Speaker 1: Happy Sunday. Since it is New Year's Eve and we
Speaker 1: know a lot of folks are going to be ringing
Speaker 1: in the new year with a cocktail, we have a
Speaker 1: special bonus episode today. This is our September twenty second,
Speaker 1: twenty twenty one distilled history of Gin. This is also
Speaker 1: a good companion to our recent live show that featured
Speaker 1: Gin based cocktails that came out on November twenty seventh.
Speaker 1: So Happy New Year's Eve, and shout out to all
Speaker 1: the transit drivers, designated drivers, cab drivers and rideshare drivers
Speaker 1: who are going to be getting folks home safely tonight.
Speaker 1: And for everybody who's glass has some water or soda
Speaker 1: or something zero proof. Cheers. I hope it's delicious. Happy
Speaker 1: New Year, everybody, enjoy Welcome to Stuff You Missed in
Speaker 1: History Class, a production of iHeartRadio. Hello, and welcome to
Speaker 1: the podcast. I'm Tracy V. Wilson and I'm Holly Frye.
Speaker 1: We got an email from listener Jessica a couple of
Speaker 1: weeks ago, and this email set in part quote my
Speaker 1: email tonight is to ask something on the lighter side.
Speaker 1: I was enjoying my Gin and tonic after dinner and
Speaker 1: had the thought of I wonder if Holly and Tracy
Speaker 1: ever did an episode about Gin. So I went to
Speaker 1: the website to try and search the archives low and behold,
Speaker 1: that doesn't seem to be possible in the current iHeartRadio format.
Speaker 1: So is there an episode about Gin in the archives?
Speaker 1: How would I go about bringing it up? So to
Speaker 1: answer half the question, Uh, the best way to find
Speaker 1: old episodes of our podcast at this point is to
Speaker 1: google the topic along with the words stuff you missed
Speaker 1: in history class as part of your search. And I
Speaker 1: know that sounds weird, but that's also how I was
Speaker 1: doing it with the old website. Other search engines like
Speaker 1: Duck Duck Go and bing did not used to work
Speaker 1: as well for this, but they have caught up since
Speaker 1: the last time I had checked. Nowadays, they're more constantly
Speaker 1: bringing up the episode if there is one as a
Speaker 1: top search result, although sometimes it's on another platform rather
Speaker 1: than our website, which is fine. All goes into the
Speaker 1: same bucket of listening. This would not have worked when
Speaker 1: Jessica sent this email, though, because at that point there
Speaker 1: was no episode on Gin, but there's about to be one.
Speaker 1: It's this one BUMU recording right now might not be
Speaker 1: quite as light as Jessica was thinking when requesting the topic,
Speaker 1: though there's always surprise horror in history. So jin as
Speaker 1: we know it today is a distilled alcoholic beverage made
Speaker 1: from grain and flavored with botanicals, particularly juniper berries. Juniper
Speaker 1: is an evergreen shrub in the cypress family, and there
Speaker 1: are at least sixty different juniper species growing all over
Speaker 1: the northern hemisphere. Those berries are not what you would
Speaker 1: think of like berry you could pick from a tree
Speaker 1: and nash On. They are actually small, fleshy cones rather
Speaker 1: than any kind of juicy looking delicious berry. Yeah, we
Speaker 1: column berries, but they're really tiny little cones. Every part
Speaker 1: of the juniper plant has been used for medicinal and
Speaker 1: religious and culinary purposes for pretty much all of recorded history.
Speaker 1: Anywhere it grows or anywhere that's been in reasonable trading
Speaker 1: distance starts with ancient Egyptian texts that describe the use
Speaker 1: of juniper and mummification recipes. John Burgundy's Plague Treatise, which
Speaker 1: is written in thirteen sixty five, recommends burning juniper branches
Speaker 1: to drive bad air and disease from the home. Juniper
Speaker 1: was also one of the fragrant substances that was stuffed
Speaker 1: up into the beaks of plague doctor masks. In the
Speaker 1: seventeenth century, the first alcohols made with juniper were also
Speaker 1: meant for medicinal or alchemical use. This is something it
Speaker 1: shares with the history vodka. Same thing, yep, most of
Speaker 1: the most of the most Some of the earliest mentions
Speaker 1: of this date back to the middle of the eleventh
Speaker 1: century in the writing of Benedictine monks living in Salerno, Italy,
Speaker 1: as well as the nearby medical school known as Scola
Speaker 1: Medicina so Lenitana. Medical texts from this period describe a
Speaker 1: tonic that's made from distilled wine infused with juniper berries. Eventually,
Speaker 1: people started combining juniper with alcohol to make a beverage
Speaker 1: rather than a medicine or a now chemical potion. In Finland, sakti,
Speaker 1: which as like an ale like beer that's flavored with
Speaker 1: juniper instead of hops, has been around since about the
Speaker 1: twelfth century, and central Europe Borovichka, also called juniper brandy,
Speaker 1: has been made since at least the fifteenth century. Today
Speaker 1: it's popular in Slovakia and the Czech Republic, and then
Speaker 1: there are similar beverages and other Slavic countries as well,
Speaker 1: that I'll have this juniper flavor to them. But the
