Leeds tram No. 274 carrying an advertising board for Bentley’s “Special” bitter. It would have been embarrassing for the brewery if a tramcar carrying a similar hoarding had been involved in an incident which took place on the Bradford Road in Leeds one day in March 1920. Charlie Johnson from Woodlesford, who was a drayman for Bentley’s, was picking up empty beer barrels from a pub and had parked his dray by the side of the road. Unfortunately it was tooo close to the tracks and the trams couldn’t get by. One was delayed by 8 minutes. The driver asked Johnson to move the dray but he continued to load up. He was taken to court and fined 20 shillings for obstructing a tramcar. Charlie Johnson was 38 years old at the time of the incident and had grown up with his five brothers and a sister at Railway Cottages on Pottery Hill in Woodleford. His father, David Johnson, had been a carter for one of the local quarries. A B.Y.B. shop at 114 Freeman Street in Grimsby. The licensee in 1913 was William Pratt Seaton and this photo of him and his wife along with their shop workers was probably taken about then. The shop had previously sold beer brewed by Ind Coope at Burton-on-Trent. Bentley’s main Lincolnshire agency was at Louth. William Pratt Seaton was born at Boston in 1888 and before taking over this shop he had been a commercial traveller for a brewery, possibly Bentley’s. In 1911 he married Florence Mary Brown, a hosiery worker from Melton Mowbray. They went on to run grocery businesses in Grimsby and Cleethorpes and he was made bankrupt in 1933. The advertising in the shop windows and on the building would have been paid for by the brewery but its not known if they owned the premises.
