Ploughman's lunch many pubs served little else: in 1932 Martin Armstrong described stopping at village inns for a lunch of bread, cheese and beer, noting that "On these occasions in country inns when bread, cheese and beer seem so extraordinarily good, the alternative is generally nothing; and compared with nothing bread, cheese, and beer are beyond compare". By the 1950s the meal was certainly being referred to by forms of the name later used to promote it. In 1956, author Adrian Bell reported: "There's a pub quite close to where I live where ... all you need say is, 'Ploughboy's Lunch, Harry,
Aerated Bread Company in it", at a time when gin was thought to have medicinal properties as it was made from juniper berries. Richardson's great support of aerated bread at the expense of traditionally baked bread has been suggested to have been motivated by his dislike of alcohol. A.B.C.'s first bakery was in Islington, London. In the late Victorian-era, the Dauglish method was considered the superior system by which to mass produce bread. In his memoir of the method, Sir Benjamin Ward Richardson, a later director of the company, wrote: I am convinced, from careful and prolonged observation, that the Dauglish method of