Discussion Post: The Priory School
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sherlock60This week, the canon story we’re looking at is The Priory School and the chosen topic is Pubs and Drinking.
A few facts:
🍺 Like all aspects of Victorian culture, drinking was strictly segregated on class and gender lines, partly on account of the expense of booze, partly through custom and preference…
Working class men and women partook of two beverages: beer and gin. Wines and other drinks were not widely available and were out of their price-range, as they were imported.
Beer has been brewed in Britain for centuries... Water was unsafe to drink, especially in towns, giving people everything from an upset stomach to cholera. Since water could be deadly, everyone drank beer. This was brewed at home, by women, or in small breweries… By the Victorian era increasing gender divides and the growth of industrial breweries pushed female purveyors of craft beer out of the market. Since the working classes lived in such cramped conditions in towns and cities, they turned away from home brewing and towards industrially produced beer, served in pubs. ...all working class districts were crowded with pubs, and they provided a friendly home from home. Plenty of gas-light and roaring fires made them often much more comfortable than people’s miserable hovels, and many men could barely be prised away from the pub. [Kate Tyte]
🍺 ...[in] the nineteenth century… [gin] was still the widely available alternative to beer. Drunk neat or with a bit of sugar, it was still popular with working-class women in need of something fortifying. [Kate Tyte]
🍺 The respectable middle classes rarely went to pubs. Men might have gone to a gentlemen’s club though. Here they could eat, drink, meet for business or a chat with friends, and read the newspapers and periodicals. The middle classes stuck to wine, fortified wines like sherry and port, possibly a little brandy.
But the century brought an exciting new trend in drinking: mixed drinks. British people had long been used to spiced, sweetened, fortified punches, often served hot… But mixed drinks were an American novelty. Charles… Dickens visited America in 1842 and in Boston he gleefully partook of an array of newfangled mixed drinks, with strange names like “the Gin-sling, Cocktail, Sangaree, Mint Julep, Sherry-cobbler, Timber Doodle, and other rare drinks.” The “Cock Tail” was a mixture of strong alcohol, such as American rye whiskey, mixed with sugar syrup, water, bitters and nutmeg. Sangaree is essentially Sangria, the mint julep is still drunk today and contains whiskey, sugar, mint and water, and the sherry-cobbler is sherry, sugar and citrus with ice… [Kate Tyte]
🍺 The most astonishing thing about [the sherry-cobbler] was apparently the drinking straw: they were pretty much unknown until then, and the sherry cobbler helped to popularise them. [Kate Tyte]
🍺 Mixed drinks were mainly drunk in American bars, for instance at the Savoy hotel, that catered for American expatriates. Gentlemen’s clubs and officer’s messes might also offer these kinds of drinks, and sometimes they were even drunk at home, though usually at large social gatherings… [Kate Tyte]
🍺 Upper class quaffers: No grand dinner would be complete without its accompanying alcoholic beverages… Each course was accompanied by a different type of alcohol. White wine with fish and light dishes, red wine with meat, and Madeira, sherry or sweet wine with desserts. Champagne was often served following an entree… Middle class and upper class ladies certainly couldn’t get drunk. They also couldn’t really go anywhere without a man, except each other’s houses or an alcohol-free tea shop. So they stuck to tippling at home. They might have drunk wine with meals, and had the odd glass of ladies’ favourites champagne and sloe gin, but they had to be careful to never appear sloshed – that was very vulgar, regrettable behaviour for the working classes only. [Kate Tyte]
🍺 ...working class drinking culture came under threat during the nineteenth century from the temperance and teetotal movements. Temperance… was advocated by middle class philanthropists and evangelical Christians, while the teetotal movement was largely led by the working classes themselves…. Unfortunately, temperance also had side-effects. When people swapped nourishing Victorian beer for plain old water, levels of malnourishment and disease went up. Drinking plenty of beer was actually surprisingly good for you. [Kate Tyte]
🍺 Having said that gin was a rough and ready drink for masses, associated with alcoholism and working class debauchery, new gin-making methods actually led to its revival. Gin was no longer a rough, sweet drink, but was distilled in a new style, christened ‘London dry’. This rehabilitated the drink and gave it a new respectability. The gin and tonic originated in this era. Tonic water is made with quinine, which helps to ward off malaria. The drink was therefore very popular amongst the military and British colonialists in hot countries, especially India. Indeed, gin became so respectable that recipes for gin-based drinks even appeared in Mrs Beeton’s Book of Household Management… [Kate Tyte]
🍺 In the 18th century, gin shops or 'dram shops' were just small shops (often originally chemist's shops as gin originally had medicinal associations) that sold gin mostly to take away, or to drink standing up. As the legislation changed establishments generally became larger; they also had to be licensed and sell ale or wine. In the late 1820s the first 'Gin Palaces' were built… They were based on the new fashionable shops being built at the time, fitted out at great expense and lit by gas lights...
