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The “Slow but Sure Poyson”: The Representation of Gin and Its Drinkers, 1736–1751

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  21 December 2012

Jonathan White
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Journal of British Studies , Volume 42 , Issue 1 , January 2003 , pp. 35 - 64
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Copyright © North American Conference of British Studies 2003

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References

1 George, M. D., London Life in the Eighteenth Century (London, 1966) pp. 42–44Google Scholar.

2 Davison, Lee, “Experiments in the Social Regulation of Industry: Gin Legislation, 1729–1751,” in Stilling the Grumbling Hive: The Response to Social and Economic Problems in England, 1689–1750, ed. Davison, L., Hitchcock, T., Keirn, T., and Shoemaker, R. B. (Stroud, 1992) pp. 25–49Google Scholar.

3 Rudé, George, “Mother Gin and the London Riots of 1736,” Guildhall Miscellany 1, no. 10 (1959): 53–62Google Scholar.

4 Clark, Peter, “The Mother Gin Controversy in the Early Eighteenth Century,” Transactions of the Royal Historical Society, 5th ser., 38 (1988): 63–88Google Scholar.

5 Warner, Jessica, “The Naturalization of Beer and Gin in Early Modern England,” Contemporary Drug Problems (1997): 373–402Google Scholar, and “In Another City, in Another Time: Rhetoric and the Creation of a Drug Scare in Eighteenth-Century London,” Contemporary Drug Problems 21 (1994): 485–511CrossRefGoogle Scholar. My thanks go to John Chartres for directing my attention to these two articles.

6 I am using “alienation” here in the rigorously Marxist sense of the estrangement of humans from their productive activity, and thus the conditions for objectifying themselves as humans, by the mediating institutions of capitalism: wage labor, private property, and the division of labor. See Marx, Karl, “Economic and Philosophical Manuscripts (1844),” in his Early Writings (London, 1981) pp. 279–401Google Scholar. See also Meszaros, Istvan, Marx's Theory of Alienation (London, 1972) pp. 123–89Google Scholar.

7 The acts were 9 George II c. 23 and 24 George II c. 40.

8 John Chartres, “English Spirits: Ersatz Good or New Taste, New Good?” (paper presented to The Sweet Poison: Alcohol in European History conference, University of Warwick, March 2000); Clark, “Mother Gin,” pp. 65–70; Davison, “Gin Legislation,” pp. 25–26; Cullen, Louis, The Brandy Trade under the Ancien Regime: Regional Specialisation in the Charente (Cambridge, 1998) pp. 1–18Google Scholar.

9 For the clearest and most sophisticated statement of this thesis, see Medick, Hans, “Plebeian Culture in the Transition to Capitalism,” in Culture, Ideology and Politics: Essays for Eric Hobsbawm, ed. Samuel, Raphael and Jones, Gareth Stedman (London, 1982) pp. 107–12Google Scholar, and “The Proto-Industrial Family Economy: The Structure and Function of the Household during the Transition from Peasant Society to Industrial Capitalism,” Social History 3 (1976): 291–315Google Scholar. See also Linebaugh, Peter, The London Hanged: Crime and Civil Society in the Eighteenth Century (London, 1991) pp. 7–41, 119–83Google Scholar; Thompson, E. P., Customs in Common (London, 1991) pp. 259–403Google Scholar; Thomas, Keith, “Work and Leisure in Preindustrial Society,” Past and Present, no. 29 (1964): 50–62CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Reid, Douglas, “The Decline of Saint Monday, 1766–1876,” Past and Present, no. 71 (1976): 76–101CrossRefGoogle Scholar. For an intriguing recent study of middling men's changing consumer practices, see Finn, Margot, “Men's Things: Masculine Possession in the Consumer Revolution,” Social History 25 (2000): 133–55CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

10 Clark, “Mother Gin,” pp. 64–73, and The English Alehouse: A Social History, 1200–1830 (Harlow, 1983) pp. 184–242Google Scholar.