Speaker 1: beverage that comes up most often as a predecessor to
Speaker 1: jin is the Dutch spirit yenavor. That's a term that
Speaker 1: comes from the Dutch word for juniper. As is the
Speaker 1: case with most food origin stories, the specifics on who
Speaker 1: first created yenavor are not totally clear. The credit often
Speaker 1: goes to chemist and physician Franciscus Silvius, also known as
Speaker 1: Francois de la Bois or Sylvius de la Bois. However,
Speaker 1: though Franciscus Silvius was born in sixteen fourteen, and some
Speaker 1: of the accounts of the creation of yenavor put this
Speaker 1: development in fifteen seventy two, so well before his birth,
Speaker 1: time Traveler, Yes, it is possible that people have conflated
Speaker 1: two different people who had similar names, both of whom
Speaker 1: worked at the University of Leiden. I was an apothecary
Speaker 1: named Sylvius de Bouve in the sixteenth century, and the
Speaker 1: other was Franciscus Silvius, who was a professor of medicine
Speaker 1: in the seventeenth century. It is just as likely, though,
Speaker 1: that no one person can get the sole credit for
Speaker 1: creating this drink regardless. Dutch distiller Lucas Bowles was established
Speaker 1: in fifteen seventy five and describes itself as the world's
Speaker 1: oldest distilled spirits brand. By sixteen oh two, Bowls was
Speaker 1: supplying spirits to the Dutch East India Company known as
Speaker 1: the VOC as it's abbreviated from Dutch. By the middle
Speaker 1: of the seventeenth century, VOC sailors were getting y Neahvor
Speaker 1: in their rations, and soon the VOC was carrying yenavor
Speaker 1: anywhere the Dutch were trading, including to what is now Indonesia.
Speaker 1: When the Dutch established the settlement of New Amsterdam on
Speaker 1: the island of Manhattan, they introduced jenavor to North America
Speaker 1: as well. Today, yenavor is sometimes known as Hollands and
Speaker 1: some people call it Dutch gin, but it's really its
Speaker 1: own distinct beverage. Gin has evolved over time, which we
Speaker 1: will get to, but it generally starts with a neutral
Speaker 1: spirit made from a grain which is flavored with botanicals,
Speaker 1: including juniper, but yenavor typically goes through a two or
Speaker 1: even three step process. It starts with a fermented grain
Speaker 1: mash which is distilled into a malt wine and then
Speaker 1: that is distilled again with botanicals including juniper berries, and
Speaker 1: the result of this process is a clear, malted grain
Speaker 1: based spirit. It's typically consumed by itself from a tulip
Speaker 1: shaped glass. In my experience, most people mix gin with
Speaker 1: other stuff most of the time. That's not so much
Speaker 1: the case with Genahbor. There's also an official appalaciond'rogen control
Speaker 1: or an AOC for you neighbor. Legally, true yenahbor can
Speaker 1: only be made in Holland, Belgium and very specific regions
Speaker 1: of France and German. While yenaver and gin are distinctly
Speaker 1: different drinks, there was probably a progression from Dutch jenav
Speaker 1: to British gin. Yinaver was introduced into Britain sometime during
Speaker 1: the seventeenth century, and there are several possibilities for exactly when.
Speaker 1: One is that during the Anglo Dutch Wars, which started
Speaker 1: in sixteen fifty two it made its way. Another is
Speaker 1: after the restoration of Charles the Second, he spent some
Speaker 1: time in the Hague before returning to the British throne
Speaker 1: in sixteen sixty. Probably the most common explanation is that
Speaker 1: yinaver's popularity in Britain really started with the Glorious Revolution,
Speaker 1: when King James the Second was deposed and succeeded by
Speaker 1: William the Third, also known as William of Orange Stadtholder
Speaker 1: of the Netherlands. William ruled with his wife Mary, who
Speaker 1: is James's daughter. Regardless of exactly when or how it
Speaker 1: was introduced, after yanav made its way into Britain, English
Speaker 1: speakers morphed its name into Geneva or Jennifer, and then
Speaker 1: shorten that to jin Yeah, because yenavor is spelled ge
Speaker 1: n e v er, so if you're reading it on
Speaker 1: a page as an English speaker, it looks like it's jennifer.
Speaker 1: So since common juniper is native to the UK, there
Speaker 1: were already culinary and medicinal uses for it well before
Speaker 1: yenaver was introduced, and in written accounts for the seventeenth century,
Speaker 1: it's not always totally clear exactly what people are describing,
Speaker 1: whether it's Dutch yenaver or a local British beverage or
Speaker 1: a medicinal preparation made from alcohol and juniper. For example,
Speaker 1: past podcast subjects Samuel Peeps described feeling unwell in his
Speaker 1: diary entry from October fourth, sixteen sixty three, Peeps was
Speaker 1: chronically ill. He had recurring bladderstones, and over the next
Speaker 1: few days his diary entries describe him as b being
Speaker 1: in pain and constipated and experiencing painful urination. Then on
Speaker 1: October tenth, he writes about making himself go into his
Speaker 1: office where he met with Sir John Mens, Comptroller of
Speaker 1: the Navy, and Sir William Batton, Surveyor of the Navy.
