Gin Craze Research Articles

Mother Gin and the Bad Examples: Figuring a Drug Crisis, 1736–51

The most memorable figure of the London “Gin Craze,” a furor over cheap spirits from approximately 1720 to 1751, is the woman in the foreground of William Hogarth’s Gin Lane (1751), so deep in stupor that she fails to notice her tumbling child. Hogarth draws on a longer tradition throughout the Gin Craze of using individual drinkers—particularly women—to rhetorically invoke a drug crisis. This essay asks how such figures of individual drinkers come to betoken a larger crisis, and how they establish gin as the cause of that crisis, rather than a symptom of underlying dispossession. I explore how various portrayals of drinkers in Gin Craze discourse each work to exemplify the crisis and to posit gin as its cause. Further, I offer formal as well as historical explanations for why these figures are so often women: how the cultural institutions of eighteenth-century femininity, including maternity and coverture, convinced artists, authors, and readers that women were particularly well-suited to exemplify gin’s compulsions and depredations.

The No-Nose Club

English manners in the eighteenth century had undergone a revolution. With Puritanism defeated, the bawdy culture of the Restoration surfed in on a tidal wave of smut, scat, and scabies. For the next century, both coarseness and wit would be intertwined with a jaded cynicism and scepticism for all things radical. Markers of the new English liberty included the gin craze, the South Sea Bubble, and a spread of venereal disease rising to near-epidemic levels. Noelle Gallagher’s new book, Itch, Clap, Pox: Venereal Disease in the Eighteenth-Century Imagination, is a surprising and gripping study of this dark century, both its humour and its discontents. Its focus, venereal disease, is a common enough subject among writers and satirists, but never has it been so perceptively interrogated as in Gallagher’s study. By focusing on the ‘imagination’ – meaning novels, drama, poetry, and satires both written and visual – Gallagher moves beyond the typical medical humanities approach that seeks to unearth the empirical truth of infection, and instead embraces the many raucous and contradictory social attitudes that underwrite the depiction of VD, and particularly syphilis, during the period.

Pragmatism, Neoliberalism or Islam: The Case of Alcoholic Beverages

After the defeats of Marxism, pundits in the global north claimed neoliberalism as the endpoint of mankind ideological evolution and the universalization of Western liberal creeds as the final form of human civilization. In contrast, Muslims believes that more than fourteen hundred years ago Islam already providedthe best and everlasting ideology for the welfare of humanity. The logic of Islam is based on intervention inthe socioeconomic affairs of mankind (Amar Bil Maroof and Nahi Anil Mumkar), while proponents of neoliberalism believes in non-intervention. Using the methodology of library research, this study investigated whether neoliberalism or Islam better serves the greatest interest of the greatest numbers by taking the case of alcoholic drinks. In 18th century England non-interference in the socioeconomic affairs of mankind created the era of gin craze which is still remembered for widespread corruption and social devastation. Besides 18th century England, recently interference in the socioeconomic affairs of mankind were linearly associated with a drastic decline in widespread corruption and social devastation. It is a wellknown fact that neoliberalism is attributed to the greatest harm to the greatest number while in the dogma of Islam there is an all-time greatest benefit to the greatest number

Theorising Alcohol in Public Discourse: Moral Panics or Moral Regulation?

In recent years, politicians, police chiefs, journalists and medical professionals have been vocal in their condemnation of excessive alcohol consumption. Newspapers routinely refer to a “binge-drinking epidemic”, Prime Minister David Cameron has spoken of drink-induced “mayhem on the streets” and Work and Pensions Secretary Iain Duncan-Smith has claimed alcohol is “damaging the fabric of the nation”. Despite the widespread belief that we live in new and difficult times, the 'drink problem' in Britain is nothing new. From the eighteenth century 'gin craze' and the Victorian temperance movement to the more current debates over twenty-four hour licensing and minimum pricing, acute public concern about drinking has been a regular feature of British history. Are these recurrent anxieties the result of successive episodic outbursts of irrational anxiety about different social changes, as classic moral panic theory might postulate? Or can other theoretical frameworks, particularly moral regulation theory, improve our understanding of the British relationship with alcohol?Various academics have examined the connection of alcohol consumption to social anxiety or moralisation. This paper brings fresh insights in two main ways: firstly by focusing on British history, a neglected area in the sociology of drinking; and secondly, by bringing enquiries up to date with an examination of recent public discourse on drink, which has been largely preoccupied with the idea of alcohol as a health problem. Drawing on the work Alan Hunt and Chas Critcher, this paper uses the history of British concerns about drinking to shed new light on the question of whether moral panic theory is still relevant, and, if so, in what form.

