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Search - Craze: Gin and Debauchery in an Age of Reason

Craze Gin and Debauchery in an Age of Reason
Author: Jessica Warner

A lively and irreverent history of the "gin craze" in eighteenth-century London -- the true story of the world’s first modern drug scare In 1720, a new drink emerged as the overwhelming drug of choice among London’s working poor. Cheap, potent, and available on virtually any street corner, gin was the original urban drug. It numbed th... more »ousands to the cold, hunger, fatigue, and filth that were the lot of the underclass. Gin also started an epidemic -- known as the gin craze -- which swept through English society from low to high, turning neighbor against neighbor, husband against wife, citizen against society. All the great voices of the day weighed in on gin, known to the happy many as Mother Gin or Madam Geneva, and to the unfortunate few as "the ladies’ delight" or "cuckold’s comfort." Samuel Johnson detested the stuff. William Hogarth spoke of the "idleness, poverty, misery, and distress" it brought about. Henry Fielding wrote of "the infant conceived in gin," along with its more general "dreadful effects," which he had "the Misfortune every Day to see, and to smell too." Daniel Defoe could go either way on it -- depending on who was stuffing his pockets at the moment. Over the thirty-year history of the gin craze, London began to change from a medieval capital to a thoroughly modern urban metropolis, with all the problems of a modern city. Parliament waged its own "war on drugs" with a series of gin acts designed to restrict sales and reform the morals of the lower classes. Ordinary men and women fought tooth and nail to save their friends and neighbors from laws that were generally regarded as harsh and unjust. The craze even gave rise to its own urban legends -- spontaneous combustion, for one -- as well as gangs, informers, and its own brand of street justice known as "the rough discipline of the rabble." Jessica Warner has written a lively and accessible social history that examines the impact of Mother Gin from all perspectives -- personal, political, sociological, economic, military, and sexual. She draws on hundreds of primary sources, from the anonymous to Defoe and Dr. Johnson, guiding us through squalid back rooms, streets thronged with hawkers, raging mobs -- and the halls of Parliament. The result is a timely, revealing, utterly engrossing look at a city and a drug -- and a drug scare -- that helped shape our contemporary views of pleasure, consumption, and public morality.

ISBN-13: 9781568582313
ISBN-10: 1568582315
Publication Date: 9/2002
Pages: 264
Rating:

0 stars, based on 0 rating

Publisher: Last Gasp
Book Type: Hardcover
Other Versions: Paperback
Members Wishing: 0
Reviews: Amazon | Write a Review

Genres:

History >> Europe >> England >> General
History >> World >> 18th Century

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