“For centuries, #Alewives dominated the brewing industry.🍺 Professional brewsters and alewives had several means of identifying themselves and promoting their businesses. They wore tall hats to stand out on crowded streets. To signify that their homes or taverns sold ale, they would place broomsticks—a symbol of domestic trade—outside of the door. 🐈 Cats often scurried around the brewsters’ bubbling cauldrons, killing the mice that liked to feast on the grains used for ale. “If all of this sounds familiar, it’s because this is all iconography that we now associate with witches. 🧙‍♀️ While there’s no definitive historical proof that modern depictions of witches were modelled after alewives, some historians see uncanny similarities between brewsters and anti-witch propaganda.” – @addisonnugent @atlasobscura https://www.atlasobscura.com/articles/women-making-beer Image: #MotherLouse #Alewife by David Logan (1634-1692) Wellcome, Wikimedia Commons #witches #folklore #brewing #feministemployment