The politics of alcohol: a history of the drink question in England

Introduction 1. A monstrous plant: acohol and the Reformation 2. Healths, toasts and pledges: political drinking in the seventeenth century 3. A new kind of drunkenness: the gin craze 4. The politics of sobriety: coffee and politics in Georgian England 5. A fascinating poison: early medical writing on drink 6. Ungovernable passions: intoxication and Romanticism 7. Odious monopolies: power, control and the 1830 Beer Act 8. The last tyrant: the rise of temperance 9. A monstrous theory: the politics of prohibition 10. The state and the trade: the drink question at the turn of the century 10. Central control: war and nationalisation 11. The study of inebriety: medicine and the law 12. The pub and the people: drinking places and popular culture 13. Prevention and health: alcohol and public health 14. Beer orders: the changing landscape in the 1990s 15. Drinking responsibly: media, government and binge drinking Conclusion: the drink question today Index -- .

Binge drinking today: Learning lessons from the past

Binge drinking is a matter of current social, media and political concern. Within the current debates binge drinking is sometimes portrayed as a recent phenomenon, but in fact it has a history and concern about binge drinking is not new. This paper sets the phenomenon in its historical context by examining how the nature and definition of binge drinking has changed over time. Aims: The overall aim is to draw lessons for policy through the interaction of social science and historical perspectives. Methods: A literature review was conducted and a workshop brought together researchers, policy makers and practitioners to consider current perceptions of binge drinking, current responses and possible future approaches. Findings: From this study it is evident that that the meaning ascribed to the term ‘binge drinking’ has changed over time but further research is required to establish quite how and why this shift came about. Parallels can be drawn between the current concerns about ‘binge drinking’ and those about the ‘gin craze’ of the eighteenth century: they are both focused on public drunkenness, urban locations and women's drinking and the media has played a pivotal role in shaping the response to the ‘crisis’.

Liberties and licences

This article looks at the ways in which discourse around alcohol has shaped, and been shaped by, British liberal thought. It discusses three key moments in which alcohol became prominent in public debates over individual rights, market freedoms and government intervention: the London ‘gin craze’, mid-19th-century arguments over the ‘Permissive Bill’ and recent concerns over ‘binge drinking’ and the 2003 Licensing Act. In addition to looking at how liberal debates have shaped government alcohol policy, this article considers how liberal definitions of rationality, value and moral autonomy have shaped wider discourses on the meaning and legitimacy of intoxication. It argues that alcohol consumption (and, more generally, intoxication) has historically brought fissures and contradictions within liberal thought to the surface and that many of the complexities and divisions within liberalism can be illustrated through an analysis of liberal debates on alcohol. It also calls for a strategic re-engagement with liberalism, in its own theoretical terms of reference, from within cultural studies as well as for a more sustained discussion of intoxication by liberal theorists.

