Gin: The Much Lamented Death of Madam Geneva: The Eighteenth Century Gin Craze (21 page)

On 1 October the
Daily Journal
was still reporting that ‘every thing remains very quiet, and no disturbance has happened about the Cities of London and Westminster.’ Scribbling a postscript on a letter to his brother the same day, Robert Walpole added ‘that last night is likewise past over in perfect quiet, although the patrols in the street were taken off.’
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Five days later, the papers could officially write Michaelmas off as a damp squib. There had ‘been no manner of disturbance,’ one reported, ‘Mother Gin having died very quietly.’
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That didn’t mean there was no mourning. Up in the City, according to the
Grub Street Journal
, punch-houses ‘put their punch bowls, irons on which they were erected, and signs, in mourning, being painted black &c.’
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Excise men had already
picked up a rumour ‘that Mother Gin is to be buried in great pomp on Thursday night.’
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The funeral took place in Swallow Street, just off Piccadilly. ‘Mother Gin lay in state yesterday at a distiller’s shop … near St James’s Church,’ wrote the
Daily Post
. But not even in death would Madam Geneva be allowed to rest in peace. ‘To prevent the ill-consequences from such a funeral,’ the paper went on, ‘a neighbouring Justice took the undertaker, his men, and all the mourners into custody.’
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For some of her followers, the prospect of life without Madam Geneva was simply too terrible to bear. Even before Michaelmas arrived, ‘one William Alexander, who liv’d near the Bull’s Head in Nightingale Lane, a bricklayer, a profess’d votary to Gin, being too deeply affected at the approaching fate of his idol, and resolv’d not to see that unhappy day, took a rope, went upstairs, shut himself in, and hang’d himself up to a staple drove into a beam in his room.’ He wasn’t the only one. ‘A man who kept a brandy, rum and wine cellar, over against Cree-church in Leadenhall Street, cut his throat with a razor; and notwithstanding an able surgeon in that neighbourhood came to his assistance, he died.’
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For others, all the weeping and wailing was getting out of hand. Printed on a black-bordered page and embellished with skulls and crossbones,
An Elegy on the Much Lamented Death of the most Excellent, the most Truly-Beloved, and Universally-admired Lady, Madam Gineva
heaped scorn both on hand-wringing distillers and their weeping customers. ‘Unhappy Briton!’ it scoffed, ‘more enslaved than Turk, forc’d to be sober and compelled to work!’

As for the distillers and vendors, most were just interested in keeping their businesses going until the last possible minute. Two hundred of them turned up at the Excise Office on Michaelmas Day to ask if they could open their doors or not. Some pushed their luck too far. The day after the Act came into force the
London Evening Post
reported that ‘a man in Bride Lane sold upwards of fifty gallons
of Geneva on Thursday, which brought such a number of people together, that the neighbours were obliged to send for an officer, who took him into custody, and he was afterwards committed to prison.’
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Not everyone was deterred. ‘Several shops,’ added the
Daily Journal
next day, ‘continued yesterday to sell drams in Southwark, Wapping &c. and kept open their shops till late.’

For the ministry, the immediate danger was passed. But Walpole certainly wasn’t going to drop his guard. ‘The murmuring and complaints of the common people, for want of Ginn,’ he wrote to his brother, ‘and the great sufferings and loss of the dealers in spirituous liquors in general, have created such uneasiness, that they well deserve a great deal of attention and consideration. And I am not without my apprehensions, that a non-observance of the law in some may create great trouble.’
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It wasn’t just riots and mobs he had to worry about. He had to put up with the Little Theatre as well. The Tuesday after the Act came in, they advertised
The Fall of Bob
– meaning Robert Walpole –
or The Oracle of Gin, A Tragedy
by Timothy Scrubb of Rag Fair. It described a town where ‘distillers’ shops … are hush’d as death, their floors and counters clean,’ and ‘shrieks of desponding matrons wound the air.’ Walpole was now cast as a Nero who had destroyed London for his own gain, and firebrand leaders rose up to preach rebellion to the mob:

Reflect, my friends, Gin is the noble cause

For which your swords should hew away the laws,

Wipe out the senate, drench in blood the nation,

And spread o’er the state wild desolation.

