How gin escaped from Gin Lane

In the mid-18th century, London was awash with gin. Socially-conscious members of the bourgeoisie believed that this was the root of all evil, contributing to crime and depravity. Fielding and Hogarth combined to denounce gin as responsible for ‘the reigning vices peculiar to the lower classes of the people’. Both of them hoped to persuade the lower orders to drink less gin and more beer. They extolled beer’s rustic health-giving properties, rather in the way that Burns exalted the nourishing virtues of haggis. In a different age, Hogarth’s cartoons of Gin Lane seem more comic than sermonising, but they are still powerful.

In various countries, the early phases of distillation were menaced by disapproval and harassment. The crude corn whiskey of the American frontier provided material for condemnations from many a pulpit. This must have been especially effective on Sunday mornings, when hangovers would have lowered the topers’ resistance. The same was true in the Highlands of Scotland, where drinkers and deplorers were — and still are — often polarised, even within families.