The Gin Craze had arrived. It was cheaper to drink a pint of gin than a pint of strong beer. In London, consumption was out of control, though other cities were also affected.
The Breezer - the joyride for a curious mind: A weekly newsletter from Steve Winduss at the Batting the Breeze podcast. Spend a few minutes with me discovering historical snippets and fascinating facts related to the forthcoming week. Add to that updates relating to the podcast, a touch of humour and a dash of "lots more".6th April 2025
Happy Sunday! Yesterday I heard that the word tariff has been Googled this week 16 times more than normal. I can’t imagine why. Anyway, time to take a look back I thought Tariffs have been around since Greek and Roman times as a method of regulating the flow of goods and topping up the governing body’s coffers. Every British student has learned about the Corn Laws (1815), which were officially enacted by Royal Assent 210 years ago on 23 March 1815. Tariffs were imposed on imported grain after the Napoleonic Wars to protect British landowners and domestic agriculture. By 1846, Prime Minister Sir Robert Peel was forced to repeal these Corn Laws. The working-class population couldn’t afford to eat. As pertinently, the Irish Potato Famine had been running rampant across Ireland for just over 12 months. It was untenable for Peel to proactively maintain high grain prices as the Irish starved.
The interior of the Corn Exchange, Mark Lane, London, 1808.
In the newly founded United States, one of Congress’s first actions was to introduce the Tariff Act of 1789, which imposed taxes on imported goods to protect emerging American industries such as textiles, flour milling, shipbuilding, cotton and agriculture. Tariffs also served to pay off debts from the War of Independence (Revolutionary War). Australia, federated in 1901, also introduced early tariffs. The Customs Tariff Act of 1902 protected Australian industry against cheap imports but also ensured no tariffs existed between individual states. As long as international trade has existed, so have tariffs.
In 1688, the English curiously invited the head of the Dutch Republic, William of Orange III, to take over the English crown as James II was proving to be a little too Catholic. This was the Glorious Revolution. King William III of England would rule with his wife, Mary II, who was also the daughter of the aforementioned James II. James II left for France with hardly a whimper, but his presence over the Channel tipped the balance, and the Nine Years’ War broke out. England, the Dutch Republic, Spain, Austria and some German states teamed up to curb French expansionist tendencies. William’s first decisive action of the war was to impose heavy tariffs on French wine and, in particular, brandy. Kick the French where it really hurts. The tariffs had the desired effect of reducing the flow of brandy across the channel. British Naval blockades of ports at Rochefort and La Rochelle applied the sledgehammer, in case tariffs weren’t sufficiently effective.
The Glorious Revolution. William of Orange III Lands at Brixham in 1688.
William was smart enough to realise that the English wouldn’t stop drinking just because French brandy was expensive and in low supply. The King introduced the Distilling Act of 1690 to promote the production of spirits, gin in particular, across the nation. A licence was no longer needed to distil gin. Everyone could have a go. The King was encouraging his citizens to be patriotic; produce gin, buy gin and drink gin. The English rarely need encouragement in this respect, and 1690 proved no different. They carried out their duty impeccably. As it turns out, you can distil gin in a much smaller area than brew beer. Better still, gin didn’t need maturation time, so it could be drunk immediately. And the English did. By 1697, the Nine Years’ War might have been over, but the English had developed a taste for gin, they couldn’t stop. Roll forward to 1720; gin was now the drink of choice for men, women and even some children. The cheap access to ‘Mother’s Ruin’ temporarily relieved the poor from their miserable existence. London was expanding too fast, and migrants were greeted with nothing but slums, lack of sanitation and poverty. Gin was the antidote. The Gin Craze had arrived. It was cheaper to drink a pint of gin than a pint of strong beer. In London, consumption was out of control, though other cities were also affected. Thousands of gin shops, cellars and front rooms had opened for business. Gin was drunk morning, noon and night.
'Gin Lane' by William Hogarth, 1751. A scene of human misery. See what you can spot: In the foreground, a drunken prostitute allows her baby to fall to its death; in front of her, a helpless, emaciated man keeps hold of his gin bottle; behind them to the left, a carpenter and his wife pawn their tools and livelihoods for another shot of gin; to the right, a brawl has erupted outside a gin shop; just in front of them, a mother pours gin into her baby; above them, a hanging man swings from the roof, forgotten; in the background, coffins pile up and buildings crumble.