11 For more detailed discussion of Defoe's views of laboring-class consumption, see White, Jonathan, “Luxury and Labour: Ideas of Labouring-Class Consumption in Eighteenth-Century England” (Ph.D. thesis, University of Warwick, 2001) pp. 44–48Google Scholar.

12 Davison, “Gin Legislation,” pp. 28–35;

13 Ibid., pp. 28–29; Clark, “Mother Gin,” pp. 73–76. See also The Charge of Sir John Gonson, Knt. to the Grand Jury of the City and Liberty Westminster etc … At the General Quarter Sessions of the Peace, 24 April, Westminster Hall 1728 (London, 1728)Google Scholar.

14 Activism in the SPCK also united the reforming M.P. James Oglethorpe; the bishop of London, Edmund Gibson; the scientist and philanthropist Stephen Hales; Thomas Wilson—the son of the bishop of Sodor and Man—and, crucially, the Master of the Rolls Joseph Jekyll, who was a friend of William Hay and whose backing would prove vital in passing not only this bill but the playhouse bill in 1737. Jekyll, like Hay, was a Whig lawyer and a loyalist to Walpole but not a courtier. See Dictionary of National Biography (DNB), 1st ed., s.v. “Joseph Jekyll.” The role of the SPCK is best explored in Clark, “Mother Gin,” pp. 73–76.

15 See A Presentment of the Grand Jury of the City of London, A Presentment of the Grand Jury for the County of Middlesex and A Report Made to the Justices of the Peace for the County of Middlesex, both appendices in Isaac Maddox, The Expediency of Preventive Wisdom. A Sermon Preach'd before the Right Honourable the Lord Mayor, the Aldermen and Governors of the Several Hospitals of the City of London (London, 1751) pp. 24–28Google Scholar. See also The Charge of J…. P…. To the Grand Jury of Middlesex, On Saturday May 22nd. 1736 (London, 1738)Google Scholar.

16 Davison, “Gin Legislation,” pp. 33–35.

17 Ibid., pp. 33–34.

18 There is a substantial literature on these coalitions. See, e.g., Langford, Paul, The Excise Crisis: Society and Politics in the Age of Walpole (Oxford, 1975)Google Scholar; Wilson, Kathleen, The Sense of the People: Politics, Culture and Imperialism in England, 1715–1785 (Cambridge, 1995) pp. 84–165Google Scholar; Colley, Linda, In Defiance of Oligarchy: The Tory Party, 1714–1760 (Cambridge, 1982) pp. 53–174CrossRefGoogle Scholar. For conservative ideology in this period, see Kramnick, Isaac, Bolingbroke and His Circle: The Politics of Nostalgia in the Age of Walpole (Oxford, 1968)Google Scholar; Pocock, J. G. A., The Machiavellian Moment: Florentine Political Thought in the Atlantic Republican Tradition (Princeton, N.J., 1975) pp. 423–506Google Scholar. For a highly illuminating study of the potential for coalitions around country ideas, see Brewer, John, “English Radicalism in the Age of George III,” in Three British Revolutions: 1641, 1688, 1776, ed. Pocock, J. G. A. (Princeton, N.J., 1988) pp. 333–42Google Scholar.

19 The Trial of the Spirits; or, Some Considerations upon the Pernicious Consequences of the Gin Trade to Great Britain (London, 1736) p. 3Google Scholar.

20 The Trial, pp. 14–29.

21 Ibid., p. 4.

22 For Mandeville's arguments on education, see Mandeville, Bernard, An Essay on Charity and Charity Schools (1723), in Bernard Mandeville: The Fable of the Bees, ed. Kaye, F. B., 2 vols. (Indianapolis, 1988) 1:285–90Google Scholar.

23 The Trial, pp. 4–7.

24 Ibid., pp. 9–13.

25 Holden, Adam, A Vindication of a Pamphlet Lately Published, Entitled “The Trial of the Spirits” (London, 1736) p. 9Google Scholar.

