Resch’s DA, ‘At the 19th’, Waverley Brewery Sydney

Edmond Resch started brewing in Wilcannia and ended up owning the Waverley Brewery in Sydney.  From 1904-1914 he proudly advertised as being brewer to the Governor General and his beers captured a large portion of the NSW market.  Resch’s Dinner Ale and Pilsener were particularly popular.  Edmund’s business was increasingly successful, enough for him to buy the harbourside mansion Swifts, built in the 1882 by his brewing rival Sir Robert Lucas Tooth and to expand his Waverley brewery, hold off his rivals and purchase hotels to sell his products.  When war broke out in 1914, Resch, who had been naturalised in 1889, contributed generously to the effort and made up the difference in pay for around 60 workers who enlisted.  Despite this, his German heritage was enough to see him arrested and interned at Liverpool Camp in 1917 until the wars end.

Resch died in 1923 and his sons took over the business.  In 1929 the company was bought by Tooth & Co, who continued the Waverley brewery and maintained the name and range of Reschs products. This pub poster was some of the last ones that were being produced. Tooth’s tried to bring the pub poster into the fifties and sixties but it became less relevant as a new advertising medium had arrived, television. In 1983 Tooth were taken over by Carlton United Breweries in Victoria, who also continued the Resch’s brand but discontinued this brand in the 2000s.