ABSTRACT
Drowning one’s cares in alcohol has been a worrying cultural practice as old as mankind: witness the stigmatization of drunkenness, though not necessarily of wine consumed in moderation, in the world’s Holy Books. In the Bible, for example, the comforting ritual drink during the Last Supper and the Eucharist are sharply distinguished from the destructive intoxication of Noah and Lot. roughout the ages, a distinction has always been made between the bene cent
82 Drink in the Eighteenth and Nineteenth Centuries
and the disastrous e ects of alcohol, depending on the kind, ritual, occasion, form and quantity of consumption. William Hogarth’s engraving Gin Lane (1751) shows the disastrous e ects of drunkenness and its connection with poverty in a London street, whereas Hogarth’s contrastive companion piece, Beer Street (1751), celebrates the bene t of plentiful consumption of native beer. Gin, that is, Dutch ‘genever’ spiced with juniper or genévrier berries, only came to England with the ‘foreign’ King William of Orange. e Gin Craze of the early eighteenth century, favoured by the over-production of grain due to agricultural reforms, led to widespread intoxication and crime, especially among the frustrated poor, as it took only two pence to get drunk on gin. e Gin Acts of 1736 and 1751, controlling and e ectively reducing the consumption of gin, advanced the cause of the Tories and their idea of healthy Englishness.4
