dChan - Q Origins Project Archive

Anonymous ID: d49206 Feb. 15, 2024, 5:28 p.m. No.20420842 🗄️.is 🔗kun

>>20420754

Evening All

TYB

In 1720, the mutiny act was passed which stated that anyone who was distilling alcohol wouldn’t have to house soldiers in their home. These factors massively encouraged local gin production, so much so that in 1730 the number of gin shops in London exceeded 7000 which was one in every three public houses. By 1733, the average person was drinking 14 gallons of gin per annum, approx. 1.3 litres of gin per week. 1 in 3 structures in London produced or sold gin. At approximately 160 proof, this gin was highly intoxicating, not only was it strong but it wasn’t being sipped like a gin and tonic, in some cases it was being drank in vast quantities some were drinking around half a litre per day.

The gin obsession was blamed for misery, rising crime, madness, higher death rates and falling birth rates. Gin joints allowed women to drink alongside men for the first time and it is thought this led many women neglecting their children and turning to prostitution, hence gin becoming known as ‘Mother’s Ruin’.

The government was forced to take action. The 1736 Gin Act taxed retail sales at 20 shillings a gallon and made selling gin without a £50 annual licence strictly illegal. But over the next seven years, only two licences were taken out meaning reputable sellers were put out of business, and bootleggers thrived. Their gin, which went by colourful names such as ‘Ladies Delight’ and ‘Cuckold’s Comfort’, was more likely to have been flavoured with turpentine than juniper and was often poisonous, containing horrifying ingredients such as sulphuric acid.

In 1751, artist William Hogarth published his satirical print ‘Gin Lane’ (above) depicting disturbing scenes of gin-crazed London including a mother, covered in syphilitic sores, unwittingly dropping her baby while she takes a pinch of snuff. Aided by powerful propaganda such as this, the more successful 1751 Gin Act was passed. A change in the economy also helped turn the tide with a series of bad harvests forcing grain prices up, making landowners less dependent on the income from gin production. Food prices consequentially went up and wages went down, meaning the poor weren’t able to afford their drug of choice. By 1757, the Gin Craze was all but dead.

Mothers Ruin explained