Speaker 1: He said of their conversation quote, Sir Jay Mens and
Speaker 1: Sir W. Batton did advise me to take some juniper water,
Speaker 1: and Sir W. Batton sent to his lady for some
Speaker 1: for me strong water made of juniper. While Peeps does
Speaker 1: describe starting to feel better over the next couple of days,
Speaker 1: he had also tried some other treatments. So it's not
Speaker 1: one hundred percent clear whether this strong water made of juniper,
Speaker 1: whether it was unaver or gin or something else, was
Speaker 1: effective or not. So while there's some uncertainty and some
Speaker 1: overlap here, jin definitely became a lot more popular in
Speaker 1: Britain during William and Mary's reign, and it was not
Speaker 1: just because William was Dutch and would have brought a
Speaker 1: Dutch in luence to things. It's also because of things
Speaker 1: like wars and laws, and we'll get to that after
Speaker 1: a sponsor break. Soon after William and Mary came to
Speaker 1: the throne of the United Kingdom, they declared war on France.
Speaker 1: This was part of the Nine Years War which started
Speaker 1: in sixteen eighty eight, and then Parliament passed the Trade
Speaker 1: with France Act of sixteen eighty eight that banned all
Speaker 1: trade with France and that put an end to all
Speaker 1: of the imports of French wine and French brandy. In
Speaker 1: sixteen ninety, Parliament passed the Act for Encouraging the Distilling
Speaker 1: of Brandy and Spirits from Corn, the set of duty
Speaker 1: of eight shillings per gallon on quote strong waters, brandy,
Speaker 1: aquavita and spirits from the Channel Islands, and it decreed
Speaker 1: that any liquors found to have been grown or manufactured
Speaker 1: and French territory would be destroyed. At this point, the
Speaker 1: British beer industry was regulated and taxed, but you didn't
Speaker 1: need a license to sell gin. So this law meant
Speaker 1: that locally made spirits distilled from grain were the cheapest
Speaker 1: alcoholic beverage available. It also helped create more demand for
Speaker 1: British grown grains, since pretty much every grain was lumped
Speaker 1: into the category of corn, so this law helped boost
Speaker 1: the price of grain to the benefit of British landowners
Speaker 1: by encouraging people to use it to make alcohol. The
Speaker 1: UK also already had its own distilling guild that was
Speaker 1: the Worshipful Company of Distillers, established in sixteen thirty eight.
Speaker 1: The guild initially had a monopoly on distilling in the
Speaker 1: area around London, and the number of distilleries in the
Speaker 1: Kingdom really grew in the last half of the seventeenth
Speaker 1: century thanks to its influence. So by the time this
Speaker 1: law was passed encouraging the distilling of brandy and spirits
Speaker 1: from corn, the UK was pretty ready for it. These
Speaker 1: spirits were really all over the place in terms of
Speaker 1: their quality and ingredients and what type of alcohol we
Speaker 1: would actually describe them as today, but by the early
Speaker 1: eighteenth century, one in particular was becoming prominent, and that
Speaker 1: was Jin. The first written use of the word jin
Speaker 1: in the Gin form in English was in seventeen thirteen
Speaker 1: from the Infernal Congress or News from Below being a
Speaker 1: letter from Dick Estcourt, the late famous comedian, to the Spectator.
Speaker 1: It read quote being fatigued with Touchin's impudence, I took
Speaker 1: a turn in the Prato and drunk a dram of
Speaker 1: royal gin with the Duchess of Portsmouth, who has a
Speaker 1: little brandy shop here. Jen was also really quickly becoming notorious.
Speaker 1: In seventeen fourteen, Bernard Mandeville published The Fable of the Bees,
Speaker 1: or Private Vices Public Benefits. In this book, he made
Speaker 1: the argument that various vices, many of which were widely
Speaker 1: criticized and even condemned, actually contributed to some sort of
Speaker 1: public good. So here's how Mandeville described gin. Quote. Nothing
Speaker 1: is more destructive, either in regard to the health or
Speaker 1: the vigilance and industry of the poor, than the infamous liquor,
Speaker 1: the name of which derived from Juniper and Dutch, is
Speaker 1: now by frequent use, and the laconic spirit of the
Speaker 1: nation from a word of meddling length shrunk into a monosyllable,
Speaker 1: intoxicating gin that charms the unactive, the desperate, and the
Speaker 1: crazy of either sex, and makes the starving lot behold
Speaker 1: his rags and nakedness with stupid indolence or banter, both
Speaker 1: in senseless laughter and more insipid jest. It is a
Speaker 1: fiery lake that sets the brain in flame, burns up
Speaker 1: the entrails, and scorches every part within. And at the
Speaker 1: same time a leaf of oblivion in which the wretch
Speaker 1: immersed drowns in most pinching cares, and with his reason
Speaker 1: all anxious reflections on brats that cry for food, hard
Speaker 1: winter's frosts, and horrid empty home. I just wanted to
Speaker 1: shout out to Holly because this was written in the
Speaker 1: seventeen hundreds, and it was full of long s's that
Speaker 1: look like f's, and I missed one of the long
Speaker 1: s's when I was getting it into here. Holly corrected
Speaker 1: it on the fly. I did not have to go.
Speaker 1: It does not say the fame time. It should, in
Speaker 1: fact say the same time. I love reading things with
Speaker 1: long s's in them, but sometimes they can be challenging.
