This period is generally perceived to have been 1720 to 1751 but the truth is that these were the dates between which people publicly expressed their concern over the craze. William Hogarth’s famous 1751 print “Gin Lane” depicts all the debauchery and death of the craze in its heyday, as mothers endanger their children, men starve and desperate gin drinkers dig up the dead to sell their clothes and trinkets. You can see more here.

In the course of a few decades, thousands upon thousands of low-rent gin shops saturated London in particular, exposing the working poor and the destitute to a spirit that was suddenly much cheaper (often cheaper than beer, even) and more available than it ever had been before. In response to mounting pressure for government intervention, Parliament first passed the Gin Control Act of 1729 to raise taxes on gin merchants, but the act was repealed only four years later after proving ineffective at curbing public drunkenness. The Gin Act of 1737 was not actually an act in its own right but a clause inserted into the so-called 'Sweets Act'. Judith, who worked twisting silk into thread, was the single mother of two year-old Mary and both lived in London's Bethnal Green Parish Workhouse. The French and Dutch developed brandewijn, meaning “burnt wine” although it’s literally distilled wine, which would eventually be called brandy. Gin was very cheap, which allowed the poor to drink it. One of the major effects the acts had was nothing at all. Judith had been drunk on gin at work, which was normal for her. This first Gin Act was the start of a battle between those calling for temperance, the land owners, farmers and distillers, and successive government exchequers.

Much to the upset of the English distillers this was the start of a flow of cheap, quality grain alcohol from Scotland which has grown over the centuries to the extent that what little gin is still produced in London today is more often than not, made with Scottish grain alcohol. The First Gin Act stated that gin was made with ‘juniper berrie, or other fruit, specie or ingredients’ (3) - which is what it is made out of. This served as a revision to the 1936 act in that it plugged the previous acts loophole allowing the gin trade to continue via back street gin shops and makeshift stalls. London's standard of living rose for both rich and poor alike. In this he described how he had overcome the Gin Act. Beer Street and Gin Lane by William Hogarth. The Irish and Scots developed poitín and then whisky. Did you enjoy this article? Only the British didn’t really produce much in the way of brandy—what instead rolled out of the thousands of newly established (and unregulated) stills was a flood of dirt cheap, barely palatable gin, given that it could easily be made from sub-standard grain that was unfit for beer brewing. For many, only destitution awaited, and the move from small villages to the huge city removed a chunk of the social safety net that an average person might have been able to rely on “back home.” As HistoryExtra put it: London’s population was around 600,000. In 1736, the previous ineffectual 1733 Gin Act was replaced by a new Gin Act, officially named, 'The Act for Laying a Duty upon the Retailers of Spirituous Liquors'.

At the same time, the 1690 “Act for the Encouraging of the Distillation of Brandy and Spirits from Corn” opened the floodgates on unlicensed spirits production in England, intended to help make use of excess grains. It doubled the price of a retail licence to £2 and specifically made that licence only available to inns, alehouses and taverns. Plymouth gin is the only vintage gin brand to still be made at the same distillery in which it was created, but the Black Friars distillery has been owned by a range of different companies. History is Now Magazine, Podcasts, Blog and Books | Modern International and American history, There were various acts brought in which aimed to restrict the sale and consumption of gin, with the Acts of 1729, 1736, 1749, 1751 and 1760. In January 1734 she collected Mary for a day out. It succeeded in putting many of the more respectable retailers of gin out of business but the act merely forced the sale of gin, or spirituous substances purporting to be gin, underground and the bootleg spirits peddled in the streets blinded and killed many of those who drunk them. By 1752 the volume of spirits produced on which duty was paid had fallen by over a third. The act also granted immunity from prosecution and a reward of £5 for any unlicensed retailer that informed upon a distiller supplying them.

The Gin Shop, a cartoon about drinking too much. The Act was running at a huge loss and by 1739 the Commissioners had run out of money to pay informers. A 1794 trade directory for the cities of London and Westminster and the Borough of Southwark lists over 40 distillers, malt distillers and rectifiers. In 1738, Dudley had an acquaintance rent a house in the City of London on Blue Anchor Alley and nailed a sign of a cat in the window, under its paw he concealed a lead pipe. London's gin consumption peaked in 1743 and despite the Gin Act of 1751 these high levels lasted until 1757 when a series of crop failures forced distillation of grain to be banned.

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