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Mention drug-related crime and people think immediately about heroin and cocaine. But 250 years ago, it was a different matter entirely.
"A new kind of drunkenness, unknown to our ancestors is lately sprung up amongst us, and which, if not put a stop to, will infallibly destroy a great part of the inferior people," wrote the London magistrate and novelist Henry Fielding in An Inquiry into the Causes of the late Increase of Robbers. "The drunkenness I here intend is that acquired by the strongest intoxicating liquors, and particularly by that poison called Gin; which I have great reason to think is the principal sustenance (if it may be so called) of more than a hundred thousand people in this metropolis."
Gin had arrived from what is today the Netherlands with the troops of William of Orange, Britain's king from 1689. Distilled from grain, it was originally known as genever, from the Old Dutch for juniper—the berry that gives the spirit its flavour. And though invented by a Dutch physician as a diuretic, the soldiers found it also gave them "Dutch courage".
At the time, the British still mostly drank ale and when they did drink spirits, they chose brandy. But France was out of favour, fighting yet another war with Britain, and anti-French policies ushered in by King William gave genever—or gin as it became known—a market opportunity.
Parliament encouraged the distillation of spirits from English grain and soon vast numbers of people set up their own distilleries. Gin drinking became positively patriotic, with workers being given gin as part of their wages. Soon it became the nation's favourite tipple.
But it also became a curse. Women were particularly taken with the spirit and bought it from pharmacists for "medicinal purposes", mixing it with warm water to calm the nerves—hence the name "mother's ruin". Mass drunkenness became a serious problem. By the 1740s, the British were consuming some 8 million gallons (30 million litres) a year and estimates suggest that in parts of London a quarter of the houses were gin shops.
The cartoonist William Hogarth drew his famous images of Gin Lane (above) with every building falling down except the pawnbroker and the gin house. He contrasted this with the relative harmony of Beer Street (left). Hogarth's friend, Fielding, blamed gin for a rising crime rate: "However cheap this vile potion may be, the poorer sort will not easily be able to supply themselves with the quantities they desire; for the intoxicating draught itself disqualifies them from using any honest means to acquire it, at the same time that it removes all sense of fear and shame, and emboldens them to commit every wicked and desperate enterprise."
Something had to be done. In 1751, Parliament increased the tax on gin, and its sale was strictly controlled. By contrast, government allowed anyone who could afford a relatively inexpensive licence to sell beer and virtually overnight pubs appeared in almost every alley. Beer began to regain at least some of its former popularity.
