Alcohol permeated every aspect of Georgian life and heavy drinking was an everyday activity. Until tea and coffee became available in every home there were few alternatives to alcohol. Water was unsafe to drink and milk would sour quickly. The brewing process alcohol underwent removed contaminants and made it a safer and cheaper option than non-alcoholic drinks.

There was a clear class divide in terms of what people drank. Beer had once been consumed by all sectors of society but the upper classes had begun to move away from the beverage and it was now considered to be a drink for the poor. Nevertheless, beer was still in great demand and the French traveller Cesar de Saussure claimed that ‘more grain is consumed in England for making beer than for making bread.’ Indeed, even children were drinking ‘small beer’, a weaker version of regular beer, to quench their first.

Beer was drunk by the lower classes throughout the day. Benjamin Franklin, one of the founding fathers of the United States, worked as a printer in London in the 1720s and labelled his fellow workmen as ‘great guzzlers of beer’. It’s not difficult to understand why Franklin reached this conclusion. ‘My companion at press drank every day a pint of beer before breakfast,’ he recalled, ‘a pint at breakfast, a pint between breakfast and dinner, a pint in the afternoon about 6 o’clock and another pint when he had done his day’s work.’

Working class drinking
Even if they had wanted to it was difficult for the lower classes to avoid the temptations of alcohol. Drink was frequently used as part payment, or reward for labour and it was common practice for workers to be given drink during their working day. As Sir Frederic Eden noted, Midland labourers in the 1790s were usually given a gallon of beer a day at harvest and some farmers distributed this amount throughout the year. Moreover, workers would often receive their wages at the end of the week at their local alehouse. These establishments also acted as employment agencies where employers would visit and expect to hire workers. Furthermore, alehouses were one of the few places available to the masses for recreation and they provided a location for meeting friends and playing games.

The middle and upper classes preferred to consume more exotic alcoholic beverages such as wine, sherry, port, brandy and punch. Indeed, foreign visitors were surprised to discover that inebriation was a vice shared by all sectors of society. ‘It is not the lower populace alone that is addicted to drunkenness,’ explained a bewildered Cesar de Saussure in a letter to his family, ‘numbers of persons of high rank and even of distinction are over fond of liquor. All men, even churchmen, have a particular club or tavern, where they meet at least twice in the week to drink together in company.’

Downing three bottles of port at one sitting was regarded as being the absolute minimum amount a gentleman was expected to drink if he wanted to gain the respect of his companions. There was no shortage of eminent public figures who had earned this respect. ‘Men of all ages drink abominably,’ Sir Gilbert Elliot reported. ‘Fox drinks what I should call a great deal… Sheridan excessively and Grey more than any of them… Pitt I am told drinks as much as anybody.’ Sir Gilbert tried to excuse and downplay this heavy drinking by maintaining that it was always accompanied with ‘lively, clever conversation on subjects of importance’.

Georgian customs
The extent of drunkenness in the 18th century was undoubtedly influenced by some Georgian customs. All classes, for example, were expected to engage in what must have seemed like the drinking of endless toasts. ‘To drink at table, without drinking to somebody’s health,’ revealed Henri Misson, ‘would be like drinking in a corner, and be reckon’d a very rude action.’

Another observer of life in Georgian England, Carl Moritz, discovered on his travels through the country that, even in the lowliest drinking establishment, it was disrespectful not to toast the health of all those who were present. Drinking was also habitual at every ceremony. The Reverend Woodforde, for example, held an annual ‘frolic’ for the farmers of his parish when they came to pay their tithe. In December 1776 he wrote in his diary that he gave them, ‘Wine, Punch, and Ale as much as they pleased; they drank of Wine 6 Bottles, of Rum 1 gallon and half, and I know not what ale.’

Perhaps surprisingly there were no negative connotations associated with middle and upper class drunkenness during this period. In fact, quite the reverse, being drunk was considered a perfectly normal and natural condition to be in. ‘A man is never happy in the present,’ Dr Johnson declared, ‘unless he is drunk.’ Dr Johnson divulged that all the ‘decent people of Lichfield got drunk every night and were not the worse thought of’ and proudly boasted that he had once been able to drink three bottles of port without being the worse for it.

The gin craze
However, the upper classes were not so tolerant in their attitude towards drunkenness when it involved the lower social echelons. In the first half of the 18th century the infamous ‘gin craze’ struck the nation and there was widespread concern about the amount of gin the poor were consuming.

The origins of the ‘gin craze’ can be traced back to a series of measures undertaken by William of Orange, after the ‘Glorious Revolution’, that were designed to increase gin production and curb the brandy trade with France.

These actions had their desired effect and the production and consumption of gin increased rapidly. ‘Drunkenness of the common people was universal,’ grumbled Lord Hervey, ‘the whole town of London swarmed with drunken people from morning till night.’ Indeed, in An Enquiry into the Causes of the Late Increase in Robbers Henry Fielding asserted that gin was the ‘principal sustenance’ of more than one hundred thousand Londoners. The ‘gin craze’ wasn’t simply confined to London. Thomas Turner, for instance, recorded in his diary that the customers in his shop in Sussex spent so much on ‘spirituous liquors’ that they frequently had ‘little money to spare to buy what is really necessary’.

The spirit, popularly known as ‘Madame Geneva’, was cheap, widely available and provided the simplest way for many to temporarily escape the misery and deprivation they experienced on a daily basis.

Even so, gin addiction was perceived by the ruling class to threaten the existing social order and the future wellbeing of the nation. ‘Madame Geneva’ was held responsible for a multitude of social problems such as the rise in crime, declining birth-rates, increasing mortality-rates and rising poverty. ‘Those accursed spirituous liquors, which to the shame of our Government, are so easily to be had,’ lamented Bishop Benson, ‘have changed the very nature of our people; and they will, if, continued to be drunk, destroy the very race of people themselves.’

The government was forced to take action and passed a number of acts intended to restrict both the sale and production of gin. The 1729 Gin Act introduced a £20 licence on all gin sellers but this proved unworkable and was repealed in 1733. A further attempt to curb gin drinking in 1736 was even more dramatic. This Act endeavoured to effectively ban the sale of gin by making it compulsory for all sellers to purchase a £50 annual licence. The Act was hugely unpopular and ultimately failed because it was impossible to enforce. Indeed, despite the vast quantities of gin consumed during the period only two licences were ever sold!

Gin consumption finally started to decline after the 1751 Gin Act. The Act prevented distillers from selling gin as retailers or to unlicensed sellers and licences were only granted to those who ran reputable establishments. However, external events also played a crucial role in bringing about the end of the ‘gin craze’. A series of bad harvests forced the price of grain up and consequently raised the price of gin. This made it significantly more difficult for the masses to purchase ‘Madame Geneva’ and they began to turn back to beer as an alternative.

The ‘gin craze’ may have subsided after 1751 but drinking remained endemic throughout society. It was not until the Victorian era that more sober and temperate attitudes towards alcohol began to emerge as non-alcoholic beverages became more widely available.

Further reading
Liquid Pleasures: A Social History of Drinks in Modern Britain, John Burnett (Routledge, 1999)
An Inebriated History of Britain, Peter Haydon (Sutton Publishing, 2006)
The Politics of Alcohol, James Nicholls (Manchester University Press, 2009)