The design hugely influenced all aspects of the design of later Victorian pubs, even after gin had declined in importance as a drink; the bar in pubs is based on the shop counter of the gin palace, designed for swift service and ideal for attaching beer pumps; the ornate mirrors and etched glass of the late 19th century. The term has survived for any pub in the late 19th-century style...
Well-preserved examples of the late 19th-century style include the Princess Louise in Holborn and the Philharmonic Dining Rooms in Liverpool. [Wikipedia]
🍺 By the early 19th century, encouraged by lower duties on gin… gin houses or "Gin Palaces" had spread from London to most cities and towns in Britain, with most of the new establishments illegal and unlicensed. These bawdy, loud and unruly drinking dens… increasingly came to be held as unbridled cesspits of immorality or crime and the source of much ill-health and alcoholism among the working classes. Under a banner of "reducing public drunkenness" the Beer Act of 1830 introduced a new lower tier of premises permitted to sell alcohol, the beer houses. At the time beer was viewed as harmless, nutritious and even healthy… [Wikipedia]
🍺 Under the 1830 Act any householder who paid rates could apply, with a one-off payment of two guineas (roughly equal in value to £170 today), to sell beer or cider in his home (usually the front parlour) and even to brew his own on his premises… Beer houses were not permitted to open on Sundays. The beer was usually served in jugs or dispensed directly from tapped wooden barrels on a table in the corner of the room. Often profits were so high the owners were able to buy the house next door to live in, turning every room in their former home into bars and lounges for customers.
In the first year, 400 beer houses opened and within eight years there were 46,000 across the country, far outnumbering the combined total of long-established taverns, pubs, inns and hotels. Because it was so easy to obtain permission and the profits could be huge compared to the low cost of gaining permission, the number of beer houses was continuing to rise and in some towns nearly every other house in a street could be a beer house. Finally in 1869 the growth had to be checked by magisterial control and new licensing laws were introduced. Only then was it made harder to get a licence, and the licensing laws which operate today were formulated.
Although the new licensing laws prevented new beer houses from being created, those already in existence were allowed to continue and many did not close until nearly the end of the 19th century… The vast majority of the beer houses applied for the new licences and became full pubs… [Wikipedia]
🍺 From the mid-19th century on, the opening hours of licensed premises in the UK were restricted… The Wine and Beerhouse Act 1869 reintroduced the stricter controls of the previous century. The sale of beers, wines or spirits required a licence for the premises from the local magistrates… Licences were only granted, transferred or renewed at special Licensing Sessions courts, and were limited to respectable individuals. Often these were ex-servicemen or ex-policemen; retiring to run a pub was popular amongst military officers at the end of their service. Licence conditions varied widely, according to local practice. They would specify permitted hours, which might require Sunday closing, or conversely permit all-night opening near a market. [Wikipedia]
🍺 ...in the 1830s the construction of a vast railway network began. Soon most towns in the country had a station, and hotels were built to cater for the new passengers. Like those on the old coaching routes, the pubs took names like the Railway Tavern or Station Arms as a way of attracting the travelling public. [Elaine Saunders]
🍺 The use of the word “pub” as we know it largely developed during the 19th century… ...before this time there was a greater variety of terminology, referring to many different kinds of establishment. “Pub” itself developed from the “public house”, which was but one type of institution (also known as an “ale house”), alongside the earlier coaching inns (which provided accommodation to travellers) and taverns (focused more on wine and food)... By the Victorian era, then, “public house” or “pub” were fairly catch-all terms and could be used to refer to any of these establishments. [London Pubology]
🍺 The late Victorian era saw the creation of flamboyant pub interiors, notable for their sumptuously decorated mirrors, tiled walls and etched glass. [Jean Manco]
🍺 ...tiling dates to the late-Victorian era, when pubs were being refashioned not just as dark and dingy drinking holes, but as grand and glorious temples to what publicans (under pressure from Victorian temperance movements) no doubt wanted to promote as the least squalid of popular entertainments. [London Pubology]
🍺 Victorian country pub furniture tended to be made by local craftsmen using what was at hand with recycled farm wood often making for some quirky designs. They used blonde woods like pine and elm, while decoration often included the fruits of the countryside like hops and horse brasses.