Crime rates soared, prostitution was rife, children were neglected and London’s health deteriorated sharply. Mass public nudity was reported, along with sightings of spontaneous human combustion, though probably through the bottom of empty gin tumblers. Nonetheless, it was a time of complete madness in London. Action was needed. Between 1729 and 1751, the Government passed a series of Gin Acts to curb the vast quantities of gin consumption. These early Gin Acts backfired. The restriction of legal gin supply only sent retail alternatives underground. London citizens may have been pickled, but they could still be enterprising. Take Captain Dudley Bradstreet, for instance... Bradstreet identified a flaw in the early Gin Acts. They hadn’t given police the right to enter homes to search for evidence of nefarious gin sales. Their reliance on informers to discreetly gather evidence was of limited value. So, the cunning Captain rented a house in London and carved out a cat on the face of a piece of wood. During the day and evening, Puss sat patiently on the window ledge of Bradstreet’s front room. Puss was no ordinary wooden cat. He had special powers. A client would walk up to the cat and whisper in his ear, “Puss, have you got any gin?” When the pussy cat mewed (i.e. Captain Dudley Bradstreet), the client would place some coins into his mouth. The coins rolled down the cat’s throat, through the open window of the front room and into the grasp of a grateful Bradstreet. Moments later, a measure of gin would squirt out of a small pipe protruding from the cat’s paw, dispensed directly into the buyer’s expectant vessel… or mouth. It became known as the Puss and Mew machine. An informant couldn’t see Bradstreet supplying the gin behind Puss, and the police had no authority to enter the house, so Bradstreet continued to operate with impunity.
100,000 days ago this Wednesday, 25 June 1751, the Gin Act 1751 (or Sale of Spirits Act 1750) was passed. It proved to be the Gin Act to beat all Gin Acts. Licenses were reintroduced, black market gin production was hounded down, reinforced policing and efforts to re-educate the public all served to bring the curtain down on the Gin Craze by 1757. Over time, gin became a sophisticated drink for the middle classes. The Gin & Tonic had arrived. Large distilleries opened, and respectable brands grew to dominate the industry, such as Gordon’s (1769), Plymouth Gin (1793) and Tanqueray (1830). The working class was then encouraged to drink beer, a much safer and lower-alcohol product than gin. The British pub flourished as a social space for beer drinking, and the foundations of the modern British pub culture were laid. And it all started with a tariff.
Dates with History
Today… The Italian Renaissance painter, Raffaello Sanzio, better known as Raphael, died 505 years ago today, 6 April 1520, on his 38th birthday. Raphael’s masterpieces include The School of Athens, a fresco at the Vatican Palace in Rome, and Sistine Madonna, a depiction of the Virgin Mary holding baby Jesus on display at the Gemäldegalerie Alte Meister in Dresden.
The School of Athens (1509-1511), Raphael. A fresco in the Raphael Rooms, Apostolic Palace, Vatican City. Raphael included himself in the painting, bottom right, looking outwards in the black beret.
Wednesday… Marie Louise von Hesse-Kassel was born in Germany in 1688. In 1708, she married Johan Willem Friso, Prince of Orange. Due to her husband’s untimely death, Marie became a prominent and loved figure in Dutch history, twice serving as Regent for her son and grandson. Marie Louise died 260 years ago this Wednesday, 9 April 1765. For 77 years from 1945, Marie Louise von Hesse-Kassel was remembered as the most recent common ancestor of all 12 of Europe’s monarchs*. In other words, all of Europe’s kings or queens between 1945 and 2022 could trace their ancestry back to ‘Aunt Mary’. *Since Queen Elizabeth II died in 2022, the new holder of the ‘most recent common ancestor to all of Europe’s monarchs’ now falls to Louis IX, Landgrave of Hesse-Darmstadt (died 1790), and his wife, Countess Palatine Caroline of Zweibrücken (died 1774).
Thursday… The Statute of Anne was enacted 315 years ago this Thursday, 10 April 1710, named in honour of the British monarch of the day, Queen Anne. To be more precise, the act was called ‘An Act for the Encouragement of Learning by Vesting the Copies of Printed Books in the Authors or Purchasers of Such Copies, During the Times therein Mentioned’. The statute is thought to be the world’s first attempt at establishing copyright law. It granted authors control of their work for a period of 14 years, with a possible 14-year extension if the author was still alive.