26 Wilson, Thomas, Distilled Spirituous Liquors the Bane of the Nation (London, 1736) pp. ix–x, 2, 7, 29Google Scholar.

27 Ibid., p. vi.

28 Ibid., p. 11.

29 Ibid., p. vi

30 Ibid., pp. ix, 8.

31 Ibid., pp. 38–39.

32 Ibid., pp. 14–18.

33 Ibid., pp. 39–52.

34 Hales, Stephen, A Friendly Admonition to the Drinkers of Gin, Brandy and Other Distilled Spirituous Liquors, 5th ed. (London, 1754) pp. 11–14Google Scholar.

35 Occasional Remarks upon the Act for Laying a Duty upon the Retailers of Spirituous Liquors etc … and for Licensing the Retailers Thereof (London, 1736) pp. 5–20Google Scholar; A Proper Reply to a Scandalous Libel Entitled ‘The Trial of the Spirits’. In a Letter to the Worshipful Author (London, 1736) pp. 6–9Google Scholar; Eboranos, , A Collection of Political Tracts (London, 1736) pp. 35–38Google Scholar.

36 Gentleman's Magazine 6 (1736): 576–78.

37 A Letter from a Member of Parliament to His Friend in the Country Containing his Reasons for Being Against the Late Act for Preventing the Retail of Spirituous Liquors (London, 1736) pp. 19–21Google Scholar.

38 A Collection of Letters Published in the Daily Papers Relating to the British Distillery (London, 1736) pp. 4, 12, 30, 7–8Google Scholar. See also Gentleman's Magazine (1736): 310–12.

39 An Elegy on the Much Lamented Death of the Most Excellent, the Most Truly-Beloved and Universally Admired Lady, Madam Gineva. Worthy to be Perused by All Distillers, whether Simple or Compound (London, 1736)Google Scholar. See also Mother Gin: A Tragi-Comical Eclogue, Being a Paraphrastical Imitation of the Daphnis of Virgil (London, 1737)Google Scholar; The Deposing and Death of Queen Gin, with the Ruin of Duke Rum, Marquee de Nantz and the Lord Sugarcane etc … An Heroic-Comic-Tragical Farce (London, 1736)Google Scholar. This section owes much to Anne Janowitz, “Gin in the Discourse of Libationary Poetics” (paper presented at the University of Warwick Luxury Project's Summer Assembly, 1997). See also the following prints: The Funeral Procession of Madam Geneva, engraving (29 September 1736); The Lamentable Fall of Madam Geneva, engraving (29 September 1736); and To the Mortal Memory of Madam Geneva, Who Died Sept. 29, 1736, engraving (29 September 1736), all in Catalogue of Prints and Drawings in the British Museum, ed. Stephens, F. G. and George, M. D. (London, 1877) nos. 2277, 2278, and 2279Google Scholar.

40 Elegy.

41 Ibid.

42 Lamentable Fall.

43 See Warner, Jessica and Ivis, Frank, “‘Damn You, You Informing Bitch’: Vox Populi and the Unmaking of the Gin Act of 1736,” Journal of Social History 33, no. 2 (1999): 299–330CrossRefGoogle Scholar. See also Rudé, “Mother Gin”; Davison, “Gin Legislation,” pp. 36–41.

44 Chartres, “English Spirits”; Davison, “Gin Legislation,” pp. 41–42.

45 Langford, Paul, A Polite and Commercial People: England, 1727–1783 (Oxford, 1989) pp. 162–65Google Scholar; Colley, Linda, Britons: Forging the Nation, 1707–1837 (New Haven, Conn., 1992) pp. 63–71Google Scholar.

46 See Tucker, Josiah, A Brief Essay on the Advantages and Disadvantages which Respectively Attend France and Great Britain with Regard to Trade (London, 1753) p. 34Google Scholar; Postlethwayt, Malachy, Britain's Commercial Interest Explained and Improved, 2 vols. (London, 1757) 1:1–3, 367Google Scholar.