All the same, no one was being drenched in blood quite yet. Maybe one reason was that no one expected prohibition to last. It wasn’t just William Pulteney who thought ‘the whole scheme’ of the Bill would
have to be changed in the very next session of Parliament. Rumours that it would be repealed had started before the ink was even dry on the Act. ‘’Tis not questioned,’ thought the
Daily Journal
back on 4 May, ‘but that all proper relief, consistent with the general interest of his Majesty’s subjects, will be given in the future sessions of Parliament.’ During the summer, Walpole had even done his best to keep the rumour going. One of his agents had suggested it as a way of heading off trouble. ‘Even the court-writers have not endeavoured so much to justify the act,’ the
Craftsman
scoffed, ‘as to soothe the people with hopes that … it will … be repealed.’
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With the next session of Parliament in mind, the pamphlet-writers even started gearing up for another campaign. The first tract appeared just four days into prohibition. It urged a still-head duty of five shillings a gallon as the only sensible long-term solution. Others lobbied for punch to be excluded from the Gin Act. The distiller’s old friend, Thomas Robe JP, returned to the fray with a suggestion that would give members of the Company of Distillers free retail licences, while others had to pay £5 for them. That, unfortunately, was to be Eboranos’ last contribution to the debate. He ‘had published his proposals without consulting the Company,’
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and when he asked for payment, they turned him down flat. The Company was on its uppers. Having broken with the distillers, Robe would go on to fall out spectacularly with his brothers on the bench. After a spat which ended up with Robe trying to sabotage the work of Quarter Sessions, Lord Chancellor Hardwicke finally removed him from the Commission of Peace.