Conversely, the cornerstones of the urban Victorian look are dark, rich colours, on the walls as well as a ‘tobacco tint’ to the ceiling, dark floorboards, lots of ornate brass in the shape of fireplace fenders, door handles and bar taps, large mirrors designed double the splendour of the drinking rooms, as well as gilt-framed paintings that showed the magnificence of the British Empire. [Ben Winstanley]
🍺 Especially in class-conscious Victorian times, traditional pubs were divided into sections by elaborate screens… allowing the wealthy to drink in a more refined setting, while commoners congregated on the pub's rougher side. These were really "public houses," featuring nooks (snugs) for groups and clubs to meet, friends and lovers to rendezvous, and families to get out of the house at night. [Rick Steves]
🍺 Why do 20th-century pubs look so different to 19th-century ones..? Many 19th century pubs in England were built in city centres. Their plans often included small bars where customers stood up to drink... While the levels of drunkenness recorded may have been exaggerated by the growing temperance movement, rowdiness in pubs was common, with a large part of workers' wages often spent in local drinking establishments on a Friday night. The 1904 Licensing Act changed this trend: it gave magistrates the power to take away an existing licence if they believed that the existence of a pub wasn't contributing positively to the needs of its local community. In the face of possible closures and with the increasing popularity of temperance, the brewers themselves felt constrained to modify their premises in the hope of changing their clients' behaviour… As a result of the Act, a new type of public house was developed, often built in the suburbs to be closer to the homes of the pubs' customers. The aim was to attract respectable families from the expanding middle class, not just male bread winners… [Historic England]
🍺 Norman Kerr ['...a physician, medical officer of health, the founder and president of the Society for the Study and Cure of Inebriety (SSI), and a key British temperance advocate in the last quarter of the nineteenth century.' [Jack S. Blocker, David M. Fahey, Ian R. Tyrrell - editors]] wrote in 1888 that “it was no uncommon thing at the present day, in London and other large cities, for young girls and grown-up women to treat each other in a public-house to beer, wine, or spirits….Scarcely a Sunday passed that [I] did not, while pursuing [my] professional avocation in London, see a number of women drunk in the streets.” The girls and women Kerr refers to were probably members of the working class, not because middle- and upper-class women did not drink, but because they diligently hid their drinking in private spaces. During the Victorian period, female alcoholics were regarded as “the most degraded of women…morally, socially, and physiologically,” and those who could do so concealed their drinking as much as possible. Public drinking among women of the upper and respectable middle classes became unacceptable in the nineteenth century because masculine spaces such as the saloon, tavern and public house were regarded as the “anti-home,” thus making them irreconcilable with the good wife and mother. Therefore, middle- and upper-class women who drank alcoholically withdrew from public spaces, and concealed their drinking, ironically, in the home. In the privacy of their own houses they became “perfume drunkards,” or they consumed the liquors kept in the home for medicinal purposes. Lower-class women often did not have this luxury, and because of the visibility of their bodies in public space the common belief was that only lower-class women drank to excess. Nineteenth-century British society had very little sympathy for the female alcoholic, even less so than for the male alcoholic, because women were believed to have maternal instincts and sensibilities that would, and should, deter them from indulging in liquor...