Speaker 1: So Vandabil went on to blame Jin for making men
Speaker 1: quarrelsome and violent and even causing murders, for breaking down
Speaker 1: people's constitutions, and for causing consumption and sudden death, but
Speaker 1: he says these are rare compared to quote, loss of appetite, fevers,
Speaker 1: black and yellow jaundice, convulsions, stone and gravel, dropsies and leucophlegmacies.
Speaker 1: He also goes on at very great length about all
Speaker 1: the squalid conditions in areas that are home to establishments
Speaker 1: that sell spirits, and to all the social and economic
Speaker 1: ills that those establishments cause. But Mandeville then goes on
Speaker 1: to say, quote those who can enlarge their view and
Speaker 1: will give themselves the leisure of gazing on the prospect
Speaker 1: of concatenated events, may in a hundred places see good
Speaker 1: spring up and pollulate from evil, as naturally as chickens
Speaker 1: do from eggs. The money that arises from the duties
Speaker 1: upon malt is a considerable part of the national revenue,
Speaker 1: and should no spirits be distilled from it, the public
Speaker 1: treasure would prodigiously suffer on that head. But if we
Speaker 1: would set in a true light the many advantages and
Speaker 1: large catalog of solid blessings that accrue from, and are
Speaker 1: owing to the evil I treat off, we are to
Speaker 1: consider the rents that are received, the ground that is tilled,
Speaker 1: the tools that are made, the cattle that are employed,
Speaker 1: and above all the multitude of poor that are maintained
Speaker 1: by the variety of labor required in husbandry, in malting,
Speaker 1: in carriage, and distillation before we can have that product
Speaker 1: of malt, which we call low wines, and is but
Speaker 1: the beginning from which the various spirits are afterwards to
Speaker 1: be made. In other words, sure, poor people were getting
Speaker 1: drunk and sometimes dying because of gin, but look at
Speaker 1: how much it was helping the economy. Needless to say,
Speaker 1: this book and the argument that Mandeville was making in
Speaker 1: it were highly controversial. Mandeville's description of gin as destructive
Speaker 1: was not controversial among the British lead though in the
Speaker 1: early eighteenth century it was increasingly taken for granted that
Speaker 1: gin was uniquely dangerous and was leading to all kinds
Speaker 1: of problems. By about seventeen twenty, this had blossomed into
Speaker 1: a full on moral panic described as the Gin craze,
Speaker 1: where sometimes you'll see it as the gin epidemic, particularly
Speaker 1: in big cities like London, Portsmouth and Bristol. For about
Speaker 1: three decades there was a huge focus on gin consumption
Speaker 1: and the damage it was purportedly doing and how they
Speaker 1: might stop it. Then. To be clear, gin did become
Speaker 1: a lot more popular in these years, and there was
Speaker 1: some real damage involved. Alcohol consumption carried the same health
Speaker 1: risks in the eighteenth century that it does today, over
Speaker 1: consumption and abuse still impacted people's lives and livelihoods. It
Speaker 1: also wasn't uncommon for liquor to be adulterated with other substances,
Speaker 1: including things like sulfurous acid and turpentine, and there weren't
Speaker 1: really any age restrictions on drinking, so people of any
Speaker 1: age drank really at any time of the day, including
Speaker 1: parents using gin and other liquors to try to soothe
Speaker 1: their babies. Excessive drinking, and especially drinking too much gin
Speaker 1: in particular, also became associated with violence and crime. Records
Speaker 1: from London's Central Criminal Court aka the Old Bailey include
Speaker 1: repeated references to gin. For example, A William Burrows, who
Speaker 1: was indicted for assault in seventeen thirty one, was described
Speaker 1: as having fallen quote into that dreadful society of gin drinkers, whorees, thieves, housebreakers,
Speaker 1: street robbers, pickpockets and the whole train of the most
Speaker 1: notable blackguards in and about London. James Baker, who was
Speaker 1: convicted of robberies in seventeen thirty three, was described as
Speaker 1: quote one of them who frequented gin shops. Perhaps most horrifyingly,
Speaker 1: in seventeen thirty four, Judith de u four was convicted
Speaker 1: of murder after two witnesses testified that she had stripped
Speaker 1: her daughter Mary naked and left her in a field
Speaker 1: and sold the baby's clothes to buy jim at the
Speaker 1: same time. Though most of the focus here, most of
Speaker 1: the concern was targeted at poor and working class people
Speaker 1: and what they were doing with their time and money.