47 Langford, Polite and Commercial People, pp. 61–121, 165–74; Colley, Britons, pp. 85–100.

48 This argument is developed in detail in White, “Luxury and Labour,” pp. 146–57.

49 Voth, Hans Joachim, Time and Work in England, 1750–1830 (Oxford, 2000) pp. 118–33Google Scholar; Rule, John, The Labouring Classes in Early Industrial England (London, 1986) pp. 130–53, 255–60Google Scholar; Shammas, Carole, “The Domestic Environment in Early Modern England and America,” Journal of Social History 14, no. 1 (1980): 3–24CrossRefGoogle Scholar, and “Changes in English and Anglo-American Consumption from 1550–1800,” in Consumption and the World of Goods, ed. Brewer, John and Porter, Roy (London, 1991) pp. 177–205Google Scholar; Lemire, Beverly, Fashion's Favourite: The Cotton Trade and the Consumer in Britain, 1660–1800 (Oxford, 1991)Google Scholar and Dress, Culture and Commerce: The English Clothing Trade before the Factory (Basingstoke, 1997)Google Scholar.

50 For the conditions of London workers, see Schwartz, L. D., “The Standard of Living in the Long Run: London, 1700–1860,” Economic History Review, 2d ser., 38, no. 1 (1985): 24–41Google Scholar; Rule, John, The Experience of Labour in Eighteenth-Century Industry (London, 1981) pp. 50–74Google Scholar. For the customary determination of plebeian consumption, see Lemire, Beverly, “Peddling Fashion: Salesmen, Pawnbrokers, Taylors, Thieves and Second-Hand Clothes in England, c. 1700–1800,” Textile History 22, no. 1 (1991): 67–82CrossRefGoogle Scholar, and “Petty Pawns and Informal Lending: Gender, Households and Small-Scale Credit in English Communities,” in From Family Firms to Corporate Capitalism: Essays in Business and Industrial History in Honour of Peter Mathias, ed. Bruland, Kristine and O'Brien, Patrick (Oxford, 1998) pp. 112–38Google Scholar; John Styles, “Custom or Consumption? Plebeian Fashion in Eighteenth-Century England” (paper presented at the Luxury Project Conference, “Luxury and the Marketplace in Eighteenth-Century Europe,” University of Warwick, July 1998). My thanks to Beverly Lemire and John Styles for allowing me to cite these papers.

51 See, e.g., Reflections on Various Subjects Relating to Arts and Commerce (London, 1752) pp. 53–64Google Scholar; Tucker, Josiah, The Elements of Commerce and Theory of Taxes (unpublished manuscript, 1755) pp. 81–82Google Scholar; White, “Luxury and Labour,” pp. 132–67.

52 See, e.g., Clayton, John, Friendly Advice to the Poor (Manchester, 1755)Google Scholar; White, “Luxury and Labour,” pp. 132–233.

53 For the extent of the trade in the 1750s, see Davison, “Gin Legislation,” pp. 41–42; Chartres, “English Spirits”; Clark, “Mother Gin,” p. 68. For women's access to gin shops, see Clark, “Mother Gin,” pp. 70–71; Warner and Ivis, “Damn You,” p. 307. On the fragility of working women's lives in London, see Earle, Peter, “The Female Labour Market in London in the Late Seventeenth and Early Eighteenth Centuries,” Economic History Review 42 (1989): 338–52CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Schwartz, L. D., London in the Age of Industrialization: Entrepreneurs, Labour Force and Living Conditions, 1700–1850 (Cambridge, 1992) pp. 18–21, 43–49CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

54 On the crisis of order in the wake of 1748, see Rogers, Nicholas, “Confronting the Crime Wave: The Debate over Social Reform and Regulation, 1749–1753,” in Davison, et al. eds., Stilling the Grumbling Hive, pp. 77–98Google Scholar; Connors, Richard, “Pelham, Parliament and Public Policy: 1746–1754” (D.Phil thesis, Cambridge University, 1993) pp. 187–217Google Scholar. For the changing position of the spirits trade within the economy and within the state's fiscal regime, see Langford, Polite and Commercial People, pp. 148–49, 164–65; Patrick K. O'Brien, “The Political Economy of British Taxation, 1660–1815,” Economic History Review, 2d ser., 41, no. 1 (1988): 23–32.