Whereas male alcoholics were regarded as nuisances at best and potential criminals at worst, female alcoholics held a special place in the popular imagination as a particularly villainous type of fallen woman; not only a threat to her own body and her children’s bodies, but also to the social body of the British nation…
It is important to note that men and women who drank to excess at the risk of their health and economic security during the nineteenth century would not have been identified as alcoholic, but rather as “intemperate” or “drunkards.” [Julia Skelly]
Some useful resources:
What did the Victorians drink? A guide to boozing in the 1800s By Kate Tyte, on her own website.
Researching the history of pubs, inns and hotels By Jean Manco, on Researching Historic Buildings in the British Isles.
Victorian and Edwardian Public Houses An index of articles on the Victorian Web.
Pub On Wikipedia.
Public Houses On The Dictionary of Victorian London.
London: Britain’s Pub Hub By Rick Steves, on his own website.
Brewers On The Dictionary of Victorian London.
The Historic Pubs of London By Pearl Harris, on Time Travel Britain.
How Did Victorian Drinking Establishments Become Family-Friendly Pubs in the 20th Century? On Historic England.
Gin palace On Wikipedia.
How the Mid-Victorians Worked, Ate and Died By Paul Clayton and Judith Rowbotham. A paragraph on alcohol.
Public vs Free Houses On London Pubology.
How public was the public house? By Phil Carradice, on the BBC (Wales) website.
Victorian Era Brilliant Cut Glass By David Adrian Smith. A modern day artist using traditional techniques. A step by step article I wrote for Sign Business Magazine in Denver, Colorado, USA in 2006. Explaining the lost art of Brilliant Cutting .Treble acid embossing White acid toning and silver-staining in kiln fired glass.
How to furnish your Victorian pub By Ben Winstanley, on the Morning Advertiser.
Where are some of the oldest and most well-known pubs in London? On Groupe INSEEC London.
Gin Palaces On The Dictionary of Victorian London.
Alcohol and Alcoholism in Victorian England An index of articles on the Victorian Web.
The Temperance Movement and Class Struggle in Victorian England By Rebecca Smith, on the Loyola University New Orleans website.
The highs and lows of drinking in Britain By James Nicholls, on History & Policy.
When Seeing is Believing: Women, Alcohol and Photography in Victorian Britain By Julia Skelly. An academic article in PDF form. ‘...and Photography’ - that is, photographs taken of female alcoholics for legal and medical reasons. Though none of the photographs discussed are actually reproduced in this PDF.
Daly's bartenders' encyclopedia. A complete catalogue of the latest and most popular drinks By Tim Daly, 1903, on Internet Archive. The book can be read online, or there are several ways to download it.
How to Mix Drinks: Or, The Bon-vivant's Companion By Jerry Thomas, 1862. On Internet Archive. The book can be read online, or there are several ways to download it.
pub (n.) On Online Etymology Dictionary.
Women - Drinking On The Dictionary of Victorian London.
Pub meals in 1860s London On Google Answers. Question from kh22-ga is: How much would a weekday tavern supper cost for one person in London in the early 1860s? and is answered by leli-ga using information from The Dictionary of Victorian London. Answer rated ‘five stars’.
Please feel free to discuss this topic in the comments.
Please also feel free to comment about the canon story itself or any related aspects outside this week’s theme. For example, any reactions, thoughts, theories, fic recs, favourite adaptations of the canon story… Or any other contribution you wish to make. And if you have any suggestions for fic prompts springing from this week's story, please feel free to share those in the comments as well.
A few facts:
🍺 Like all aspects of Victorian culture, drinking was strictly segregated on class and gender lines, partly on account of the expense of booze, partly through custom and preference…
Working class men and women partook of two beverages: beer and gin. Wines and other drinks were not widely available and were out of their price-range, as they were imported.
