Thomas Sheridan founded a "Beefsteak Club" in Dublin at the Theatre Royal in 1749, and of this Peg Woffington was president. According to William and Robert Chambers, writing in 1869, "it could hardly be called a club at all, seeing all expenses were defrayed by Manager Sheridan, who likewise invited the guests – generally peers and members of parliament. … Such weekly meetings were common to all theatres, it being a custom for the principal performers to dine together every Saturday and invite 'authors and other geniuses' to partake of their hospitality." [3] Thompson, Charles Willis, "Thirty Years of Gridiron Club Dinners", The New York Times, 24 October 1915, p. SM16 Timbs (1872) gives no date for this club but cites Memoirs of Charles Lee Lewis, vol ii, p. 196 as his source.

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Gunn, J. Alexander. Records of the 400th dinner of the Melbourne Beefsteak Club: Held at Hotel Windsor, Saturday, August 11th, 1928 (Melbourne: The Club, 1928). Meetings were held every Saturday between November and June. All members were required to wear the society's uniform – a blue coat and buff waistcoat with brass buttons. The buttons bore a gridiron motif and the words "Beef and liberty". The steaks were served on hot pewter plates, with onions and baked potatoes, and were accompanied by port or porter. The only second course offered was toasted cheese. After dinner, the tablecloth was removed, the cook collected the money, and the rest of the evening was given up to noisy revelry. [10] The oldest dining club in Australia is the Melbourne Beefsteak Club, established in May 1886, [21] when merchant John Deegan, [22] City Councillor William Ievers, [23] solicitor James Maloney and manufacturer Frank Stuart [24] gathered with friends for regular lunches. [25] Their motto was "Beefsteak and Brotherhood", and the membership was made up of gentlemen from business, the professions, and academia. [26] It held its 300th dinner on 14 October 1916 [27] and its 400th on 11 August 1928, in the Hotel Windsor. [28] [29] "Leadership in War", the speech that General Sir John Monash gave to the Club on 30 March 1926, was included in a 2004 collection entitled The Speeches that Made Australia. [30] Successors to the Sublime Society [ edit ] Dining room at the Lyceum, used by the Sublime Society and later by Henry Irving. The kitchen is at the rear, beyond the gridiron-shaped grating. Irving's dinners and the present Sublime Society [ edit ] Patrons considered themselves to be down-to-earth men of the people and would attend wearing simple clothes and rugged leather boots. They were said to embody the British spirit and saw beef as the sustenance of the nation (unlike France’s “soup meager, frogs and sallads”). Members wore a ring with a picture of a gridiron and the words ‘Beef & Liberty’. They were in stark contrast to the flamboyant and effeminate Macaroni Club, formed by rich young men freshly returned from the Grand Tour, who became associated with outrageous costumes and foreign food. The club has had at least one prime minister in its ranks: in 1957 the members gave a dinner to Harold Macmillan "to mark the occasion of his becoming Prime Minister, and in recognition of his services to the club as their senior trustee." [40] Who's Who lists 791 men, living and dead, who have been members of the present Beefsteak Club. As well as men of the theatre, they include politicians such as R. A. Butler, Roy Jenkins and Robert Gascoyne-Cecil, the writer Evelyn Waugh, poets including John Betjeman, musicians including Edward Elgar and Malcolm Sargent, filmmakers and broadcasters such as Richard Attenborough, Peter Bazalgette, Richard Dimbleby, Barry Humphries and Stephen Fry, and philosophers including A. J. Ayer and A. C. Grayling, as well as figures from other spheres such as Robert Baden-Powell, Osbert Lancaster and Edwin Lutyens. [41] See also [ edit ]Morrissey, Silvia. "Ievers, William (1839–1889)" Australian Dictionary of Biography, vol. 4 (1972). Retrieved 16 March 2012 Stedman, Jane W. (1996). W. S. Gilbert, A Classic Victorian & His Theatre. Oxford: Oxford University Press. ISBN 0-19-816174-3. Other "Beefsteak Clubs" included one in Dublin from 1749, for performers and politicians, and several in London and elsewhere. Many used the gridiron as their symbol, and some are even named after it, including the Gridiron Club of Washington, D.C., US. In 1876, a Beefsteak Club was formed that became an essential after-theatre club for the bohemian theatre set, including W. S. Gilbert, and still meets in Irving Street.

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Report of the fiftieth anniversary dinner, "Beefsteak and Brotherhood", Cairns Post, 6 June 1936, p.13. The first known beefsteak club (the Beef-Stake Club, Beef-Steak Clubb or Honourable Beef-Steak Club) seems to have been that founded in about 1705 in London. [2] It was started by some seceders from the Whiggish Kit-Cat Club, "desirous of proving substantial beef was as prolific a food for an English wit as pies and custards for a Kit-cat beau." [3] The actor Richard Estcourt was its "providore" or president and its most popular member. William Chetwood in A General History of the Stage is the much quoted source that the "chief Wits and great men of the nation" were members of this club. This was the first beefsteak club known to have used a gridiron as its badge. [3] In 1708, Dr. William King dedicated his poem "Art of Cookery" to "the Honourable Beef Steak Club". His poem includes the couplet: Weinreb, Ben; Hibbert, Christopher; Keay, Julia; Keay, John (2008). The London Encyclopaedia. London: Macmillan. ISBN 978-1-4050-4924-5.

