Craze: Gin and Debauchery in an Age of Reason : Consisting of a Tragicomedy in Three Acts in which High and Low are Brought Together, Much to Their Mutual Discomfort ...Rotgut gin—cheap, widely available, and remarkably potent—was the overwhelming drug of choice among London’s working poor in the early 1700s. Sold for pennies in taverns and squalid gin shops, on street corners and even in jails, gin was the original opiate of the masses, plunging England’s capital into chaos and giving rise to the first modern drug scare.Crazeis an engaging social history of gin and the men and women whose lives it touched: the poor who drank it, the distillers who made it, the members of Parliament who feared it, and the prime minister who relied on its tax revenues to line his pockets. Offering a rich political, social, and economic history of gin and the London of Hogarth and Dr. Johnson,Crazewill intoxicate you with its blend of erudition, style, and wit. |
Contents
Introduction I | 1 |
IN WHICH A NEW AND BEWITCHING LIQUOR | 19 |
A Lesson in Political Arithmetic | 85 |
Copyright | |
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Craze: Gin and Debauchery in an Age of Reason ; Consisting of a Tragicomedy ... Jessica Warner No preview available - 2004 |
Common terms and phrases
Addiction alcohol April beer beverage bill brandy capital cocaine commissioners of excise Company of Distillers constables consumption convicted Corporation of London Court Crack Croft Daily Gazetteer Daniel Defoe distilled spirits Distilled Spirituous Liquors drank gin drinking drugs drunk East London English Excise Office excisemen February folio Frank Ivis gallons Gentleman's Magazine Gin Act gin craze gin shops gin-sellers Grub-Street Journal hawkers Henry Fielding house of correction infant informers January John Joseph Jekyll justices later license Liquors the Bane London Company London Daily Post London Evening-Post London Metropolitan Archives Lord March Middlesex moral reformers Mother Gin Nation Norwich Mercury October Old Bailey Oxford parish Parliament political poor Printed prison prosecutions Public Record Office publicans Read's Weekly Journal recto retailers riots sales of gin selling gin Sessions Papers Sir Robert Walpole Social Society sold gin Southwark Street taxes Thomas De Veil Thomas Wilson took effect Warner wholesale distillers William woman women