The "slow but sure poyson": The representation of Gin and its drinkers, 1736-1751

Journal of British Studies

Volumn 42, Issue 1, 2003, Pages 35-64

  White, Jonathan ^a  

^a Institute for Historical Research   (South Africa)

Author keywords

[No Author keywords available]

Indexed keywords

EID: 61149412068     PISSN: 00219371     EISSN: None     Source Type: Journal    
DOI: 10.1086/342685     Document Type: Review

References (96)

1. M. D. George, London Life in the Eighteenth Century (London, 1966), pp. 42-44
2. Lee Davison, "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. L. Davison, T. Hitchcock, T. Keirn, and R. B. Shoemaker (Stroud, 1992), pp. 25-49
3. George Rudé, "Mother Gin and the London Riots of 1736," Guildhall Miscellany 1, no. 10 (1959): 53-62
4. Peter Clark, "The Mother Gin Controversy in the Early Eighteenth Century," Transactions of the Royal Historical Society, 5th ser., 38 (1988): 63-88
5. Jessica Warner, "The Naturalization of Beer and Gin in Early Modern England," Contemporary Drug Problems (1997): 373-402
6. and "In Another City, in Another Time: Rhetoric and the Creation of a Drug Scare in Eighteenth-Century London," Contemporary Drug Problems 21 (1994): 485-511. My thanks go to John Chartres for directing my attention to these two articles
7. 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 Karl Marx, "Economic and Philosophical Manuscripts (1844)," in his Early Writings (London, 1981), pp. 279-401
8. See also Istvan Meszaros, Marx's Theory of Alienation (London, 1972), pp. 123-89
9. 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)
10. Clark, "Mother Gin," pp. 65-70
11. Davison, "Gin Legislation," pp. 25-26
12. Louis Cullen, The Brandy Trade under the Ancien Regime: Regional Specialisation in the Charente (Cambridge, 1998), pp. 1-18
13. For the clearest and most sophisticated statement of this thesis, see Hans Medick, "Plebeian Culture in the Transition to Capitalism," in Culture, Ideology and Politics: Essays for Eric Hobsbawm, ed. Raphael Samuel and Gareth Stedman Jones (London, 1982), pp. 107-12
14. 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): 291-315
15. See also Peter Linebaugh, The London Hanged: Crime and Civil Society in the Eighteenth Century (London, 1991), pp. 7-41, 119-83
16. E. P. Thompson, Customs in Common (London, 1991), pp. 259-403
17. Keith Thomas, "Work and Leisure in Preindustrial Society," Past and Present, no. 29 (1964): 50-62
18. Douglas Reid, "The Decline of Saint Monday, 1766-1876," Past and Present, no. 71 (1976): 76-101
19. For an intriguing recent study of middling men's changing consumer practices, see Margot Finn, "Men's Things: Masculine Possession in the Consumer Revolution," Social History 25 (2000): 133-55
20. and The English Alehouse: A Social History, 1200-1830 (Harlow. 1983), pp. 184-242
21. For more detailed discussion of Defoe's views of laboring-class consumption, see Jonathan White, "Luxury and Labour: Ideas of Labouring-Class Consumption in Eighteenth-Century England" (Ph.D. thesis, University of Warwick, 2001), pp. 44-48
22. 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
23. 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. 24-28
24. See also The Charge of J. ... P. ... To the Grand Jury of Middlesex, On Saturday May 22nd. 1736 (London, 1738)
25. There is a substantial literature on these coalitions. See. e.g., Paul Langford, The Excise Crisis: Society and Politics in the Age of Walpole (Oxford, 1975)
26. Kathleen Wilson, The Sense of the People: Politics, Culture and Imperialism in England, 1715-1785 (Cambridge, 1995), pp. 84-165
27. Linda Colley, In Defiance of Oligarchy: The Tory Party, 1714-1760 (Cambridge, 1982), pp. 53-174