Beer has been brewed in Britain for centuries... Water was unsafe to drink, especially in towns, giving people everything from an upset stomach to cholera. Since water could be deadly, everyone drank beer. This was brewed at home, by women, or in small breweries… By the Victorian era increasing gender divides and the growth of industrial breweries pushed female purveyors of craft beer out of the market. Since the working classes lived in such cramped conditions in towns and cities, they turned away from home brewing and towards industrially produced beer, served in pubs. ...all working class districts were crowded with pubs, and they provided a friendly home from home. Plenty of gas-light and roaring fires made them often much more comfortable than people’s miserable hovels, and many men could barely be prised away from the pub. [Kate Tyte]
🍺 ...[in] the nineteenth century… [gin] was still the widely available alternative to beer. Drunk neat or with a bit of sugar, it was still popular with working-class women in need of something fortifying. [Kate Tyte]
🍺 The respectable middle classes rarely went to pubs. Men might have gone to a gentlemen’s club though. Here they could eat, drink, meet for business or a chat with friends, and read the newspapers and periodicals. The middle classes stuck to wine, fortified wines like sherry and port, possibly a little brandy.
But the century brought an exciting new trend in drinking: mixed drinks. British people had long been used to spiced, sweetened, fortified punches, often served hot… But mixed drinks were an American novelty. Charles… Dickens visited America in 1842 and in Boston he gleefully partook of an array of newfangled mixed drinks, with strange names like “the Gin-sling, Cocktail, Sangaree, Mint Julep, Sherry-cobbler, Timber Doodle, and other rare drinks.” The “Cock Tail” was a mixture of strong alcohol, such as American rye whiskey, mixed with sugar syrup, water, bitters and nutmeg. Sangaree is essentially Sangria, the mint julep is still drunk today and contains whiskey, sugar, mint and water, and the sherry-cobbler is sherry, sugar and citrus with ice… [Kate Tyte]
🍺 The most astonishing thing about [the sherry-cobbler] was apparently the drinking straw: they were pretty much unknown until then, and the sherry cobbler helped to popularise them. [Kate Tyte]
🍺 Mixed drinks were mainly drunk in American bars, for instance at the Savoy hotel, that catered for American expatriates. Gentlemen’s clubs and officer’s messes might also offer these kinds of drinks, and sometimes they were even drunk at home, though usually at large social gatherings… [Kate Tyte]
🍺 Upper class quaffers: No grand dinner would be complete without its accompanying alcoholic beverages… Each course was accompanied by a different type of alcohol. White wine with fish and light dishes, red wine with meat, and Madeira, sherry or sweet wine with desserts. Champagne was often served following an entree… Middle class and upper class ladies certainly couldn’t get drunk. They also couldn’t really go anywhere without a man, except each other’s houses or an alcohol-free tea shop. So they stuck to tippling at home. They might have drunk wine with meals, and had the odd glass of ladies’ favourites champagne and sloe gin, but they had to be careful to never appear sloshed – that was very vulgar, regrettable behaviour for the working classes only. [Kate Tyte]
🍺 ...working class drinking culture came under threat during the nineteenth century from the temperance and teetotal movements. Temperance… was advocated by middle class philanthropists and evangelical Christians, while the teetotal movement was largely led by the working classes themselves…. Unfortunately, temperance also had side-effects. When people swapped nourishing Victorian beer for plain old water, levels of malnourishment and disease went up. Drinking plenty of beer was actually surprisingly good for you. [Kate Tyte]
🍺 Having said that gin was a rough and ready drink for masses, associated with alcoholism and working class debauchery, new gin-making methods actually led to its revival. Gin was no longer a rough, sweet drink, but was distilled in a new style, christened ‘London dry’. This rehabilitated the drink and gave it a new respectability. The gin and tonic originated in this era. Tonic water is made with quinine, which helps to ward off malaria. The drink was therefore very popular amongst the military and British colonialists in hot countries, especially India. Indeed, gin became so respectable that recipes for gin-based drinks even appeared in Mrs Beeton’s Book of Household Management… [Kate Tyte]
🍺 In the 18th century, gin shops or 'dram shops' were just small shops (often originally chemist's shops as gin originally had medicinal associations) that sold gin mostly to take away, or to drink standing up. As the legislation changed establishments generally became larger; they also had to be licensed and sell ale or wine. In the late 1820s the first 'Gin Palaces' were built… They were based on the new fashionable shops being built at the time, fitted out at great expense and lit by gas lights...
The design hugely influenced all aspects of the design of later Victorian pubs, even after gin had declined in importance as a drink; the bar in pubs is based on the shop counter of the gin palace, designed for swift service and ideal for attaching beer pumps; the ornate mirrors and etched glass of the late 19th century. The term has survived for any pub in the late 19th-century style...
