It was his duty before the Lodge opened to ceremoniously taste the ale on sale at the Inn. The City Taster had a most important roll in the evenings proceedings. Lesser officers carried the prefix 'City' in their title, for example City Taster, City Barber, City Physician.
The meeting room was organised in the form of a City with four or more wards and so the Master or chief officer was referred to as Mayor, and the senior officers were Aldermen. Whatever the reason the Lushingtons would only allow members to attend their meetings. At some point in time not easily identified the Lushingtons became a 'closed shop' presumably because meeting rooms in the Inn or Tavern were not big enough to accommodate everyone (member and visitor alike). Selected guests of members were invited to attend these gatherings, and many stage hands obviously availed themselves of this privilege for a number of years. In order to be members of the Lushingtons one was required to be either an actor or artist who actually earned their living 'treading the boards'. In so far as surviving records can prove, the earliest known traceable date of a Lodge of the Royal Antediluvian Order of Buffaloes is 1822 at the Harp Tavern, Great Russell Street near Drury Lane Theatre and was created by stage hands and theatre technicians who had been denied a long held privilege extended to them by the actors and artists of the day.Īn Order known as the City of Lushington existed in the late 1700s to the 1800s which consisted almost exclusively of actors or variety artists and held its meetings, mostly for entertainment and social recreation in the Inns and Taverns close to the well populated theatres of the day. Cover art, The Grand Lodge of England, The Way Forwrd, The Journey Begins.
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