Gin Craze - Gin Acts of 1736 and 1751

Gin Acts of 1736 and 1751

The British government tried a number of times to stop the flow of gin. The 1736 Gin Act taxed retail sales at a rate of 20 shillings a gallon on spirits and required licensees to take out a £50 annual licence to sell gin. The aim was to effectively prohibit the trade by making it economically unfeasible. Only two licences were ever taken out. The trade became illegal, consumption dipped but then continued to rise and the law was effectively repealed in 1743 following mass law-breaking and violence (particularly towards informers who were paid £5 to reveal the whereabouts of illegal gin shops). The illegally distilled gin which was produced following the 1736 Act was less reliable and more likely to result in poisoning.

By 1743, England was drinking 2.2 gallons (10 litres) of gin per person per year. As consumption levels increased, an organised campaign for more effective legislation began to emerge, led by the Bishop of Sodor and Man, Thomas Wilson (who, in 1736, had complained that gin produced a 'drunken ungovernable set of people'). Prominent anti-gin campaigners included Henry Fielding (whose 1751 'Enquiry into the Late Increase in Robbers' blamed gin consumption for both increased crime and increased ill health among children), Josiah Tucker, Daniel Defoe (who had originally campaigned for the liberalisation of distilling, but later complained that drunken mothers were threatening to produce a 'fine spindle-shanked generation' of children), and – briefly – William Hogarth. Hogarth's engraving Gin Lane is a well known image of the gin craze.

The Gin Craze began to peter out following the Gin Act 1751. This Act lowered the annual licence fees, but encouraged 'respectable' gin selling by requiring licensees to trade from premises rented for at least £10 a year. Historians suggest that gin consumption was reduced not as a result of legislation but because of the rising cost of grain. Landowners could afford to abandon the production of gin, and this fact, coupled with population growth and a series of poor harvests, resulted in lower wages and increased food prices. The Gin Craze had mostly ended by 1757. The government tried to ensure this by temporarily banning the manufacture of spirits from domestic grain; there was a resurgence of gin consumption during the Victorian era, with numerous 'Gin Palaces' appearing.