Distillers and spirit-sellers may have started looking ahead to the next session of Parliament, but in the meantime they still had a whole winter to get through. None of them chose the obvious solution. Michaelmas may have been greeted by Jacobite plots, suicides, and funerals for Madam Geneva, but there was no flood of applications for the £50 retail licences. Some people reckoned
there were 10,000 gin-sellers in London, but only two of them sold spirits legally in winter 1736. J. Ashley, of the London Punch House on Ludgate Hill, had already published a smug advert in the
Grub Street Journal
to reassure the public ‘that at Michaelmas next I shall take out a licence, and in all things strictly conform to the law.’
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Down the road at the London Bridge Punch House, Amos Wenman also offered ‘punch made by licence.’ And those two, as the
Craftsman
put it, ‘are the only persons in England or Wales, that can make punch, or vend spirituous liquors, in less quantities than two gallons, without incurring the penalty of the Act, which is £100 for every offence.’
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There were legal alternatives. Some punch-houses tried to brew up a spiritless hooch to keep their customers satisfied. At Gordon’s Punch House, opposite the New Exchange in the Strand, customers were served ‘with a most excellent liquor called sangree, [Mr Gordon] having for that purpose bought the finest full-flavour’d Madeira wine; [which] by a particular preparation in the sherbett, equals, if not excels, the so much approved liquor, punch.’ As for the common people, ‘Tho [they] … are deprived of Gin,’ reported the
London Daily Post
, ‘there are various drams invented and sold at gin-shops, in lieu thereof; as sangree, tow-row, cyder boiled with Jamaica pepper &c.’
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Everyone was on the look-out for loopholes in the law. The 1729 Gin Act had exempted apothecaries who brewed up spirits as medicine. There was a widespread belief, seven years later, that medicines had been let off the hook again. ‘A certain person near St James’s Market,’ reported
Read’s Weekly Journal
on 9 October, ‘continues selling drams, being colour’d with red, having a large label tied to the bottle, on which is wrote, “Take two or three spoonfuls of this four or five times a day, or as often as the fit takes you.”’ Unfortunately, apothecaries were supposed to take out spirits licences like everybody else, and were liable for prosecution
if they didn’t. When one apothecary’s case came to court, a month or so later, learned counsel joked ‘that it … had been a more sickly time lately than usual, seeing the apothecaries &c. had more people frequented their shops for the cholick and gripe water than ever were known.’ To that, the apothecary standing in the dock replied ‘that the late Act of Parliament had given many people the gripes … which occasioned a great laughter in court.’
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Another scam took advantage of the way the Act was drafted. It wasn’t illegal, after all, to sell gin, only to sell it in quantities less than two gallons. There was an obvious way round that, and the
London Daily Post
helpfully talked Londoners through it on 5 October: ‘Mr A comes to me, to you, or to any other great dealer that can supply two gallons, and says, Mr B, I have a great call for spirituous liquors … Mr B replies, I can serve you, sir … Mr A answers, Do you sell for money or upon credit? Mr B replies … a little money would not be amiss. But, says Mr A, I have not at present warehouse room to stow two gallons. O, sir, says Mr B, pray don’t let that be any hindrance to the bargain; my warehouse, shop and even dwelling house, is at the service of so good a customer.’ It looked promising. Buy two gallons on credit, take away a little at a time and pay a little at a time. One group of distillers even went so far as to seek legal advice. But by mid-November, the two-gallon scam had been firmly squashed. The distillers were ‘given to understand from the Board of Excise by their Surveyors, that such a practice is within the said statute.’
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That still left people with the option of buying two gallons legally and taking it away all in one go. But they found two gallons of gin an awful lot to get rid of. An Irishman bought two gallons to split with his workmates, ‘but on his asking them to pay for their drams, they sent him to the further end of the field to one of their companions, under the notion that he was their master and would satisfy him, who, instead of giving him the money, fell foul of him and took away the remainder of his gin, with which they
all got drunk and fell asleep.’ Four farmers in Earls Court bought two gallons with the idea of making it last, but temptation proved too great. The four ‘drank to such excess, that … two [of them] died soon after; and the other two have with great difficulty been recovered.’
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Meanwhile, the authorities were getting on with the business of enforcement. One week into prohibition, Excise men submitted their first lists of violations, and twenty prosecutions were ordered. The first gin-sellers in the dock were hardly the vicious drug-pushers that reformers had campaigned against. On the first day, cases were brought against Mr Kirkpatrick, a prominent apothecary, and Mr John Thomas, a distiller and chemist. These were established businessmen, and they were prepared to stake their livings on the result. Both defendants employed legal counsel. But expensive lawyers and two and a half hours of argument were not enough to save them. Both men were found guilty and charged the £100 fine for retailing spirits without a licence. Everyone had known the penalties of the Gin Act were harsh. For Kirkpatrick, they proved too much. A week later, Excise men were seen raiding his shop in Turnmill Street, and his worldly possessions were wheeled away on a cart.

Apothecaries were sitting ducks for the Excise men. Everyone knew them; they weren’t going to fade away into the slums when trouble arrived. If they couldn’t afford the huge fine, they probably had goods enough to cover it. To make matters even easier, the apothecaries had been feuding with distillers for decades, and a steady stream of information came flooding into the Excise Office. There was no secret where it came from. ‘Several distillers,’ it was reported in mid-October, ‘made severe complaints against certain apothecaries within the liberty of Westminster, for selling liquors by retail, as chymical prescriptions, which upon proof were found to be Geneva.’
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As they surveyed the scene in late October, reformers found every reason to feel pleased with themselves. Michaelmas had come and gone without incident. They felt optimistic; they even started to claim victory. ‘The good effects of the Gin Act,’ reported the
Gentleman’s Magazine
on Sunday 31 October, ‘have appeared in the sobriety and regular conduct of the soldiery and common people; so that there have not been half the number of courts-martial, or quarrels brought to the justices as before; and some observed, that the bakers and sellers of old clothes, had a brisker trade since Michaelmas.’ Freed from the tyranny of Madam Geneva, the poor had money in their pockets again. ‘Since the suppression of Gin,’ the
London Daily Post
reported, ‘beef &c. has sold much better at the several markets about town than before; the lower class of people, being deprived of that liquor, have now got stomachs.’
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