Tooth & Co collection added to UNESCO Australian Memory of the World Register

We are delighted to end the year with the news that the UNESCO Australian Memory of the World Committee has approved the inscription of the Tooth and Company Collection on the UNESCO Australian Memory of the World Register. ANU Archives and the Powerhouse Museum were recognised for holding an extraordinary collection.

 ANU Archives holds an extraordinary collection including the history of businesses and trade unions in the Noel Butlin Archive Centre.  You can browse the collections online. 

The archive tells the tale of business, regional communities, architecture and society in Australia.

Background on the Tooth and Company collections

The Tooth and Company Collections form the most significant and complete publicly accessible documentation of Australian brewing and the hotel industry in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries.

Several members of the Tooth family were well known in NSW public life. John Tooth, who established the company with Charles Newham, had an interest in several pastoral ventures and worked as a general merchant and commission agent in Sydney. John Tooth’s nephews Robert and Edwin leased the brewery in 1843, with their brother Frederick joining in 1853. In addition to several pastoral interests, Robert Tooth was involved in raising retail alcohol prices in 1857, represented Sydney in the assembly in 1858-59, and was involved with the anti-transportation movement. Both Robert and Edwin Tooth were directors of the Bank of New South Wales between the 1850s and 1870s and were also associated with the Colonial Sugar Refining Company. 

In 1835 John Tooth and Charles Newnham opened the Kent Brewery in Sydney. The company initially made more money from importing alcohol rather than brewing it, as locally produced beer did not become popular until the 1880s. The company expanded by acquiring the New South Wales Malting Company's works at Mittagong in 1905, the Maitland Brewery in 1913, Castlemaine Brewery and Wood Brothers, Newcastle in 1921, breweries in Wagga Wagga, Narrandera and Goulburn, and in 1929 they acquired Resch's Limited, an iconic brand. In 1977 the company acquired Wright, Heaton and Company wholesale distributors and Penfolds Wines Limited, followed by Courage Australia in 1978. Tooth and Company was acquired by Carlton and United Breweries (CUB) in 1983 and CUB was bought by Asahi Beverages in 2020. The company's extensive collection of hotel properties was sold after 1990. 

The archival collections document the growth of private companies and local manufacturing alongside reduced reliance on imports from England in colonial NSW. The records show the evolution of the local industry to a sophisticated and multi-faceted business before its decline in the late 20th century. In post-Federation Australia, beer consumption was a tribal culture with consumption based on state, although there was interstate trade in the border regions of Broken Hill, northern NSW and the Riverina. These archives document the trend of brewery establishment in regional centres and their later absorption into the larger conglomerates. 

The ledgers within the ANU Archives collections cover the period 1843-1917. They contain the owner/licensee’s name, location of hotel, and amounts of product ordered. This raw data shows changing patterns of consumption and economic impact of the brewing and public house trade. 

The ‘Leased hotels files’ document the hotel industry including leases, valuations, inventories, buildings plans and photographs. The collection includes architectural plans from 1919 to 1990 relating to 187 hotels formerly owned or leased by Tooth and Company. Changes to hotel layout over time reflect different ways consumers used hotel space including the disappearance of the Ladies Lounge as mixing of the sexes on licensed premises became socially acceptable. 

It shows a history including the role women have had in brewing and hotel management since colonisation of Australia.

The extensive photograph collection traces the landscape in which the company operated. It tracks the growth of towns and cities, architectural trends, change in types of businesses and environmental changes.

The ‘Yellow Cards’ (approximately 12,900 summary index cards on hotels), property and managers files, and architectural plans track the remodelling of the hotels. They cover 1920-70 and can be seen online.