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The toast at each session was “Ne fidos inter amicos sit, qui dicta foras eliminet”, which today might be translated as “What´s said at Steak Club stays at Steak Club” a b c Horne, Colin J., "Notes on Steele and the Beef-Steak Club", The Review of English Studies, July 1945, pp. 239–44 Allen, Robert Joseph (1933). The Clubs of Augustan London. Cambridge: Harvard University Press. OCLC 2174749. The club originally met at the Imperial Phiz public house in Old Jewry in the City of London, but finding that venue not private enough, it ceased to meet there, and by 1709 it was not known "whether they have healed the breach and returned into the Kit-Cat community [or] … remove from place to place to prevent discovery." [4] Joseph Addison referred to the club in The Spectator in 1711 as still functioning. The historian Colin J. Horne suggests that the club may have come to an end with the death of Estcourt in 1712. [2] There was also a "Rump-Steak or Liberty Club" (also called "The Patriots Club") of London, which was in existence in 1733–34, whose members were "eager in opposition to Sir Robert Walpole". [5] Sublime Society of Beef Steaks [ edit ] Badge of the Sublime Society: a gridiron and the motto "Beef and Liberty"

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Stuart, Francis. "Stuart, Francis (Frank) (1844–1910)", Australian Dictionary of Biography, vol. 12 (1990). Retrieved 16 March 2012

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If you’d like to start your own Beef Steak Club (which we would be happy to host), here are a few guidelines from the Sublime Society: The Sublime Society of Beef Steaks was re-formed in 1966 and has met continually since then. Several nineteenth century members have lineal descendants among today's membership, who wear the original blue and buff uniform (of a Regency character) and buttons and adhere to the 1735 constitution whenever practicable. [1] This revival started to meet at the Irish Club, Eaton Square, in 1966, then at the Beefsteak Club, Irving Street, and today meets in a private room at the Boisdale Club and Restaurant in Belgravia/ Victoria and, annually, at White's Club in St James's, where it is able to dine at the early society's nineteenth century table and where it also keeps the early society's original "President's Chair", which Queen Elizabeth II gave to the current society in 1969. [1] [33] Although other of the society's relics (such as the original Grid Iron, Sword of State, Halberts and early members' chairs, rings, glasses, documents, etc.) have passed down to members of the current society from ancestors in the original society, the current society "leaves such items in safety, keeping less fragile replicas and proxy items for its normal meetings in Central London". [1] Other early customs of the original society, such as the singing and composition of songs, are also encouraged by the current society. [34] Beefsteak Club, Irving Street [ edit ] Early members of the 1876 Beefsteak Club: (top) Henry Irving (l) and W. S. Gilbert; (below) Henry Labouchère (l) and F. C. Burnand

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Colman, George; Bonnell Thornton (1754). The Connoisseur, By Mr. Town, Critic and Censor-General. London: R. Baldwin. OCLC 83521763.Since the closure of the original Sublime Society in 1867, three separate efforts have been made to revive it in various forms. Sir Henry Irving, as proprietor of the Lyceum Theatre, had possession within his theatre of the society's last premises. From about 1878 until his death in 1905, he hosted dinners in the society's dining room. A biographer of Irving wrote, "He wanted the Lyceum to have the same educational and intellectual force that Phelps' theatre had enjoyed in lslington." [31] A contemporary newspaper reported, "Almost as soon as Mr. Irving undertook the management of the Lyceum he restored this venerable sanctuary to something like its former appearance, and very often now it is the scene of the informal and bright little supper parties which he delights to bring about him. … If the nocturnal gatherings in the room were not of a private character we might say a good deal about them, especially as the guests frequently include men whose names are great." [32] Hollingshead, John (1903). Good Old Gaiety: An Historiette & Remembrance. London: Gaiety Theatre Co. OCLC 1684298. Arnold, Walter (1871). Life and Death of the Sublime Society of Steaks. London: Bradbury, Evans and Co. OCLC 4110424. Many beefsteak clubs of the 18th and 19th centuries have used the traditional grilling gridiron as their symbol and some are even named after it: the Gridiron Club of Oxford was founded in 1884, and the Gridiron Club of Washington D.C. was founded the following year. These two clubs also still exist. [19] [20] Elliot, William Gerald (1898). Amateur Clubs and Actors. London: E. Arnold. p. 127. OCLC 1388732. Forty Thieves Beefsteak Club.