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| William Hogarth; Beer Lane and Gin Street |
When one thinks of the underbelly of Victorian London the
first thing that springs to mind is the image of the shadowy alleys of
Whitechapel, where slum dwellers slink in gin soaked corners and their
predilection for alcohol causing all sorts of criminal behaviour, as can been
seen in this earlier image where the drunk and idling mother is allowing her child to
fall from the steps in her stupor. It
was a condition of English poor life which
drew much contemporaneous attention,
with critics such as William Hoyle in 1876 writing that alcohol had been
responsible for turning England into a 'land of drunkenness,
crime....[and]insanity.' -
This was a view that was not entirely erroneous; the
Reverend J.W Horsley (1845-1921), who had served as chaplain of the Clarkenwell
Prison, London ,
engaged in an examination of the motivating and mitigating features of the
criminal acts committed in his jurisdiction in his 1898 study Prisons and Prisoners. He found that:
...half the cases of common assault,
three-quarter of the assaults on the police and
half the aggravated assaults were committed by drunken persons...Cruelty to animals...and children...of these,
half might fairly be considered drink caused,
as also might be half of the cases of malicious damage...and half of such military and naval
offenses...as come before the police courts...Then [consider] the cases which are indirectly caused by
drink, for example thefts by or from
drunken persons, and one arrives at the conclusion that half of all crime directly and an addition
one-fourth as indirectly drink caused, is a moderate
estimate...
Horsely argued, that while 170,000 people per year were
charged with being drunken disorderly, there were other satellite crimes which
were caused indirectly because of the consumption of alcohol or by people who
were seeking access to alcohol. He cited
a number of case studies
Stealing
a pony and cart - a young man out
on his employers business spends some
of the money he has collected in a public house, and therefore fears to face his master, recollecting the devil's
proverb, 'As well be hung for the sheep as
the lamb,' he sells the pony and cart.
As he expressed the matter to me, 'the first
word of your mouth when you're drunk is you don't care for nothing...
Larceny-A
married woman, aged 35, stole 30 shillings from her landlady to get drink...
Begging-
A woman, aged 44, seven out of ten children alive, her husband fairly well to do, begged simply to get money
for drink*.
There is, of course, the argument that Horsley, as a leading
temperance reformer, had an ulterior motive for blaming the condition of
England's poor, and the high levels of criminal behaviour among (and involving)
the
Despite the damning figures of Shadow and Horsley, the
annual report of the Liverpool Head Constable for 1898 indicated that drunkenness
was on the decline finding that:
766 fewer cases of...drunk and riotous
[behaviour] etc...Licensing Acts - the number
of licenced-houses in the city had been decreased by 18 public houses and 2 beer-houses, and increased by 5
off-licenses...the number of licenced premises...is:
Public House: 1,865
Beer House: 244
Off-License: 153
Total: 2,262
Drunkness -
The total number of arrests during
the year: 4,292
On a given night of the week:
Sunday: 294
Monday: 703
Tuesday:544
Wednesday: 452
Thursday: 401
Friday: 501
Saturday: 1,398
This was a trend which was identified by the social critic
Charles Booth, in his London based survey from 1902, which clearly identified that the number of arrests related to or involving alcohol were dropping as the
new century progressed.
*On a side note, I
find it interesting that the women both have the qualifying notes of being
married and that one has a high number of living children, as though to state
that these are otherwise 'good' women who have fallen low through the vice of
alcohol- but that could be my personal hobby horse.