Speaker 1: In seventeen twenty seven, Daniel Dafoe wrote about the after
Speaker 1: effects of the prohibition of trade with France and this
Speaker 1: increase in English distilling. He said, quote we find since
Speaker 1: these prohibitions very great quantities of brandy run by the
Speaker 1: arts of clandestine traders. But even that quantity is now
Speaker 1: much abated, except in the north parts and the west parts,
Speaker 1: since the distillers have found out a way to hit
Speaker 1: the palette of the poor by their new fashioned compound
Speaker 1: waters called geneva, so that the common people seem not
Speaker 1: to value the French brandy as usual, and even not
Speaker 1: to desire it. Efforts to curtail drinking, and especially gin drinking,
Speaker 1: were really rooted in upper class ideas of appropriate behavior
Speaker 1: and social standards, and on quote cleaning up the moral
Speaker 1: lives of the poor, rather than addressing any of the
Speaker 1: social or economic factors that might contribute to excessive drinking. Soon,
Speaker 1: gin was perceived as the cause of poverty and immorality,
Speaker 1: and it became symbolic of pretty much every vice and
Speaker 1: social ill. To combat all of this, Parliament passed a
Speaker 1: series of Gin Acts starting in seventeen twenty nine, and
Speaker 1: these used a range of strategies, including taxes and fines
Speaker 1: and licensing fees and other regulations to try to discourage
Speaker 1: gin sales and consumption. For example, in seventeen thirty three,
Speaker 1: it became illegal to sell spirits quote about the streets
Speaker 1: and any wheelbarrow or upon the water in any ship,
Speaker 1: boat or vessel. Several versions of the Gin Act encouraged
Speaker 1: people to inform on others for illegally selling spirits. This
Speaker 1: was especially true after the passage of the seventeen thirty
Speaker 1: six Act, which did more to stoke illicit gin sales
Speaker 1: than to discourage people from doing it. Informers were paid
Speaker 1: half of the ten pound fine that was collected for
Speaker 1: violating the Act. At some point, this was lucrative enough
Speaker 1: that people basically became professional informers, often working in groups
Speaker 1: of two or three so they could back up each
Speaker 1: other's accounts when they reported someone's illicit business. Professional informers
Speaker 1: had to be strategic, though. People who couldn't afford to
Speaker 1: pay the fine were sentenced to two months of hard
Speaker 1: labor instead, and that meant that the informers would get nothing.
Speaker 1: Most informers also avoided reporting people from their own neighborhoods,
Speaker 1: since they faced retaliation and sometimes even physical violence, for
Speaker 1: getting local drinking establishments shut down. Their reputations in their
Speaker 1: own community also weren't likely to recover if they reported
Speaker 1: somebody who knew and trusted them, but there was still
Speaker 1: a lot of retaliation. A law passed in seventeen thirty
Speaker 1: eight set a penalty of seven years transportation to the
Speaker 1: North American colonies for attacking an informer. By that point,
Speaker 1: there had been at least twelve thousand prosecutions for selling
Speaker 1: gin without a license, and these laws disproportionately affected women.
Speaker 1: Newly established gin houses were often more welcoming to women
Speaker 1: than pubs that sold beer were, especially when it came
Speaker 1: to single, working class women. So even though women weren't
Speaker 1: necessarily drinking more gin than men were, they were more
Speaker 1: visible than they had been. This was kind of new,
Speaker 1: so soon the drink was being more associated with women.
Speaker 1: Gin became known by nicknames like Ladies Delight, Mother Geneva,
Speaker 1: and Mother Gin. But at the same time, while only
Speaker 1: about a third of Britain's unlicensed sellers were women, at
Speaker 1: least half the people who faced charges for violating the
Speaker 1: gen Acts were women. Women also made up as much
Speaker 1: as three fourths of the people who were imprisoned because
Speaker 1: they could not afford to pay the fine. The Gen
Speaker 1: Acts were deeply unpopular among poor and working class people,
Speaker 1: leading to riots in seventeen thirty seven. Trying to enforce
Speaker 1: the law was also expensive, and in the seventeen forties
Speaker 1: the Kingdom needed to put more money toward the War
Speaker 1: of the Austrian succession. This was also happening in parallel
Speaker 1: with the Jacobite uprisings that we have covered on the
Speaker 1: show before, and there were fears that the Jacobites were
Speaker 1: stirring up discontent among working class people, using all of
Speaker 1: this furor over Gin as a cover. On top of
Speaker 1: all these factors and shifts in the government's priorities, two
Speaker 1: of the biggest proponents of the Gen Acts died in
Speaker 1: the late seventeen thirties. One was Sir Joseph Jekyl, master
Speaker 1: of the Roles, and the other Edward Parker, who had
Speaker 1: run a professional informing ring that had accused at least
Speaker 1: fifteen hundred people of illegal activity. So, after all this,
Speaker 1: the wars and the Jacobites and the people dying. In
Speaker 1: seventeen forty three, Parliament repealed the Act that had been
Speaker 1: passed in seventeen thirty six and replaced it with one
Speaker 1: that was more focused on regulating the industry than on
Speaker 1: trying to curtail it. So licenses became more affordable and
Speaker 1: the unlicensed gin trade started to wane. The war may
Speaker 1: have contributed to a decline in the illicit liquor trade
Speaker 1: as well. Some people who had been supporting themselves that
Speaker 1: way instead found work related to the war. A new
Speaker 1: style of beer was also introduced around this time that
Speaker 1: would be porter, which started to become more popular and
Speaker 1: more affordable to working class people. The Gin Act of
Speaker 1: seventeen fifty one built on the one that had been
Speaker 1: passed in seventeen forty three. It increased to the duty
Speaker 1: on gin and set a licensing fee of two pounds
Speaker 1: a year and mandated that only respectable people were eligible
Speaker 1: for a license to sell spirits. Gin's popularity continued to
Speaker 1: wane in the UK after this, dropping from an estimated
Speaker 1: eight point five million gallons consumed in seventeen fifty one
Speaker 1: to five point nine million just a year later. You
Speaker 1: think of millions of gallons, it sounds like so much,
Speaker 1: but that's a huge drop off. It's a you know,
Speaker 1: spread out among a lot of people also drinking a lot,
Speaker 1: like a lot of people drinking a lot for sure. Listen. Uh.
