Free Gin: The Much Lamented Death of Madam Geneva: The Eighteenth Century Gin Craze by Patrick Dillon

CHAPTER FIVE

    THE FIRST GIN ACT
    S uddenly everything went wrong for Madam Geneva. Maybe the pressure was bound to get to her sooner or later. She was too conspicuous. She’d ruled unchallenged in the slums for too long.
    In 1727, an anonymous reformer wrote A Dissertation upon Drunkenness setting out to show ‘to what an intolerable pitch that vice is arriv’d at in this kingdom, together with the astonishing number of taverns, coffee-houses, alehouses, brandy-shops &c. now extant in London, the like not to be paralleled by any other city in the Christian world.’ Its warning was stark. ‘If this drinking spirit does not soon abate, all our arts, sciences, trade, and manufactures will be entirely lost, and the island become nothing but a brewery or distillery, and the inhabitants all drunkards.’
    That was only the start of the distillers’ woes. At the same time, Daniel Defoe, their most eloquent supporter, began to wobble. The second volume of The Complete English Tradesman , published in 1727, still expanded on the importance of the distilling industry, but there were warning signs. ‘I must confess,’ Defoe added, ‘thatthe advice to the Complete Tradesman ought to have bestowed a little pains upon these gentlemen called strong-water men, whose share in ruining the people’s morals, as well as their health, is too great … Let them take this gentle hint, they know how to reform it.’
    The trouble with Defoe as an ally was that if he changed his mind, he didn’t keep quiet about it. He was a journalist. His opinions might fluctuate, but he always knew how to express them. By 1728, his U-turn was complete. Augusta Triumphans was subtitled ‘the way to make London the most flourishing City in the Universe.’ One way was ‘to save our lower class of people from utter ruin, and rendering them useful by preventing the immoderate use of Geneva.’
    If 1727 had been bad for the distillers, 1728 was even worse. Sir John Gonson was chair of Quarter Sessions in both Westminster and Tower Hamlets at the same time, and with a platform like that he saw no reason to mince his words. Drunkenness, for Sir John, was the root of ‘blood-shed, stabbing, murder, swearing, fornication [and] adultery … the overthrow of many good arts and manual trades, the disabling of divers workmen, and the general impoverishment of many good subjects, abusively wasting the good creatures of God.’ 1
    Worst of all, in 1728 the door of Parliament finally swung open to reformers. On 8 October the new King, George II, issued yet another proclamation against the evils of London. And by now the work of Sir John Gonson and his colleagues had had its effect. After seven years of campaigning, Madam Geneva was squarely in the frame for the city’s ills. In a follow-up letter to the magistrates, Viscount Townshend, the Secretary of State, was already talking about ‘the shops where Geneva, and other spirits and strong liquors are drunk to excess,’ and instructing the Middlesex magistrates to proceed against them. 2

    The reformers took up the battle exactly where they had left off. Sir John Gonson was on the committee established in response to the royal proclamation, and the magistrates immediately recommended new legislation. They had already pointed out the problem with the existing laws. They had done what they could; extra petty sessions had been held to suppress unlicensed houses. What they needed was a change in the law.
    Reformers had been calling for a Gin Act for years; this time they were going all the way to Parliament. But that didn’t mean that new laws were a foregone conclusion. Parliament in 1729 didn’t have much appetite for social issues, or much of a track record with them. For early eighteenth-century legislators, domestic issues came a poor third to foreign policy and the serious business of raising revenue.
    Back in Elizabeth’s reign, Parliament had produced the Poor Laws, it was true, and later the Acts of