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The ‘Mother Gin’ Controversy in the Early Eighteenth Century

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  12 February 2009

Peter Clark
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Extract

DURING the second quarter of the eighteenth century there were successive waves of public agitation over the spirits trade—in 1726, 1728–9, 1735–8 and again in 1748–51. Opponents of ‘Mother Gin’ and her supporters waged a multi-media propaganda war, through tracts and sermons, broadsides, ballads, satirical verse, petitions, posters and prints (though Hogarth's Gin Lane and Beer Street came only as a final, splendid coda to the attack on gin, in 1751). Parliament in this period enacted a series of measures to deal with the problem. The most dramatic and draconian of these was the 1736 Gin Act, whichwas hurried through Parliament in a few weeks and threatened to close down the spirits trade overnight. The Act, with secondary legislation in 1737 and 1738, caused such a landslide of protest and opposition in the capital that it had to be abandoned and later repealed. In this paper I want to concentrate on the 1736 Act, looking at its background and aftermath. As we shall see, the controversy raises important questions not only about the organisation of the drink trade and consumption patterns in the early eighteenth century, but also about the social and political processes of legislation–the activity of interest groups, the attitude of government, and the problems of enforcement.

Type
Research Article
Information
Transactions of the Royal Historical Society , Volume 38 , December 1988 , pp. 63 - 84
Copyright
Copyright © Royal Historical Society 1988

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References

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