Well-preserved examples of the late 19th-century style include the Princess Louise in Holborn and the Philharmonic Dining Rooms in Liverpool. [Wikipedia]
🍺 By the early 19th century, encouraged by lower duties on gin… gin houses or "Gin Palaces" had spread from London to most cities and towns in Britain, with most of the new establishments illegal and unlicensed. These bawdy, loud and unruly drinking dens… increasingly came to be held as unbridled cesspits of immorality or crime and the source of much ill-health and alcoholism among the working classes. Under a banner of "reducing public drunkenness" the Beer Act of 1830 introduced a new lower tier of premises permitted to sell alcohol, the beer houses. At the time beer was viewed as harmless, nutritious and even healthy… [Wikipedia]
🍺 Under the 1830 Act any householder who paid rates could apply, with a one-off payment of two guineas (roughly equal in value to £170 today), to sell beer or cider in his home (usually the front parlour) and even to brew his own on his premises… Beer houses were not permitted to open on Sundays. The beer was usually served in jugs or dispensed directly from tapped wooden barrels on a table in the corner of the room. Often profits were so high the owners were able to buy the house next door to live in, turning every room in their former home into bars and lounges for customers.
In the first year, 400 beer houses opened and within eight years there were 46,000 across the country, far outnumbering the combined total of long-established taverns, pubs, inns and hotels. Because it was so easy to obtain permission and the profits could be huge compared to the low cost of gaining permission, the number of beer houses was continuing to rise and in some towns nearly every other house in a street could be a beer house. Finally in 1869 the growth had to be checked by magisterial control and new licensing laws were introduced. Only then was it made harder to get a licence, and the licensing laws which operate today were formulated.
Although the new licensing laws prevented new beer houses from being created, those already in existence were allowed to continue and many did not close until nearly the end of the 19th century… The vast majority of the beer houses applied for the new licences and became full pubs… [Wikipedia]
🍺 From the mid-19th century on, the opening hours of licensed premises in the UK were restricted… The Wine and Beerhouse Act 1869 reintroduced the stricter controls of the previous century. The sale of beers, wines or spirits required a licence for the premises from the local magistrates… Licences were only granted, transferred or renewed at special Licensing Sessions courts, and were limited to respectable individuals. Often these were ex-servicemen or ex-policemen; retiring to run a pub was popular amongst military officers at the end of their service. Licence conditions varied widely, according to local practice. They would specify permitted hours, which might require Sunday closing, or conversely permit all-night opening near a market. [Wikipedia]
🍺 ...in the 1830s the construction of a vast railway network began. Soon most towns in the country had a station, and hotels were built to cater for the new passengers. Like those on the old coaching routes, the pubs took names like the Railway Tavern or Station Arms as a way of attracting the travelling public. [Elaine Saunders]
🍺 The use of the word “pub” as we know it largely developed during the 19th century… ...before this time there was a greater variety of terminology, referring to many different kinds of establishment. “Pub” itself developed from the “public house”, which was but one type of institution (also known as an “ale house”), alongside the earlier coaching inns (which provided accommodation to travellers) and taverns (focused more on wine and food)... By the Victorian era, then, “public house” or “pub” were fairly catch-all terms and could be used to refer to any of these establishments. [London Pubology]
🍺 The late Victorian era saw the creation of flamboyant pub interiors, notable for their sumptuously decorated mirrors, tiled walls and etched glass. [Jean Manco]
🍺 ...tiling dates to the late-Victorian era, when pubs were being refashioned not just as dark and dingy drinking holes, but as grand and glorious temples to what publicans (under pressure from Victorian temperance movements) no doubt wanted to promote as the least squalid of popular entertainments. [London Pubology]
🍺 Victorian country pub furniture tended to be made by local craftsmen using what was at hand with recycled farm wood often making for some quirky designs. They used blonde woods like pine and elm, while decoration often included the fruits of the countryside like hops and horse brasses.
