The Gin Craze

In a programme first broadcast in December 2016, Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss the craze for gin in Britain in the mid-18th century and the attempts to control it. With the arrival of William of Orange, it became an act of loyalty to drink Protestant, Dutch gin rather than Catholic brandy, and changes in tariffs made everyday beer less affordable. Within a short time, production increased and large sections of the population that had rarely or never drunk spirits before were consuming two pints of gin a week. As Hogarth indicated in his print ‘Beer Street and Gin Lane’ (1751) in support of the Gin Act, the damage was severe, and addiction to gin was blamed for much of the crime in cities such as London.

→ Listen on BBC Sounds website

Guests

• Angela McShane No other episodes
  Research Fellow in History at the Victoria and Albert Museum and University of Sheffield
• Judith Hawley 14 episodes
  Professor of 18th century literature at Royal Holloway, University of London
• Emma Major No other episodes
  Senior Lecturer in English at the University of York

Reading list

• The English Alehouse: A Social History, 1200-1830
  Peter Clark (Longman, 1983) Google Books →
• Gin: The Much-Lamented Death of Madam Geneva: The Eighteenth-century Gin Craze
  Patrick Dillon (Thistle Publishing, 2013) Google Books →
• The First Bohemians: Life and Art in London's Golden Age
  Vic Gattrell (Penguin, 2014)
• An Inebriated History of Britain
  Peter Haydon (The History Press, 2005) Google Books →
• Empire of Booze
  Henry Jeffreys (Unbound, 2016) Google Books →
• A History of Drink and the English, 1500-2000
  Paul Jennings (Routledge, 2016) Google Books →
• The Politics of Alcohol: A History of the Drink Question in England
  James Nicholls (Manchester University Press, 2011) Google Books →
• English Society in Eighteenth-Century Britain
  Roy Porter (Penguin, 1990) Google Books →
• A Pleasing Sinne: Drink and Conviviality in Seventeenth-Century England
  Adam Smyth (ed.) (D. S. Brewer, 2004) Google Books →
• William Hogarth: A Life and a World
  Jenny Uglow (Faber and Faber, 2002) Google Books →
• Craze: Gin and Debauchery in an Age of Reason
  Jessica Warner (Profile Books, 2002) Google Books →
• Gin Glorious Gin: How Mother's Ruin Became the Spirit of London
  Olivia Williams (Headline, 2014) Google Books →
• Last Orders: A Social History of Drinking
  History Today, e-book ( 2012)

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Experimental. For more related episodes, visit the visual explorer.

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Programme ID: b084zk6z

Episode page: bbc.co.uk/programmes/b084zk6z

Auto-category: 363.41 (Alcohol abuse and its social effects)

Hello (First sentence from this episode)

Hello, the gin craze gripped Britain in the 18th century when the government feared that poor people were drinking far too much cheap gin, damaging their own health and the safety and well-being of all.