Gin

“[T]he principal sustenance (if so it may be called) of more than a hundred thousand persons in this metropolis [of London],” was Henry Fielding’s description of gin.  If his estimate was correct, then 1 in 7 Londoners was addicted to gin.  It’s estimated that people drank an average of six gallons a year.  It was cheap – a penny for half a cup.  Shops even advertised somebody could get drunk for a penny and “dead drunk” for twopence.  To get dead drunk was so prevalent that for an additional three pennies one could rent a double bed of straw in order to sleep until sober.  Everyone – men, women, and children – then slept together in a single room while drunk (Olsen, 239).    Alcohol was considered the panacea for everything, and was the drug of choice for the English (Olsen, 241).

“Wine cures the gout, the cholic [stomach pain], and the tisic [tuberculosis],

And is for all men the very best of physic.

He that drinks small beer, and goes to bed sober,

Falls, as the leaves do, that die in October.

But he that drinks all day, and goes to bed mellow,

Lives as he ought to, and dies a hearty fellow.” (Olsen, 240.)

You can imagine the number of people who died from the effects of alcohol and alcohol poisoning.  Would you have thought, though, that nursemaids would give it to pauper children in their care to keep them quiet?  In 1751, 9000 children died of gin poisoning (Picard, 124).