Craze: Gin and Debauchery in an Age of Reason [Hardcover]

Jessica Warner (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: September 18, 2002

In 1720, a new drink emerged as the overwhelming drug of choice among London's working poor; it was both affordable and many times stronger than traditional spirits. The beverage was gin, and the craze it initiated would become the 18th-century's equivalent of our crack cocaine epidemic. Craze is the first popular illustrated history to focus exclusively on the gin craze. Warner looks at the impact of "mother gin" from personal, political, and sexual perspectives. She draws on hundreds of primary sources, from Defoe to Dr. Johnson, guiding us through squalid back rooms, streets thronged with hawkers, raging mobs, and the halls of Parliament. The result is a timely, irreverent, utterly engrossing look at a city and a drug — and a drug scare — that helped shape our contemporary views of pleasure, consumption, and public morality.

Editorial Reviews

From Publishers Weekly

Gin took London by storm in the first half of the 18th century. It "was the original urban drug," says Warner in this intriguing slice of social history. "Cheap, potent, and readily available," it aided London's poor in escaping the wretchedness of their lives and was considered a public menace by Daniel Defoe and Samuel Johnson. (Hogarth's famous print Gin Lane imagined a nightmarish world destroyed by a seemingly demonic drink.) Warner, a University of Toronto professor, gives us the whole story of gin: where it came from (Holland), who drank it (a large percentage were women), how it was perceived among elites (as a threat to the nation), and how legislative efforts to curb consumption fared (badly). Due to its popularity among the English lower classes, gin became synonymous with squalor. And as back-alley gin-shops doubled as meeting places for thieves, gin also became associated with debauchery and criminality. Warner brings us inside these rundown, unlicensed gin shops to show us how and where gin was consumed. and into Parliament, which in 1736 passed the "most notorious" of a series of Gin Acts, which ended in failure. Gin consumption increased; moreover, the laws created a working-class atmosphere of "open contempt for the law and its agents." In the book's final chapter, Warner paints an interesting parallel between the "gin craze" and the recent war on drugs. This informative and accessible popular history should appeal to those with a taste for 18th-century English history as well to those interested in histories of mind-altering substances, such as Dominic Streatfeild's recent Cocaine: An Unauthorized Biography, Richard Davenport-Hines's The Pursuit of Oblivion and the forthcoming Out of It: A Cultural History of Intoxication by Stuart Walton (Forecasts, July 29). Illus. (Oct. 21)
Copyright 2002 Reed Business Information, Inc.

From Library Journal

This is an insightful account of gin, the new drink that emerged with a vengeance in London in 1720. Warner (graduate professor, Univ. of Toronto) illustrates that the economic circumstances were ideal for both gin production and its ready consumption. The drink's main proponents were the landowners who produced the grain and the working poor for whom gin was cheap and readily available. Parliament both welcomed it as a source of tax revenue and introduced legislation to limit its use. Gin's enemies were the moral reformers who focused solely on its detrimental effect on "polite society." Numerous failed Gin Acts (eight in all) were introduced to address these perceived social ills. Warner closely examines the custom of paid informers, a corollary of the introduced legislation, and contends that this practice did more to undermine society than gin ever could. She highlights the flamboyant characters of Prime Minister Walpole and reformer Joseph Jekyll, as well as the often tragic stories of ordinary folk. Warner draws parallels between the gin craze and our current drug problems. An interesting and educational read, this book is recommended for all public libraries. Isabel Coates, CCRA-Toronto West Tax Office, Mississauga, Ont.
Copyright 2002 Reed Business Information, Inc.

