The Gin Crisis

Abstract

Abstract The moral framework uncovered in Chapter 1 helps explain the English gin ban of the early eighteenth century, the first Western nationwide prohibition of a euphoric substance. William Hogarth’s famous prints, “Gin Lane” and “Beer Street,” conveyed the differing moral meanings contemporaries saw in gin and beer. Gin, a distilled spirit, was thought to cause “sudden intoxication”—and the “gin craze.” Beer, in contrast, was deemed healthful and nourishing. Hence between 1736 and 1743, Parliament imposed cripplingly high license fees and taxes aimed at ending the gin traffic. The ban lasted only seven years, in part because lawmakers accepted that the sin lay in the excess and that gin served at times as a necessary medicine and warming agent. Moreover, the government needed gin duties to fund war efforts. When the gin ban fell, Parliament replaced it with an array of sophisticated regulatory mechanisms that permitted traffic in gin but guarded against drunkenness.