How could you not like a book with that title? But it's also a fluently-written analysis of the "gin craze" of the early eighteenth century, and what it has to tell us about more recent drug scares. Warner persuasively argues that the public concern about gin had more to do with fears that the lower classes were changing and would no longer "know their place", and touches on such fascinating subjects as the first use of "political arithmetic" (now it would be called statistics) to lend gravity to what was essentially an emotional argument, and what Hogarth's famous Gin Lane and Beer Alley prints were really saying (the man fondling the barmaid's bosom in Beer Alley? that's good because beer promotes lust, which promotes children, which means that England's army will have plenty of people to be soldiers in 20 years' time). I would have preferred a little more analysis and a little less on the ins and outs of the passing of the different "Gin Acts", but overall, an easy and interesting read. ( )

In this book Warner gives the reader a social and political history of the effects of gin on English culture in the mid-1700s -- primarily as it was legislated through the Gin Acts of 1729 through 1751. Although distilled liquor (or "strong water") had been around since the fifteenth century, it wasn't until the 1700s that methods of cheaply distilling liquor from local grains came to England. Before that the poor drank beer and ale, and plenty of it (Warner quotes the national average at 30 gallons a year) -- hard liquor was mostly imported and mostly for the rich. That all changed when gin came to town at a time when wages were slightly higher than usual. The working poor made room in their bellies and budgets for plenty of gin (2 gallons per person per year, at its peak -- and they didn't drink less beer, they just added on the gin), and this made the upper classes a little nervous. Why can't the poor be happy with beer and gruel? Why do they have to want gin and imported coffee? If they don't produce tons of healthy children, who will fight our wars? Single women are getting drunk and causing trouble! Aren't they getting kind of uppity? All these questions and more bounced around the halls of Parliament. To complicate matters, all that gin was heavily taxed by the government, and the government really really needed the tax money to pay for a series of long wars.

These conflicts resulted in a series of more and less stringent Gin Acts that hoped to both curb the amount of gin sold to the working poor (and the amount of unlicensed street hawkers selling that gin), and to increase the amount of tax money coming into government coffers. None of the legislation really worked though, and the primary result was more drinking with the added fun of occasional riots and mob justice for the informers who made their living testifying against unlicensed gin sellers.

The details of the various gin acts and their political motivations can get a little dull, and because of a real lack of documentation of the lives and thoughts of the poor in this time period the examples and narratives that Warner constructs are often repeated and frustratingly short on detail. Warner does a nice job of drawing on contemporary newspaper accounts and court records, and fleshes out the story as much as she can through biographies and memoirs written by politicians and authors of the era. ( )

A fascinating and colorful history of the "Gin Acts" passed by Parliament between 1729 and 1751, in response to the generalized feeling that the new availability of English domestic gin was creating serious social & public health problems in England. Jessica Warner explores the general history of drinking in England - the amounts of alcohol consumed by all classes are staggering! - and the history of gin consumption during this period specifically.

She draws on a number of secondary sources treating the history of England during the early 18th century, in addition to using court records, press clippings, and poems/ads/bawdy songs about gin. For the most part, these are put together in a very engaging way - although there were a few times when the story felt a little repetitive. She also pulls in some great public art/propaganda.

Warner argues that Parliament and the Crown had a complicated relationship with gin and other distilled spirits, which were viewed, on the one hand, as a public health and morals menace, and on the other hand as a source of desperately needed tax revenue. When the economy was good and nothing else was going on, the "gin scare" would heat up and laws restricting it were generally supported. When revenue was needed and the country was distracted by outside events - during the War of Austrian Succession, for example - Parliament generally loosened the flow of gin and taxed the pants off its producers, rather than going after its consumers.

One of Warner's most important and successful avenues of exploration focuses on how the attempt to regulate gin and outlaw its consumption by the lower classes created a huge network of informers - people who could be counted on to sell out their neighbors and friends for selling and consuming gin. But the creation of this network of informers effectively broke the social bonds that held the lower-classes together by rewarding them for enriching themselves at the expense of others and betraying people who - despite the anti-gin propaganda that portrayed gin-drinkers as crazed and dissolute - were basically decent, hard-working people. Eventually this structure would completely backfire and create a climate of lawlessness that was far more threatening to the social order than the problem it was intended to curb.

Warner's book is also very interesting for its focus on the roles that women - especially young, single,urban women - played as dealers and drinkers of gin and as informers on those who did. A young woman willing to take the risk could make a day's maid wages by informing once on a single seller of gin. Warner also emphasizes that much of the concern over gin consumption focused on women gin drinkers, who were accused of being negligent mothers who were shirking their national duty to produce soldiers and workers for the nation because of their gin consumption. Stories circulated telling of women who, drunk on gin, let their children fall into the fire and spent their last coin on gin, rather than food.

The book closes with a kind of extended meditation on drug scares in general - linking the 18th century gin wars to the modern American "war on drugs," generally focusing on crack cocaine. I usually hate these kind of summaries because they tend to ignore historical differences between events and "force relevance" onto the past. But I actually think this portion was extremely well done and very thoughtful.

She points out that these scares usually involve a new substance or a new variation on an old substance (alcohol, old - gin, new; cocaine, old - crack, new), the substance is often disproportionately used by the poor or disadvantaged, women users and the children affected by their use often become the symbol of the problem because together they invoke both horror and pity, and the "science" behind the scare is often scarce. Hence statements like "crack is instantly addictive" or the image of the crack baby, forever doomed by its lowlife mother's neglect. While not arguing that crack is great, Warner's conclusion certainly makes the case that all drug scares are about more than just the drug itself.

This was a great book, a fantastic piece of social history and gender history. Highly recommended to anyone interested in England, social history, gender history or just looking for a great read about a pretty obscure topic that has some significance for current times. I'm not much of a drinker, but I'll certainly dedicate my next gin & tonic to Warner! ( )