THE CONSUMPTION OF GIN IN LONDON.

Lyttelton Times, Volume XIX, Issue 1093, 2 May 1863, Page 3

THE CONSUMPTION OF GIN IN LONDON.

We can tell our readers a story hitherto unedited, and which we think will not be considered the less terrible for being grotesque. One Boxing-day, not very long ago, a labouring man and his wife were overheard in violent altercation in the street. The man was drunk, but he had arrived at the lachrymose stage of inebriety, and was sobbing piteously. ''What's the matter?" querously asked his wife. "I—l—l'm so unhappy," blubbered the husband. "Unhappy?" the lady repeated, with a profound expression of contempt, " Unhappy! You were drunk on Sunday, you were drunk on Monday, you're drunk now, and you ain't happy. What more do you want ? Do you want io be a Hangelf' Such is literally the verbatim report of a conversation between two honest and hard-working people on the morrow of the Great Festival of Humanity, in a London street, and in the reign of Queen Victoria; and such was, at no very distant period, the general, nay, almost invariable way of keeping Christmas among the industrious classes in this country. From Christmas to New Year's Eve was one riotous and uproarious orgie, in honour of an abstraction which we will not dignify by the name of Bacchus, rosy god of wine, or of Sir John Barleycorn, honest and cordial patron of malt and hops, but which will be much better personified and understood as the Gin Fiend. Gin—fiery, poisonous, maddening yet enervating, stimulating yet depressing—Gin, the most infernal of paradoxes, at once the food and the poison, the chief comfort and the chief curse of the poor—was the one absorbing element of enjoyment which the working classes looked forward to at the end of the year. The affluent and middle classcs might have their holly and mistletoe, their turkeys and oysters, their game and brawn, their plum-pud-dings and mince-pies; but in the poor's man's household the seasonable decoration was often forgotten, the substantial banquet—even if the means were at

hand—too often neglected, and the ministrations of the Gin Fiend were depended upon to make amends for all. Christmas was regarded much less at a time when the larder was to be fuller, the clothespress more abundant in garments, the table more bounteously spread, than as a horrible kind of halycon time when there was to be a great deal more liquor. ,

The consequence of unlimited indulgence in this appetite, destructive alike to body and soul, was the creation of a vast number of resorts, some dirty and uncomfortable, but by far the majority dangerously brilliant and seductively commodious. Poor people were glad to escape from their bleak and cheerless lodging-rooms, to find solace and enjoyment in the huge gin-palace, with its flood of gaslight, its vistas of plate-glass, its mahogany panels, its gilded columns, and its smartly - attired barmaids. The careless housewife—much too frequent a character in the domestic economy of the poor—found impunity from the reproaches of her dinnerless husband when she discovered him snugly anchored in the gin-shop; and the neglected marketing, the Barmecide Christmas dinner, were forgotten amidst the clattering of noggins and the clinking of "three-out" glasses. If the children followed their dissipated parents to the gin-shop and cried for bread, could they not be slapped into quiescence or comforted with " a little drop ?" This dream of fallacious joy had its terrible awakening in pauperism, in disease, and in despair. Not only at Christmas time proper, but for days to follow, the revelry went on, and the juniper-bush was the only Christmas-tree. Artisans knocked off work; orders remained unexecuted; scores were run up, savings squandered. Then came the ginshop contention, the gin-shop brawl, the dastardly blow, the ruffianly kick, the hellish stab. Then followed staggerings about the street, rows at street corners, altercations with sober people, assaults upon policemen, the station-house, the police-court, the van, the treadmill, and the gaol. Gin had done it all. Gin was the unit whose multiple formed a terrible figure in the criminal statistics of the year. The police inspectors could calculate within a score or two how many " drunk and disorderly " or " drunk and incapable " charges would be entered on their sheets at Christmas time, and the columns of the newspapers were filled to repletion with narratives of the excesses and the outrages committed by those who had been keeping the festival by taking poison.

In his fantastic fairy tale of " The Water Babies," Professor Kingsley tells us of a mayor of Plymouth, who grew wearied of sitting in a hard chair and listening to the reiterated and unvarying query of the police, " What shall we do with the drunken sailor, so early in the morning?" to which his worship made the reply, as unvarying, " Put him in the watch-house till he gets sober, so early in the morning." Very many of our police magistrates have, all the year round, a task as wearisome as that which wore out the mayor of Plymouth's patience; but we are glad to observe that their labours, at Christmas time at least, have within these latter days been considerably lightened. Last year there was a very perceptible diminution in the average of "night charges" on Boxing-day, and the subsequent mornings during the holidays; and the judicial statistics of intoxication will show this year a decrease quite as appreciable. Moreover, from all parts of the licensed victualling interest we hear complaints of the falling-off of gin-shop takings, the deterioration of gin-shop property, and the growing disinclination of the public to patronize gin-shops themselves, coupled with an inclination as progressive to bestow their patronage upon something better. Individually it would be cruel to express gratification for the decline of any branch of trade, and individually we might be sorry for those who invest their capital in palaces for the sale of poison ; but, on broader grounds, we are surely as entitled to rejoice at the want of prosperity in the gin business as the Chinese Government would be if the opium trade fell into decay. Our revenue may derive some unholy benefit from the sale of alcohol, but the entire trade is nevertheless a covenant with sin and death. —Daily Telegraph.