Speaker 1: There had been a huge number of pamphlets, sermons, works
Speaker 1: of art and the like during the Gin craze, And ironically,
Speaker 1: the one that's probably the most well known came out
Speaker 1: at the very end of this That was Gin Lane
Speaker 1: by past podcast subject William Hogarth. And this was an
Speaker 1: engraving showing all of the evil of Gin, among other things,
Speaker 1: an extremely emaciated man with a cup and bottle in
Speaker 1: his hands, and an ebreated woman whose child is falling
Speaker 1: over the railing of the stairs that she's sitting on,
Speaker 1: and a crowd of people having a melee in the background.
Speaker 1: It has the caption Gin Cursed Fiend with fury fraught
Speaker 1: makes human race a prey. It enters by a deadly
Speaker 1: draft and steals our life away, virtue and truth driven
Speaker 1: to despair, its rage compels to fly, but cherishes with
Speaker 1: hellish care, theft, murder, perjury, damned cup that on the
Speaker 1: vitals prays that liquid fire contains, which madness to the
Speaker 1: heart conveys and rolls it through the veins. Hogarth put
Speaker 1: out his engraving Beer Street as a companion to this one.
Speaker 1: This is the far more pleasant scene of people mostly
Speaker 1: just going about their lives in business. Its caption reads
Speaker 1: quote beer happy, produce of our eyes, consinewy strength, impart
Speaker 1: and wearied with fatigue and toil, can cheer each manly heart,
Speaker 1: labor and art upheld by the successfully advance, we quaff
Speaker 1: thy balmy juice with glee and water. Leave to France
Speaker 1: genius of health, Thy grateful taste rivals the cup of Jove,
Speaker 1: when warms each English generous breast with liberty and love, Oh,
Speaker 1: William Hogarth, Beer good, gin bad. In the words of
Speaker 1: William Hogarth, I also read some speculation that the reason
Speaker 1: that he put this out like really at the end
Speaker 1: of all this, when Jin's popularity was dropping really quickly,
Speaker 1: was that, thanks to the ends of earlier wars, there
Speaker 1: were suddenly a lot of unemployed sailors and others about,
Speaker 1: and that that made people worried once again about the
Speaker 1: specter of gin. Oh William Hogarth, Obviously, this is not
Speaker 1: the end of gin, so we are going to talk
Speaker 1: about what happened in gin's history a little bit more
Speaker 1: after we pause for a sponsor break. In eighteenth century Britain,
Speaker 1: the drink that people were consuming and describing as gin
Speaker 1: was really all over the place in terms of what
Speaker 1: grain it was made of and how it was flavored,
Speaker 1: what it tasted like, whether it was adulterated with anything dangerous.
Speaker 1: Most of it was made in batches in pot stills,
Speaker 1: so there could even be a huge variation in quality
Speaker 1: from batch to batge, even when those batches were all
Speaker 1: made by the same distiller. In general, though, a lot
Speaker 1: of the flavorings that were added into it were there
Speaker 1: to try to improve the taste of some generally poor
Speaker 1: quality alcohol. One of those flavorings was sugar, so the
Speaker 1: final bever ridge was sweeter than gin typically is today
Speaker 1: most of the time, and this sweeter rougher gin became
Speaker 1: known as old Tom and There are several stories about
Speaker 1: where that name came from. One is that when the
Speaker 1: Gin Acts were in effect, Captain Dudley Bradstreet rented a
Speaker 1: house for the purpose of illicitly selling gin. You put
Speaker 1: a picture of an old tomcat on the outside, and
Speaker 1: customers would put their money in a drawer built into
Speaker 1: the wall and whisper a code word, and then their
Speaker 1: gin would be dispensed through a lead pipe that ran
Speaker 1: out through the wall from the inside of the house
Speaker 1: to the outside, and the customer would catch it in
Speaker 1: a cup. While I love this story, it may be
Speaker 1: apocryphal and the Old Tom may just be a weird
Speaker 1: name that cropped up. There are some places that still
Speaker 1: make Old Tom gin as like a craft gin experience.
Speaker 1: Even though gin consumption dropped off pretty quickly after seventeen
Speaker 1: fifty one, the beverage did not go away entirely. Later on,
Speaker 1: in the eighteen twenties, a grain surplus combined with a
Speaker 1: reduction in the duties that were levied on spirits, and
Speaker 1: gins started to surge in popularity again. A new kind
Speaker 1: of drinking establishment also evolved around this time. That was
Speaker 1: the Gin Palace, which tended to be a brightly lit
Speaker 1: and heavily decorated space where people came to drink. In
Speaker 1: the mid eighteen twenties, thanks to all this, gin consumption
Speaker 1: in Britain roughly doubled. This stoked a lot of the
Speaker 1: same concerns that had been part of the gin craze
Speaker 1: that happened about one hundred years earlier. In In eighteen thirty,
Speaker 1: the Lancet published an article describing what they call gin liver.
