Pub London's pubs had closed. The closures have been ascribed to factors such as changing tastes, rise in the cost of beer due to applied taxes and the increase in the Muslim population. Inns and taverns feature throughout English literature and poetry, from The Tabard Inn in Chaucer's "Canterbury Tales" onwards. The highwayman Dick Turpin used the Swan Inn at Woughton-on-the-Green in Buckinghamshire as his base. Jamaica Inn near Bolventor in Cornwall gave its name to a 1936 novel by Daphne du Maurier and a 1939 film directed by Alfred Hitchcock. In the 1920s John Fothergill (1876–1957) was the innkeeper of
Jamaica Inn (film) drives a long way past the inn in spite of her repeated demands that he stop. Instead, he drops her off near the home of the local squire and justice of the peace, Sir Humphrey Pengallan (Charles Laughton). She meets him and requests the loan of a horse so she can go back to Jamaica Inn. Pengallan warns her not to go there. Nevertheless, Mary says she just came from Ireland, and as the orphaned niece of Joss's wife Patience (Marie Ney), she intends to live at Jamaica Inn. Unable to convince her to stay, Pengallan accompanies Mary to Jamaica