Conversely, the cornerstones of the urban Victorian look are dark, rich colours, on the walls as well as a ‘tobacco tint’ to the ceiling, dark floorboards, lots of ornate brass in the shape of fireplace fenders, door handles and bar taps, large mirrors designed double the splendour of the drinking rooms, as well as gilt-framed paintings that showed the magnificence of the British Empire. [Ben Winstanley]
🍺 Especially in class-conscious Victorian times, traditional pubs were divided into sections by elaborate screens… allowing the wealthy to drink in a more refined setting, while commoners congregated on the pub's rougher side. These were really "public houses," featuring nooks (snugs) for groups and clubs to meet, friends and lovers to rendezvous, and families to get out of the house at night. [Rick Steves]
🍺 Why do 20th-century pubs look so different to 19th-century ones..? Many 19th century pubs in England were built in city centres. Their plans often included small bars where customers stood up to drink... While the levels of drunkenness recorded may have been exaggerated by the growing temperance movement, rowdiness in pubs was common, with a large part of workers' wages often spent in local drinking establishments on a Friday night. The 1904 Licensing Act changed this trend: it gave magistrates the power to take away an existing licence if they believed that the existence of a pub wasn't contributing positively to the needs of its local community. In the face of possible closures and with the increasing popularity of temperance, the brewers themselves felt constrained to modify their premises in the hope of changing their clients' behaviour… As a result of the Act, a new type of public house was developed, often built in the suburbs to be closer to the homes of the pubs' customers. The aim was to attract respectable families from the expanding middle class, not just male bread winners… [Historic England]
🍺 Norman Kerr ['...a physician, medical officer of health, the founder and president of the Society for the Study and Cure of Inebriety (SSI), and a key British temperance advocate in the last quarter of the nineteenth century.' [Jack S. Blocker, David M. Fahey, Ian R. Tyrrell - editors]] wrote in 1888 that “it was no uncommon thing at the present day, in London and other large cities, for young girls and grown-up women to treat each other in a public-house to beer, wine, or spirits….Scarcely a Sunday passed that [I] did not, while pursuing [my] professional avocation in London, see a number of women drunk in the streets.” The girls and women Kerr refers to were probably members of the working class, not because middle- and upper-class women did not drink, but because they diligently hid their drinking in private spaces. During the Victorian period, female alcoholics were regarded as “the most degraded of women…morally, socially, and physiologically,” and those who could do so concealed their drinking as much as possible. Public drinking among women of the upper and respectable middle classes became unacceptable in the nineteenth century because masculine spaces such as the saloon, tavern and public house were regarded as the “anti-home,” thus making them irreconcilable with the good wife and mother. Therefore, middle- and upper-class women who drank alcoholically withdrew from public spaces, and concealed their drinking, ironically, in the home. In the privacy of their own houses they became “perfume drunkards,” or they consumed the liquors kept in the home for medicinal purposes. Lower-class women often did not have this luxury, and because of the visibility of their bodies in public space the common belief was that only lower-class women drank to excess. Nineteenth-century British society had very little sympathy for the female alcoholic, even less so than for the male alcoholic, because women were believed to have maternal instincts and sensibilities that would, and should, deter them from indulging in liquor...
Whereas male alcoholics were regarded as nuisances at best and potential criminals at worst, female alcoholics held a special place in the popular imagination as a particularly villainous type of fallen woman; not only a threat to her own body and her children’s bodies, but also to the social body of the British nation…
It is important to note that men and women who drank to excess at the risk of their health and economic security during the nineteenth century would not have been identified as alcoholic, but rather as “intemperate” or “drunkards.” [Julia Skelly]
Some useful resources:
What did the Victorians drink? A guide to boozing in the 1800s By Kate Tyte, on her own website.
Researching the history of pubs, inns and hotels By Jean Manco, on Researching Historic Buildings in the British Isles.
Victorian and Edwardian Public Houses An index of articles on the Victorian Web.
Pub On Wikipedia.
Public Houses On The Dictionary of Victorian London.
London: Britain’s Pub Hub By Rick Steves, on his own website.
Brewers On The Dictionary of Victorian London.
The Historic Pubs of London By Pearl Harris, on Time Travel Britain.
How Did Victorian Drinking Establishments Become Family-Friendly Pubs in the 20th Century? On Historic England.
