Mother's Ruin - gin

Gin is a spirit which derives its predominant flavour from juniper ber­ries. From its earliest medieval beginnings, gin has evolved from an herbal medicine to the commercial drink that the Dutch physician Franciscus Sylvius (1614-72) invented. By the mid C17th, many small Dutch and Flemish distillers had popularised the re-distill­ation of malt spirit or wine with juniper, anise, caraway and coriander which were sold in pharmacies and used to treat such medical problems as kidney ailments and gout.

Gin was loved by English and Dutch troops who were fighting the Spanish during the Thirty Years War (1618-48). In particular they noticed its calming effects before battle. By 1663, there were c400 Dutch distil­l­ers in Amsterdam alone.

Gin only became pop­ular on English soil when Prince William of Orange and Princess Royal Mary took the English throne in 1688. But note that the original Dutch spirit-jenever was only c30% alcohol. The gin distilled in London was very strong and often mixed with impur­it­ies eg turpentine or sulphuric acid. London gin didn’t have the “dry, botanical-based sophistication” of Amsterdam gin. London’s was more of a hellish drink.

Former Victorian gin palace in London
bought when the new Great Central Railway terminus was to be built in St John’s Wood 
and restored in 2014. 
Photo credit: Britain Magazine

Gin also provided an alternative to French brandy at a time of both political and religious conflict with France. To patriotically protect the economy and the war effort, the English Government passed Acts between 1689-97 aimed at restrict­ing French brandy imports. Furth­er­more the monopoly of the London Guild of Distillers was broken in 1690, opening up the market in gin distillation. Economic protect­ionism and the prod­uction of English gin were actually encouraged by the government.

At the same time, a drop in food prices ensured that working people had a larger disposable income to spend on alcohol. This was a crisis waiting to happen.

So what went so tragically wrong? By 1721 magistrates were already decrying gin as "the principal cause of all the vice and debauchery committed among the inferior sort of people". “How surprisingly this Infection has spread within these few Years … it is scarce possible for Persons in low Life to go anywhere or to be anywhere, without being drawn in to taste, and, by Degrees, to like and approve of this pern­ic­ious Liquor." For a few pennies, London’s poor found an escape from cold, hunger and misery.

Yet alcohol consumpt­ion was high at all levels of society, as William Hogarth showed in A Midnight Modern Conversation 1733. Well dressed, bewigged gentlemen were fall-down drunk in a "coffee-house".

By 1730 c7,000 gin shops and street corner stands (plus an unknown number of illegal drinking dens) were in business in London, with millions of litres of gin distilled each year. Though many other drinks were available, it was gin that became known as Moth­er's Ruin and caused the greatest public concern. The British government had to act!

The Gin Act 1736 taxed retail sales at a rate of 20 shillings a gallon on spirits and required licensees to take out a £50 annual licence to sell gin, an impossibly high fee. The intended aim was to eff­ect­ively prohibit the trade by making it economically unfeasible. The actual outcome was mass law-breaking and violence (particularly towards informers who were paid £5 to dob in illegal gin shops).

The illegally distilled gin which was produced following the 1736 Act was less reliable and more likely to result in poisoning. Gin was blamed for misery, rising crime, madness, prostitution, higher death rates and falling birth rates. Drunkenness of the common people was said to be universal. In an infamous case of 1734, one infamous woman collected her toddler from the workhouse, strangled him, dumped the body in a ditch and sold the child’s new set of clothes for 1s 4d to buy gin.

As consumption levels increased in Britain, an organised campaign for more effective legislation was led by Bishop Thomas Wilson; he complained that gin produced a drunken, ungov­ernable set of people. Prominent anti-gin campaigners included authors Henry Fiel­d­ing (who blamed gin for both incr­eas­ed crime and increas­ed children's ill health) and Daniel Defoe (who complain­ed that drunken mothers were threatening to produce a fine spindle-shanked generation of children). The 1736 Act had failed and had to be repealed!

The Gin Craze was satirised in Hogarth's famous engraving called Gin Lane (1751). It depicted a gin-crazed mother, covered in syphilitic sores, mindlessly dropping her baby to its death. A pawnbroker did a roaring trade as people swapped their goods for money to buy more gin.

William Hogarth's print

   A Midnight Modern Conversation, 1733

William Hogarth's print

   Gin Lane, 1751

Compare Gin Lane with Hogarth’s slightly less famous engraving Beer Street (1751), creating a contrast between the miserable lives of gin drinkers and the healthy, enjoyable lives of beer drinkers with their vast tankards of foaming ale. Plump Englishmen downed pints of beer, the "happy prod­uce of our isle … we quaff thy balmy juice with glee”. Aided by powerful propaganda like this, the government had to act again. 

It passed more bills aimed at slow­ing the city's endless love for gin, despite creaming off serious taxes from the trade. The Gin Act of 1751 successfully prohibited distillers from selling to unlicen­s­ed merch­ants. Gin was no longer being sold in small dingy gin shops, but in smarter pubs where quality control was tighter. And another thing. When English grain became more expen­sive, land owners became less dependent on income from gin production. A series of poor harvests resulted in lower wages and increased food priced.

Parliament had passed five major Acts, in 1729, 1736, 1743, 1747 and 1751, designed to control the consumption of gin. But the gin crisis only ended after the 1751 Act. In the later C18th tea, coffee and beer began to rival gin.

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There was a resurgence of gin consumption during the Victorian era, but this time the new Gin Palaces were attractive. And welcoming to women. Dropping in for a quick Flash of Lightning was a popular precursor to a night at the theatre or to prepare workers for their evening journey home. Many of London’s gin palaces were centrally located in Bloomsbury or Covent Garden; in outlying suburbs, smaller gin shops served local communities.