28. For conservative ideology in this period, see Isaac Kramnick, Bolingbroke and His Circle: The Politics of Nostalgia in the Age of Walpole (Oxford, 1968)
29. J. G. A. Pocock, The Machiavellian Moment: Florentine Political Thought in the Atlantic Republican Tradition (Princeton, N.J., 1975), pp. 423-506
30. For a highly illuminating study of the potential for coalitions around country ideas, see John Brewer, "English Radicalism in the Age of George III," in Three British Revolutions: 1641, 1688, 1776, ed. J. G. A. Pocock (Princeton, N.J., 1988), pp. 333-42
31. The Trial of the Spirits; or, Some Considerations upon the Pernicious Consequences of the Gin Trade to Great Britain (London, 1736), p. 3
32. The Trial, pp. 14-29
33. For Mandeville's arguments on education, see Bernard Mandeville, An Essay on Charity and Charity Schools (1723), in Bernard Mandeville: The Fable of the Bees, ed. F. B. Kaye, 2 vols.'(Indianapolis. 1988), 1:285-90
34. Adam Holden, A Vindication of a Pamphlet Lately Published, Entitled "The Trial of the Spirits" (London, 1736), p. 9
35. Thomas Wilson, Distilled Spirituous Liquors the Bane of the Nation (London, 1736), pp. ix-x, 2, 7, 29
36. Stephen Hales, A Friendly Admonition to the Drinkers of Gin, Brandy and Other Distilled Spirituou Liquors, 5th ed. (London, 1754), pp. 11-14
37. 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. 5-20
38. A Proper Reply to a Scandalous Libel Entitled 'The Trial of the Spirits '. In a Letter to the Worshipful Author (London, 1736), pp. 6-9
39. Eboranos, A Collection of Political Tracts (London, 1736), pp. 35-38
40. Gentleman's Magazine 6 (1736): 576-78
41. 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. 19-21
42. A Collection of Letters Published in the Daily Papers Relating to the British Distillery (London, 1736), pp. 4, 12, 30, 7-8
43. See also Gentleman's Magazine (1736): 310-12
44. 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)
45. See also Mother Gin: A Tragicomical Eclogue, Being a Paraphrastical Imitation of the Daphnis of Virgil (London, 1737)
46. 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)
47. The Lamentable Fall of Madam Geneva, engraving (29 September 1736)
48. See Jessica Warner and Frank Ivis, " 'Damn You, You Informing Bitch': Vox Populi and the Unmaking of the Gin Act of 1736," Journal of Social History 33, no. 2 (1999): 299-330
49. See also Rudé, "Mother Gin"
50. Chartres, "English Spirits"
51. Paul Langford, A Polite and Commercial People: England, 1727-1783 (Oxford, 1989), pp. 162-65
52. Linda Colley, Britons: Forging the Nation, 1707-1837 (New Haven, Conn., 1992), pp. 63-71
53. See Josiah Tucker, A Brief Essay on the Advantages and Disadvantages which Respectively Attend France and Great Britain with Regard to Trade (London, 1753), p. 34
54. Malachy Postlethwavt, Britain's Commercial Interest Explained and Improved, 2 vols. (London, 1757), 1:1-3, 367
55. Langford, Polite and Commercial People, pp. 61-121, 165-74
56. Colley, Britons, pp. 85-100
57. This argument is developed in detail in White, "Luxury and Labour," pp. 146-57
58. Hans Joachim Voth, Time and Work in England, 1750-1830 (Oxford, 2000), pp. 118-33
59. John Rule, The Labouring Classes in Early Industrial England (London, 1986), pp. 130-53. 255-60
60. Carole Shammas, "The Domestic Environment in Early Modern England and America," Journal of Social History 14, no. 1 (1980): 3-24
61. and "Changes in English and Anglo-American Consumption from 1550-1800," in Consumption and the World of Goods, ed. John Brewer and Roy Porter (London, 1991), pp. 177-205
62. Beverly Lemire, Fashion's Favourite: The Cotton Trade and the Consumer in Britain, 1660-1800 (Oxford, 1991)