Speaker 1: That's what we would know is cerhosis today. But efforts
Speaker 1: to reduce gin consumption in the early nineteenth century were
Speaker 1: focused less on making gin more expensive and more regulated,
Speaker 1: and more on making beer cheaper. This didn't have quite
Speaker 1: the intended effect, though, public houses serving beer became more
Speaker 1: popular among the working class, while more middle class people
Speaker 1: started to prefer gin served in a gin palace. Kat
Speaker 1: didn't really reduce the popularity of gin very much. It
Speaker 1: just sort of flipped which social classes preferred which drink.
Speaker 1: The process of making gin also changed somewhat around this time.
Speaker 1: The column still was developed. Starting around eighteen twenty two,
Speaker 1: Irish distiller Anias Coffee refined this design and was awarded
Speaker 1: for a patent on his improved version. In eighteen thirty.
Speaker 1: Unlike pot stills, which required distillers to make their wares
Speaker 1: in small batches, the column still could run continually, and
Speaker 1: this made the final product a lot more consistent with
Speaker 1: generally better quality. Again, there are still plenty of distillers
Speaker 1: who work in small batches using pot stills today, but
Speaker 1: generally using more sophisticated techniques and more consistency than in
Speaker 1: the eighteenth century. The development of the column still also
Speaker 1: led to a new style of gin, London Dry, named
Speaker 1: for being made in London and for not being sweetened.
Speaker 1: Some of the distillers that were established around this time
Speaker 1: still exist today. For example, Charles Tanker established a distillery
Speaker 1: in the Bloomsbury neighborhood of London in eighteen thirty. Plymouth
Speaker 1: gin was evolving as well, sweeter and stronger than London
Speaker 1: Dry and available in a more potent navy strengths for
Speaker 1: provisioning to the Royal Navy. There were still a lot
Speaker 1: of concerns about all the social issues associated with drinking,
Speaker 1: and specifically with drinking gin, though Charles Dickens started writing
Speaker 1: about this in his Sketches by Boz in eighteen thirty six.
Speaker 1: Unlike earlier writers from back in the seventeen hundreds. Though
Speaker 1: Dickens didn't really frame gin as the cause of poverty,
Speaker 1: he was fond of gin himself, and instead he described
Speaker 1: over consumption and alcohol abuse as effects of poverty and
Speaker 1: poor living conditions. Quote gin drinking is a great vice
Speaker 1: in England, but wretchedness and dirt are a greater And
Speaker 1: until you improve the homes of the poor, or persuade
Speaker 1: a half famished wretch not to seek relief in the
Speaker 1: temporary oblivion of his own misery. With the pittance which
Speaker 1: divided among his family, would furnish a morsel of bread
Speaker 1: for each gin shops will increase in number and splendor,
Speaker 1: just like William Hogarth had depicted gin Lane in the
Speaker 1: eighteenth century. Other artists depicted the dangers of alcohol in
Speaker 1: the nineteenth century, including George Kruickshank, who is sometimes called
Speaker 1: the modern Hogarth. Kruck Shank's satirical The Gin Shop shows
Speaker 1: a whole inebriated family in the shop, including children standing
Speaker 1: in a trap with death off to one side, and
Speaker 1: a cask of old tom shaped like a coffin. Unlike
Speaker 1: the eighteenth century movement that had mostly focused on spirits,
Speaker 1: the temperance movement that arose in the UK in the
Speaker 1: nineteenth century focused on the dangers of all alcohols, including beer.
Speaker 1: More London dry distillers were established in the middle of
Speaker 1: the nineteenth century, including Gilby's in eighteen fifty seven and
Speaker 1: beef Eater in eighteen sixty three. Distillers also started experimenting
Speaker 1: with different blends of botanicals in addition to the juniper,
Speaker 1: to give their products different flavor profiles. All kinds of
Speaker 1: gin based cocktails and mixed drinks evolved during the nineteenth century.
Speaker 1: Bitters were popularized in the UK around this time, particularly
Speaker 1: pay shows and Angustura bitters. Plymouth gin flavored with angusterra
Speaker 1: bitters became known as pink gin, which was both a
Speaker 1: popular beverage and a treatment to sue the stomach and
Speaker 1: prevent sea sickness. Here in the US you can buy
Speaker 1: various pink gins in bottles, some of which are this
Speaker 1: and of which are not. They're pink for some other reason.
Speaker 1: Another nineteenth century innovation was the gimlet, combining gin and lime,
Speaker 1: and this probably arose from the use of lime juice
Speaker 1: to prevent scurvy among sailors. Sometimes this name is attributed
Speaker 1: to Sir Thomas Gimlett, the Surgeon General of the Navy,
Speaker 1: although another idea is that it was named for the
Speaker 1: tool that was used to drill holes in the barrels
Speaker 1: that these liquids were stored in. That tool is also
Speaker 1: called a gimlet. The Martini was introduced by about eighteen seventy,
Speaker 1: combining gin, Vermouth and Garnish. This is also about when
Speaker 1: the gin and Tonic made its debut. Chinchona bark has
Speaker 1: its own long long history as the source of medicine
Speaker 1: to treat recurring fevers. Quinine comes from Chinchona bark, and
Speaker 1: the British Royal Navy relied on it to treat malaria.