Gin palace On Wikipedia.
How the Mid-Victorians Worked, Ate and Died By Paul Clayton and Judith Rowbotham. A paragraph on alcohol.
Public vs Free Houses On London Pubology.
How public was the public house? By Phil Carradice, on the BBC (Wales) website.
Victorian Era Brilliant Cut Glass By David Adrian Smith. A modern day artist using traditional techniques. A step by step article I wrote for Sign Business Magazine in Denver, Colorado, USA in 2006. Explaining the lost art of Brilliant Cutting .Treble acid embossing White acid toning and silver-staining in kiln fired glass.
How to furnish your Victorian pub By Ben Winstanley, on the Morning Advertiser.
Where are some of the oldest and most well-known pubs in London? On Groupe INSEEC London.
Gin Palaces On The Dictionary of Victorian London.
Alcohol and Alcoholism in Victorian England An index of articles on the Victorian Web.
The Temperance Movement and Class Struggle in Victorian England By Rebecca Smith, on the Loyola University New Orleans website.
The highs and lows of drinking in Britain By James Nicholls, on History & Policy.
When Seeing is Believing: Women, Alcohol and Photography in Victorian Britain By Julia Skelly. An academic article in PDF form. ‘...and Photography’ - that is, photographs taken of female alcoholics for legal and medical reasons. Though none of the photographs discussed are actually reproduced in this PDF.
Daly's bartenders' encyclopedia. A complete catalogue of the latest and most popular drinks By Tim Daly, 1903, on Internet Archive. The book can be read online, or there are several ways to download it.
How to Mix Drinks: Or, The Bon-vivant's Companion By Jerry Thomas, 1862. On Internet Archive. The book can be read online, or there are several ways to download it.
pub (n.) On Online Etymology Dictionary.
Women - Drinking On The Dictionary of Victorian London.
Pub meals in 1860s London On Google Answers. Question from kh22-ga is: How much would a weekday tavern supper cost for one person in London in the early 1860s? and is answered by leli-ga using information from The Dictionary of Victorian London. Answer rated ‘five stars’.
Please feel free to discuss this topic in the comments.
Please also feel free to comment about the canon story itself or any related aspects outside this week’s theme. For example, any reactions, thoughts, theories, fic recs, favourite adaptations of the canon story… Or any other contribution you wish to make. And if you have any suggestions for fic prompts springing from this week's story, please feel free to share those in the comments as well.
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Date: 2017-05-14 03:23 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2017-05-14 04:49 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2017-07-04 06:00 pm (UTC)a ‘tobacco tint’ to the ceiling... Are we talking someone getting up on a ladder and arranging for the ceiling to be a certain colour, or is this more about the colour the ceiling became after it'd been open for a year or so?
That brilliant-cut glass link is a beautiful find, thank you. I used to do a little bit of glass etching (diamond stylus, hydrochloric acid) once upon a long time ago, but had never heard of these techniques. That's beautiful, beautiful work. (The process is a bit harrowing, though -- hydrofluoric acid!)
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Date: 2017-07-06 01:24 pm (UTC)a ‘tobacco tint’ to the ceiling... Are we talking someone getting up on a ladder and arranging for the ceiling to be a certain colour, or is this more about the colour the ceiling became after it'd been open for a year or so? This is a very good point - and... I don't know ^__^
I used to do a little bit of glass etching... Crikey, the things you've done ^_^ It was so interesting seeing a Victorian style panel being created - but yes, just seeing pictures of the acid being poured makes you flinch a bit ^^"
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Date: 2017-07-06 02:01 pm (UTC)Heh, I've dabbled in many things over the years. It turns out the world is full of interesting things, and that people are often very happy to show newbies around. Or, alternatively, people have sometimes written how-to books to show off and share some of what they know. ;-)
Hydrofluoric acid, the kind in the video, is insidious stuff. It penetrates the skin, often without much pain or immediate damage, and then attacks the bones, screwing up one's blood chemistry to the point of heart failure. It doesn't require all that much exposure to make one very sick, either. It's one of those things where you never, ever want it to splash your skin, not because it might give you a nasty acid burn, but because you might fail to notice that it had failed to give you a nasty acid burn...