In the late 1820s, Edward Dyer, a small-town boy from Devon, England, made his way to India, searching for fame and fortune. Educated in England as an engineer, Edward Dyer would have, as is family tradition, joined the army. But destiny had other plans for him.
Edward fell in love with Mary Passmore, a girl from Barnstaple, and married her. To make a good living and to ‘make something of himself,’ he chose to ‘go East,’ as was the norm those days.
India was his natural choice. Partly, this was because his brother John Dyer, who worked as a Barrister in Mussoorie, made a good living for himself. An ambitious risk taker with a belly full of dreams, Edward mortgaged his home and, with the purchase money, set off for Mussoorie.
Edward’s brother, John, who had been living luxuriously as a Sahib in India, felt the pinch of buying imported beer from England. The cost of transport made beer prohibitively expensive. Moreover, with the lack of refrigeration in those days, distributing and storing beer was a challenge. John also knew of two Englishmen–Henry Bohle and Barratt–who imported Ales from England, sold them in India, and made a pretty penny for themselves.
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