The Gin Epidemic

The Spirit of the Times: The Gin Epidemic of 18th Century England
Beginning in the early 1700s, England went on a notorious five-decade gin binge. Gin became the alternative to French brandy after Parliament placed an embargo on French trade. An excess of grain caused corn prices to drop making gin relatively inexpensive and “by 1750 nearly half of all British wheat harvests went directly into gin production.” The spirit was consumed predominantly among those who lived in destitution and worked lengthy hours in factories. For pennies, they could find a release from hunger pangs and the grinding drudgery of everyday life at the bottom of a glass. Gin was available everywhere: “street markets, grocers, chandlers, barbers, and brothels.” In the
1730s, in a district of over 2,000 houses, more than 600 either manufactured or sold the drink. By the 1740s, British gin consumption reached an average of six gallons per person per year. The abundant drinking of gin led to an alarming social crisis and became accountable for the sudden surge in poverty, criminality, child neglect and infant mortality.
Before the early 18th century, the lower class of Britons had been unable to afford distilled liquors.
They had become accustomed to drinking beer which provided essential nutrients that would otherwise be missing in a poor diet. It also had a lower alcohol proof than distilled liquor, 5% compared to the 60% proof gin that had started to become available. Gin provided a new, enchanting drunkenness. Inexperience coupled with a superfluous amount of cheap gin flowing freely instantaneously led to social calamity. Both poverty and crime strongly plagued England during the Epidemic and caused the English to believe gin-drinking was the source. Henry Fielding, a novelist of the time, believed drunkenness was the second main cause of crime in England. A London Grand Jury of 1736 also stated that “Most of the Murders and Robberies lately committed have been laid and concentrated at Gin Shop, people being fired with these Hot Spirits are prepared to execute the most bold and daring Attempts.” Although the crime rate did rise, most of the capital offenses were against property; less than 100 murders occurred in the unruliest parts of England, Middlesex and
London.
Another deleterious effect of the Gin Epidemic was a rise in infant mortality and child neglect.
Prenatal exposure to alcohol contributed to an ample amount of “newborn deaths and sickly children.” A report sent to Parliament in 1734 stated that “unhappy mothers habituate themselves to these distilled liquors, whose children are born weak and sickly, and often look shrivel’d and old as though they had numbered many years.” Over 74% of children birthed in London during the 1720s and 30s, did not reached their fifth-birthday. The infamous case of Judith Defour epitomized and illustrated the dangers of gin: motherhood failure and child negligence. In 1734, Judith Defour left her toddler at a workhouse. She returned a few days later and found the child newly clothed. Within a few hours, Defour stripped and strangled the girl and sold her clothes for sixteen-pence to buy gin. Though the rise in infant mortality could have resulted from the “overcrowded, insanitary living conditions and the endemic levels of smallpox and typhus” in the cities, cheap gin encouraged alcoholism and was the culprit of child negligence, and thus earned the nickname “Mothers’ Ruin.” As water supplies improved and parents replaced the gin in their child’s diet with cow’s milk, London’s infant mortality rates
abated.
Poverty, crime, and infant mortality rates rose drastically as gin enslaved the ignoble sector of England’s society in the early half of the 18th century. Although the ruling class were too drunkards, the Industrial Revolution depended on a sober working-class and they feared the workers would become too dissipated if the gin-drinking continued. In an effort to slow down consumption and reduce the social harms of gin, Parliament passed a series of acts. The Gin Act of 1736 imposed a tax of 20 shillings on each gallon of spirits and prohibited the sale of gin without an annual £50 license. The act was ineffective and unenforceable: after six years only two licenses were ever taken out and the government relied on informants to disclose the locations of illegal gin shops. Public outcry, including the famous satirical works of William Hogarth, aided the passing of the successful Sale of Spirits Act of 1750. The act lowered the license fee, included requirements to ensure gin merchants were creditable, and restricted the poor from buying alcohol on credit. Bad grain harvests increased the price of gin by 300 percent and along with forcefully increased food prices and decreased wages, it became progressively difficult for the working and poor to afford hard liquor. By 1757, the Gin Epidemic concluded and the government temporarily outlawed spirits being manufactured from domestic grain.