gin craze

• Huge growth of the number of alehouses and drunkenness.
• Puritans were concerned about drunkenness and wrote pamphlets
• After 1660, alcohol became a big problem for people health since many poor people started to drink spirits instead of ale / beer
• Gin became incredibly cheap and there was a huge increase of gin drinking by the poor
• Thousands of small gin shops opened in cellars, back room, attics and sheds. some people even sold it from barrows in the streets
• By the 1720s, crimes went up, families were ruined and there was a huge increase in death rate
• In 1729, parliament finally made a law to control gin drinking called 1729 gin act:

  • Gin distillers had to pay a tax of 5 shillings on each gallon of gin they produced and gin sellers had to buy a annual licence costing £20
  • This law had little effect - impossible to enforce it as there were too many gin shops
• In 1736, the government passed a harsher gin act. licences went up to £50 and the tax increased to 20 shillings. However, this law could not be enforced because it was too easy for gin shops to hide what they were doing from the authorities
• The 1743 gin act restricted the sale of gin to alehouses. But, gin consumption still increased
• By 1750, Londoners were consuming over 11 million gallons of gin in a year
• In 1751, the government introduced another gin act which banned all unlicensed sales of spirits except beer. The penalty for selling without a license was first imprisonment, then for the second offence whipped and then for a third offence, deportation. This finally had some effect