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Product Details

• Hardcover: 264 pages
• Publisher: Basic Books (September 18, 2002)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 1568582315
• ISBN-13: 978-1568582313
• Product Dimensions: 8.5 x 5.7 x 1 inches
• Shipping Weight: 15.5 ounces
• Average Customer Review: 4.0 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (8 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #819,963 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

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Most Helpful Customer Reviews

16 of 16 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars A War On Drugs, in Eighteenth Century London, March 9, 2003

By 

R. Hardy "Rob Hardy" (Columbus, Mississippi USA) - See all my reviews
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This review is from: Craze: Gin and Debauchery in an Age of Reason (Hardcover)

Every physician knows that there is an abusable and addictive drug that produces more physical deterioration, complications with medication, and disruption of happiness than any other. The drug is alcohol, and although it has been around for millennia, it was available in eighteenth century London in a new way. A history of the "Gin Craze" might seem to be an unlikely topic to produce a learned and funny book, but _Craze: Gin and Debauchery in the Age of Reason_ (Four Walls Eight Windows), by Jessica Warner, not only is full of surprising facts and statistics (peak gin use was in 1743, 2.2 gallons of gin per person, per year), but it brings a light to a murky little corner of human history that may be reflected usefully into our own times.

Clearly, the ruling classes of Britain realized that gin was a social evil. Of course, it was a social evil for the ruled classes, for gin became a craze among the poor of the city. Such reformers as members of the Society for Promoting Christian Knowledge could not fathom why gin had any appeal. Reform had to conquer inertia. The landed gentry were only too happy to have distillers as eager buyers for their surplus grain. The London Company of Distillers had friends in Parliament and was willing to keep them friendly by dishing out money. The government was glad to get excise taxes and license fees from the sales of gin. Over a 22 year period, reformers persuaded Parliament to pass eight different laws, generally ineffective, to suppress the consumption of gin. Monetary rewards were given to informers who squealed for a fee. Informers were not popular. Some were beaten to death by angry mobs, who resented that members of their own circle betrayed them. The reformers failed, because they had it backward; Warner writes, "It was not gin that made people poor. It was poverty that made them drink."

As the book draws to a conclusion, the reader is likely to have reflected many times during it that it is not really about gin. Warner calls her fascinating distillation of court reports, newspaper articles, and contemporary statistical tables "a parable about drugs, about why some people take them and other people worry when they do." Gin was merely the first urban drug, cheap, available, and able to neutralize the misery of poverty, at least temporarily. It made cities frightening to the upper and middle classes that did not live in them. Reformers exaggerated the tales of just how bad gin was, and pamphleteers were ready to spread the exaggerations. In her final chapter, she makes the breadth of her parable plain. We are "too easily seduced by the notion that the complex problems that come with complex places boil down to a simple and single source, be it gin, heroin or crack cocaine." Declaring a War on Drugs is facile and futile. No war on poverty has yet been universally successful, but unless something is done to relieve the poverty that makes drugs seem attractive, warring on drugs is just window dressing.

6 of 6 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars An illuminating history of the first political drug war, May 26, 2004

By 

M. Bromberg "BellemeadeBooks" (Atlanta, GA United States) - See all my reviews
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This review is from: Craze: Gin and Debauchery in an Age of Reason (Hardcover)

Warner's book is a fascinating study of how politics, drugs and society intertwined in 18th century England to create the first known "drug menace." Written in a casual, conversational style, "Craze" describes the fifty-year-long, escalating relationship between the introduction of gin in 1720, the deleterious effects upon the people who abused it, and the politicians who then demonized it. Each successive "gin law" ensured that some would profit from the taxation and regulation of Mother Geneva, while at the same time gaining political capital from the prosecution of demon alcohol. Warner also describes the parallels between past and present, especially those presented as "victims" of drug wars -- the unwed mother, the unemployable addict -- whose problems lay far outside the realm of the political or the ability to be helped by these laws. An essential book to the understanding of how drugs affect the individual and society at large.

4 of 5 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Well-researched, and with a good writing style, June 16, 2003

By 

Barry J. Stiefel (San Francisco, CA United States) - See all my reviews

This review is from: Craze: Gin and Debauchery in an Age of Reason (Hardcover)

Warner has a good, punchy writing style, and she's clearly done her homework. The story is meticulously well-researched and she knows her history. The parallels with more modern drug scares are illuminating.