Craze: Gin and Debauchery in an Age of Reason, by Jessica Warner and The Much-lamented Death of Madam Geneva: The Eighteenth-Century Gin Craze, by Patrick Dillon

<i>Craze: Gin and Debauchery in an Age of Reason</i>, by Jessica Warner and <i>The Much-lamented Death of Madam Geneva: The Eighteenth-Century Gin Craze</i>, by Patrick Dillon

The naturalization of beer and gin in early modern England

Two of England's most popular alcoholic beverages originated not in England but on the continent of Europe, probably in The Netherlands or Belgium. The two beverages are beer and gin, and both aroused feelings of intense xenophobia when they were first introduced in England several centuries ago. Beer replaced ale over the course of the 15th and 16th centuries, and was itself temporarily eclipsed by in the early 18th century. This paper examines how the image of the two beverages was recast and rehabilitated, and how each, in turn, came to be closely identified with the English and their way of life. In particular, it examines the role of xenophobia in propaganda designed to limit drinking and other forms of disinhibition among the working poor. It also examines the role of nationalism in promoting the acceptance of new alcoholic beverages and in transforming the working poor from a class whose access to alcohol was subject to official restriction into a mass market whose demand for cheap alcohol was seen as benefiting the national economy. The discussion starts with an overview of the sources used in this study. It then examines the political uses of xenophobia in the medieval and early modern periods. That overview will provide a context for understanding how beer was introduced and assimilated in England over the course of the l5th and 16th centuries, as well as for understanding the very similar ways in which was naturalized over the course of the late 17th and early 18th centuries. The sources The primary documents used in this study variously date from the early l5th century to the height of the so-called gin craze of 1720-1751, spanning the period between the introduction of beer in England in the late medieval period and the creation of a mass market for cheap distilled spirits at the end of the 17th century. The sources consist variously of sermons, ballads, doggerel, social satire, and broadsides. Several hundred publications were consulted in the course of preparing this study, and they were identified through a number of secondary sources, starting with the bibliography to a temperance publication dating from about 1890 (French, 1890?). Other sources include Austin's bibliography of Alcohol in Western Society, the Short-title Catalogue of British books printed between 1474 and 1640 (Pollard, 1976-1991), and the Short-title Catalogue of British books printed between 1641 and 1700 (Wing, 1945-1951). Sources were selected if they addressed any aspect of drinking or drunkenness. Of these, a fairly large number contained one or more references to foreign drinking habits and preferences, whether in the form of observations about the drinking practices of other nationalities, or in the form of commentary about the introduction of new and foreign alcoholic beverages in England. Most of the references to foreign drinking practices are informed by an intense xenophobia, and this raises two questions: Who stood to benefit by encouraging hostility toward foreigners, and who was susceptible to the appeal of xenophobia? Political uses of xenophobia It is not hard to find examples of xenophobia in late medieval England, nor is it surprising that many of these examples date from the 13th century-that is, from a time when England was being shorn of its once vast holdings in France. There were several attempts to oust foreigners from office during the long and troubled reign of Henry III (1216-1272) of England (Black, 1994), although closer examination shows that many of the key players in attacks on foreigners were themselves foreign-born, and that they stood to benefit both politically and financially from the ouster of their rivals (Carpenter, 1992; Ridgeway, 1988). Another source of popular discontent was the presence of numerous foreigners who held benefices in England (MacKenzie, 1929). But again, such movements primarily benefited the nation's privileged classes, be they the native-born clergy or the noble families whose surplus sons hoped to obtain lucrative benefices in England. …

The drinking man's disease: the 'pre-history' of alcoholism in Georgian Britain.

SummaryDrinking played an extremely important social role in eighteenth century England, and heavy drinking was considered manly. At times, especially during the ‘gin craze’ of the 1730s and 1740s, consumption levels rocketed alarmingly, creating vast social and medical problems and perturbing public opinion. The medical writers of Georgian England had no doubt that heavy alcohol consumption was often responsible for ill‐health and disease, and not least was one of the triggers of madness (and for this reason much health advice literature was at pains to moderate consumption). But was habitual drunkenness itself seen as a disease? Conventional wisdom amongst historians is that the disease concept of habitual drunkenness (which later became labelled ‘alcoholism’) essentially stems from the writings of Benjamin Rush and Thomas Trotter. Scrutiny of earlier writers on the subject, however, particularly those of Lettsom, Cheyne and Mandeville, indicates no substantial differences between their outlooks and those of Trotter. Trotter was part of a continuing tradition, rather than the beginning of a new one.