Boddingtons Breweries Ltd. Its major local competitors were Groves and Whitnall, Threlfalls, and the Manchester Brewing Company. The company owned 212 public houses by 1892, making it the twelfth largest tied estate in the United Kingdom. The tied estate was mostly freehold. Boddingtons was one of the breweries implicated in the 1900 English beer poisoning epidemic, in which 6,000 people were poisoned by arsenic and 70 died. In January 1902, 86 percent of production was of mild ale. Following the death of W. Slater Boddington in 1908, the family retained an interest in the company and continued to take a practical hand in its running. Henry's youngest son, Robert Slater Boddington (1862–1930) had a fifty-year association with the company and oversaw the installation of a bottling hall in the 1920s. Robert's third and fourth sons Philip (1893–1952) and Charles (1897–1982) served as joint chairman following the death of their father in 1930, and Charles took sole responsibility after Philip died. By the 1930s, the Boddington family shareholding had dwindled to around 40 per cent. On 22 December 1940, the brewery water tanks were hit by bombs during the Manchester Blitz, and the brewery had to be closed down for several months, with production moved temporarily to the nearby Hydes Brewery. The brewery was rebuilt with the most up-to-date and modern equipment of the time, and was the first in Europe to install stainless steel brewing vats. Pale ale or "bitter" rapidly grew in popularity after the Second World War and overtook mild in sales from the 1950s. Whitbread, a large brewery, took a 13 per cent stake in the company in 1961. In 1962 the company purchased Richard Clarke & Co of Reddish, Stockport, adding 60 public houses to the firm. Mergers and acquisitions In 1969 the large Allied Breweries combine initiated a hostile takeover bid for Boddingtons, which valued the company at £5 million. Charles Boddington took the unusual step of issuing a spirited defence of the company to the shareholders: You will be only too aware that present-day pressures bear heavily towards the elimination of individuality and character in many consumer goods. There is an inexorable progression towards the mass-produced nationwide product of standardised quality. You, however, are still, at this moment in time, a shareholder in one of the remaining independent brewery companies whose traditional draught beers have a reputation for quality and individual character beyond the