Mother Gin

[pozorvlak]

A while back I read a book called Gin: the Much-Lamented Death of Madam Geneva, from which I learned all kinds of interesting things about the Gin Craze (and parallel Gin Panic) in eighteenth-century London. I can't whole-heartedly recommend the book - it would have been better with fewer rhetorical flourishes and more serious analysis - but it

Comments

[susannahf]

there was a Gin Panic? that's just a fantastic concept. I have wonderful mental image (mainly of Two Shades people, it has to be said...)

[pozorvlak]

You've seen Hogarth's engraving Gin Lane, right? That kind of thing, but society-wide. Probably reached its nadir with the moral panic about the woman who strangled her daughter so she could sell her clothes for gin.

[susannahf]

oh. I was imagining something more along the lines of people running around in a panic going "Gin! There's no Gin!"

[pozorvlak]

Oh, no, there was lots of gin, even at times when it was supposedly banned. The only thing that really made a dent in gin availability was poor harvests.

There were, however, riots and insurrection over the prospect of restrictions on gin. The government of the day somehow managed to blame said insurrection on the Jacobites, neatly forgetting that gin had been introduced to Britain by William III as a way of encouraging closer ties with Holland and reducing sympathy for the Jacobite cause.

[necaris]

Short version: whatever your idea is, they tried it in the eighteenth century, and it either didn't work or made the problem worse. Concentrate on fixing poverty instead.
Genius! I had no idea!

[pozorvlak]

There is very little new under the sun :-) Or did you mean the bit about fixing poverty instead? Needless to say, that's replacing an impossible problem with one that's merely very, very hard...

[necaris]

Well mostly about all the stuff that's been tried re: binge drinking, for which I've seen ludicrous policy proposals on both sides of the Atlantic. Depressingly, it seems that only in places where poverty is in everyone's face all the time (developing countries) does more energy go towards talking about that than about binge drinking :-(

[firefliesinjune]

Edinburgh Public Libraries doesn't have this book. Any desire to sell me your copy for cheap?

[pozorvlak]

Sorry, very delayed response. I actually got it from Edinburgh Public Libraries! Shelfmark DA686.2, and it's currently available. Unfortunately I can't see how to link directly to the catalogue entry.