55 For Hogarth's advocacy of the British Fisheries, and his charitable commitments, see Uglow, Jenny, Hogarth: A Life and a World (London, 1997) p. 499Google Scholar. For Maddox and Tucker's activities, see DNB, 1st ed., s.vv. “Isaac Maddox,” “Josiah Tucker.” For Tucker's connections with Robert Nugent, and on the British Fisheries project more broadly, see Connors, “Pelham, Parliament and Public Policy,” pp. 278–80.

56 Fielding, Henry, An Enquiry into the Causes of the Late Increase of Robbers etc., With Some Proposals for Remedying This Growing Evil (London, 1751)Google Scholar in An Enquiry into the Causes of the Late Increase of Robbers and Related Writings: The Wesleyan Edition of the Works of Henry Fielding, ed. Zirker, Malvin R. (Oxford, 1988) pp. 78–84, 87–88Google Scholar.

57 Maddox, Isaac, The Expediency of Preventive Wisdom, a Sermon Preached before the Right Honourable the Lord Mayor, the Aldermen and the Governors of the Severall Hospitals of the City of London, at St Bridget's Church on Easter Monday (London, 1751) pp. iv, vi–viiiGoogle Scholar. See also Tucker, Josiah, An Impartial Inquiry into the Benefits and Damages Arising to the Nation from the Present Very Great Use of Low-Priced Spirituous Liquors (London, 1751) pp. 8–15Google Scholar, app.; “A Letter from a Gentleman in the Country to His Friend in the Town,” London Magazine (1751), pp. 125–26Google Scholar; Serious Thoughts in Regard to the Publick Disorders (London, 1750) pp. 38–40Google Scholar.

58 For the ways in which social reformers focused on the public condition of the “private” familial lives of the laboring classes at this time, see White, “Luxury and Labour,” pp. 201–33.

59 Maddox, Expediency, pp. ix–x.

60 White, “Luxury and Labour,” pp. 152–77.

61 A Dissertation on Mr. Hogarth's Six Prints, Lately Publish'd viz. Gin Lane, Beer Street, and the Four Stages of Cruelty (London, 1751) pp. 17, 26Google Scholar. See also Maddox, Expediency, pp. ix–x; Haywood, Eliza, A Present for Women Addicted to Drinking, Adapted to All the Different Stations of Life: From a Lady of Quality to a Common Servant (London, 1750) pp. 1–25, 35–35Google Scholar; “Petition of the Mayor, Citizens, Sherriff and Commonalty of the City and County of Norwich in Common Council Assembled,” Journals of the House of Commons 26 (1751): 88Google Scholar.

62 Dissertation, pp. 15–16, 27.

63 Tucker, Impartial Inquiry, pp. 21–22; Dissertation, pp. 4, 15, 11–12. See also, Maddox, Expediency, pp. xi–xii; Haywood, A Present, pp. 5–7.

64 On Gin Lane and Beer Street, see Paulson, Ronald, Hogarth, vol. 3, Art and Politics, 1750–1764 (New Brunswick, N.J., 1993) pp. 17–21Google Scholar; Hallett, Mark, The Spectacle of Difference Graphic Satire in the Age of Hogarth (London, 1999) pp. 204–6Google Scholar; Uglow, Hogarth, pp. 498–501; Medick, “Plebeian Culture in the Transition to Capitalism.”

65 Gentleman's Magazine 21 (1751), p. 134Google Scholar.