63. and Dress, Culture and Commerce: The English Clothing Trade before the Factory (Basingstoke. 1997)
64. For the conditions of London workers, see L. D. Schwartz, "The Standard of Living in the Long Run: London, 1700-1860," Economic History Review, 2d ser., 38, no. 1 (1985): 24-41
65. John Rule, The Experience of Labour in Eighteenth-Century Industry (London, 1981), pp. 50-74
66. For the customary determination of plebeian consumption. see Beverly Lemire. "Peddling Fashion: Salesmen, Pawnbrokers, Taylors, Thieves and Second-Hand Clothes in England, c. 1700-1800," Textile Hi tory 22, no. 1 (1991): 67-82
67. 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. Kristine Bruland and Patrick O'Brien (Oxford, 1998), pp. 112-38
68. 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
69. See, e.g., Reflections on Various Subjects Relating to Arts and Commerce (London, 1752), pp. 53-64
70. Josiah Tucker, The Elements of Commerce and Theory of Taxes (unpublished manuscript, 1755), pp. 81-82
71. See, e.g., John Clayton, Friendly Advice to the Poor (Manchester, 1755)
72. Warner and Ivis, "Damn You," p. 307
73. On the fragility of working women's lives in London, see Peter Earle, "The Female Labour Market in London in the Late Seventeenth and Early Eighteenth Centuries," Economic History Review 42 (1989): 338-52
74. L. D. Schwartz, London in the Age of Industrialization: Entrepreneurs, Labour Force and Living Conditions, 1700-1850 (Cambridge, 1992), pp. 18-21, 43-49
75. On the crisis of order in the wake of 1748, see Nicholas Rogers, "Confronting the Crime Wave: The Debate over Social Reform and Regulation, 1749-1753," in Davison et al. eds., Stilling the Grumbling Hive, pp. 77-98
76. Richard Connors, "Pelham, Parliament and Public Policy: 1746-1754" (D.Phil thesis, Cambridge University, 1993), pp. 187-217
77. Patrick K. O'Brien, "The Political Economy of British Taxation, 1660-1815," Economic History Review, 2d ser., 41, no. 1 (1988): 23-32
78. For Hogarth's advocacy of the British Fisheries, and his charitable commitments, see Jenny Uglow, Hogarth: A Life and a World (London, 1997), p. 499
79. 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
80. Henry Fielding, An Enquiry into the Causes of the Late Increase of Robbers etc., With Some Proposals for Remedying This Growing Evil (London, 1751)
81. An Enquiry into the Causes of the Late Increase of Robbers and Related Writings: The Wesleyan Edition of the Works of Henry Fielding, ed. Malvin R. Zirker (Oxford, 1988), pp. 78-84, 87-88
82. Isaac Maddox, 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-viii
83. See also Josiah Tucker, 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. 8-15. app.
84. "A Letter from a Gentleman in the Country to His Friend in the Town," London Magazine (1751), pp. 125-26
85. Serious Thoughts in Regard to the Publick Disorders (London, 1750), pp. 38-40
86. Maddox, Expediency, pp. ix-x
87. 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. 26
88. Eliza Haywood, 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, 35-35
89. "Petition of the Mayor, Citizens. Sherriff and Commonalty of the City and County of Norwich in Common Council Assembled," J urnals of the House of Commons 26 (1751): 88
90. Tucker, Impartial Inquiry, pp. 21-22
91. Haywood, A Present, pp. 5-7
92. On Gin Lane and Beer Street, see Ronald Paulson, Hogarth, vol. 3, Art and Politics, 1750-1764 (New Brunswick, N.J., 1993), pp. 17-21
93. Mark Hallett, The Spectacle of Difference Graphic Satire in the Age of Hogarth (London, 1999), pp. 204-6
94. Uglow, Hogarth, pp. 498-501
95. Medick, "Plebeian Culture in the Transition to Capitalism."
96. Gentleman's Magazine 21 (1751), p. 134