Speaker 1: Quinine was unpleasant to consume, though, teen seventy Schwepes introduced
Speaker 1: what it called Indian tonic water that was carbonated water
Speaker 1: infused with quinine. John Jacob Schwepp was not the first
Speaker 1: person to carbonate water, and Schwep's was not the first
Speaker 1: company to combine carbonated water and quinine. But Schwep's was
Speaker 1: the first company to produce carbonated water at an industrial
Speaker 1: scale and also to market this quinine tonic as a
Speaker 1: malaria preventative. Mixing tonic water with gin and serving that
Speaker 1: over ice became a popular way for people in tropical
Speaker 1: areas to get their doses of quinine. Tonic water as
Speaker 1: it is produced today has far less quinine in it
Speaker 1: does not really prevent or treat malaria at the currents proportions.
Speaker 1: Please do not count on these things as medicine for yourself.
Speaker 1: This brings us to gin's connections to colonialism. Anywhere the
Speaker 1: British Empire established a trade or started a colony, it
Speaker 1: introduced gin or made gin more widely available there than
Speaker 1: it had been before. Britain and other European powers also
Speaker 1: traded liquor for enslaved Africans during the Transatlantic slave trade. Overwhelmingly,
Speaker 1: the people already living in these areas already had their
Speaker 1: own fermenting methods, and unless religious prohibitions on alcohol were
Speaker 1: in place, some of them were used to make beers, wines,
Speaker 1: or other alcoholic beverages in addition to being used to
Speaker 1: preserve foods. But stronger distilled spirits were often a new innovation,
Speaker 1: and this led to some of the same societal and
Speaker 1: health issues that Britain had already witnessed. Starting in the
Speaker 1: eighteenth century combined with the same paternalistic attitudes about how
Speaker 1: working or poorer people were spending their time, but now
Speaker 1: a lot of those attitudes were also threaded through with racism.
Speaker 1: Colonial officials often had a lot of concerns as local
Speaker 1: people developed their own distilling practices and lumped everything that
Speaker 1: they were making under the umbrella of gin, regardless of
Speaker 1: what was actually being used. So as one example, in Nigeria,
Speaker 1: British officials described locally made distilled palm wine as gin,
Speaker 1: even though did not have the ingredients that were commonly
Speaker 1: used to make gin. So we haven't really talked about
Speaker 1: the United States at all. Although jin did exist in
Speaker 1: the US, Americans tended to prefer both beer and whiskey
Speaker 1: to gin, but when prohibition went into effect in nineteen twenty,
Speaker 1: illicit gin became a bit more popular. Gin was easier
Speaker 1: to make than many other spirits since it did not
Speaker 1: need to be aged, and since the juniper could help
Speaker 1: disguise the flavor of roughly made alcohol. The terms radiator
Speaker 1: gin and bathtub gin arose during this time, although bathtub
Speaker 1: gin was probably meant to describe the dirtiness of the
Speaker 1: bootleg gin rather than it actually being made in a bathtub. Yeah,
Speaker 1: The idea of it really being made and bathtubs sort
Speaker 1: of came about in film depictions of prohibition from later on,
Speaker 1: rather than how people using it were using it at
Speaker 1: the time. In the early twentieth century, Jin's popularity started
Speaker 1: to wane in a lot of the world. When it
Speaker 1: came to distilled spirits and their popularity, Jin was really
Speaker 1: overtaken by vodka, but especially in the United States, attitudes
Speaker 1: toward drinking also started to shift. Alcoholics Anonymous was established
Speaker 1: in nineteen thirty five, and by nineteen fifty the organization
Speaker 1: had grown large enough to hold its first international convention.
Speaker 1: The popularity of the quote three martini lunch rose and
Speaker 1: fell over the course of the mid twentieth century, with
Speaker 1: Jimmy Carter criticizing that practice when he ran for president
Speaker 1: in teen seventy six. Over time, gin and drinks made
Speaker 1: with gin started to be seen as pretty passe. However, again,
Speaker 1: if you live in the modern world, you know gin
Speaker 1: didn't go away. There's really been a resurgence in gin
Speaker 1: and its popularity. More recently, some people mark gin's resurgence
Speaker 1: as starting with the introduction of Bombay sapphire in nineteen
Speaker 1: eighty six. Others credit Scottish distillers William Grant and Sons,
Speaker 1: which introduced Hendrix gin in nineteen ninety nine, and over
Speaker 1: the last couple of decades there's been a big focus
Speaker 1: on small batch craft distillers experimenting with botanical blends to
Speaker 1: come up with their own flavorings and seasonal gins and
Speaker 1: the like. In twenty twenty, the global gin market was
Speaker 1: valued at fourteen point h three billion dollars, with European
Speaker 1: consumers making up about half of that market share. Yes,
Speaker 1: gin a lot of variety in gin nowadays. If we
Speaker 1: did not mention your face gin or your favorite gin drink, uh,
Speaker 1: don't feel personally left out. I haven't mentioned my favorite
Speaker 1: ones either. Thanks so much for joining us on this Saturday.
Speaker 1: Since this episode is out of the archive, if you
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Speaker 1: similar over the course of the show, that could be
Speaker 1: obsolete now. Our current email address is History Podcast at
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