was cleaned three or four times a day.”
Andrew Hugh Smith and Gordon Irving were acquitted on most of the remaining summons, and duly fined £500 - considerably less than the potential £10,000 faced - and that was very much the end of the matter, with the court having accepted that a major kitchen clean-up had already occurred by the time the trial started.
But the incident served as a warning across Clubland: not only would poor hygiene no longer be tolerated, but a club’s management could and would be held to account for any lapses.
Rest assured, in the years that followed each of the clubs mentioned above subsequently cleaned up their act - they had to. A quick look at the Food Standards Agency website for food hygiene ratings shows the marked improvement in club kitchen standards today.
You can view the full and varied backlog of Clubland Substack articles, by clicking on the index below.
Index
Articles are centred around several distinct strands, so the below contains links to the main pieces, sorted by theme.