Statute of Anne, 1710.
Prior to the Statute of Anne, the Licensing Act gave book publishers total control of copyright and was seen as a monopolist’s charter. When the act expired in 1695, an opportunity emerged to encourage more creative writing and ensure that these works would enter the public domain for the benefit of all. The new copyright laws removed the controlling rights of publishers and gave authors a reasonable period of time to benefit from their work. Today, in the UK, copyright lasts for the author's lifetime plus 70 years, a significant extension of the Statute of Anne. Copyright is automatically granted at the point of creation; no registration is needed. Other Western countries’ copyright laws have variations, but they all follow the theme as constructed by the Statute of Anne 315 years ago.
Out of Curiosity…
William Shakespeare (1564-1619) earned very little money from his written works as they were not protected by copyright at the time. Publishers could print unauthorised versions of his plays without paying compensation. Shakespeare did, however, earn a comfortable income as a shareholder of the Lord Chamberlain’s Men Theatre Company. The theatre company paid Shakespeare modest sums to write plays. These plays were then performed at various locations, and the profits were distributed to shareholders.
On this Day
William Keith Kellogg was born 165 years ago tomorrow, 7 April 1860, in Battle Creek, Michigan. He was brought up as a strict Seventh-Day Adventist where discipline and hard work were at the core of his childhood. At 13 years of age, Will was working in his father’s broom manufacturing business. By the age of 14, he was selling brooms door-to-door. Fast-forward a few years. Will had turned 30 and was working with his brother, John, to develop flaked cereal. However, they couldn’t agree on how beneficial the cereal should be for health.
William Keith Kellogg, c1900.
John wanted to leave out sugar to avoid ‘biological excitement’. Will felt that the product needed some sweetness to make the taste palatable. One day while John was out, Will added sugar to a batch. John returned and flew into a rage when he found out. The brothers were at an impasse. They agreed to disagree. Will left to start the Kellogg Company, still in Battle Creek, in 1906. The company revolutionised breakfast with its ready-to-eat convenience. John’s Battle Creek Sanitarium Health Food Company ceased trading in the 1930s during the Great Depression. The Kellogg Company is still thriving today. It generates $15 billion of revenue each year and ships many billions of packs of Corn Flakes, Rice Crispies and Special K.
On the same day that William Keith Kellogg was born, 7 April 1860, Ernst and Suzanne Richter welcomed their daughter, Rossa Matilda, into the world. Rossa was a born performer. She learned ballet at the age of four, adding trapeze, tightrope walking and gymnastics to her repertoire throughout her teens. As Rossa was turning 17 years old, a Canadian performer, William Hunt, The Great Farini, who had crossed Niagara Falls on a tightrope, was cultivating plans for a very special performance. He had filed a patent for a ‘certain new and useful Apparatus for Projecting Persons or Articles into or through the Air’. The Italians had considered something similar during World War I when they proposed that spring-loaded cannons could fire their soldiers over enemy lines. (A moment’s pause while I wipe tears from my eyes imagining how this spectacle might have looked. I presume parachutes would have come into play at some point.) Hunt was known to Ernst and Suzanne. Suzanne pushed Ernst to sign a contract with Hunt for their daughter to become the first ‘projected person’ from his newly patented apparatus. On 2 April 1877*, Rossa Matilda Richter, stage name 'Zazel', became the first person to be fired from a cannon. The venue was the Royal Aquarium in London. She was the world’s first human cannonball.
Rossa Matilda Richter, ‘Zazel’, the human cannonball, 1887.
The rubber springs used to launch Rossa had limited power, but, combined with the well-timed explosion of a small cup of dynamite, the effect was dramatic. The act proved to be a sensation, but Zazel was subject to regular injuries. A particular accident in 1891 brought the curtain down on her death-defying career. Instead, Rossa took up opera singing, performing in an opera company she co-founded with her husband. Rossa Matilda Richter died in 1937. *This date is disputed by a matter of days, though the 2nd is the most commonly quoted date.
Question of the Week
In 1589, Russia built a new city in the south west, on the Volga River, to protect its southern flanks from unwanted visitors. Tsaritsyn grew to become a major Russian industrial centre. In 1917, the Bolsheviks had risen up against the provisional government, formed a year earlier after Tsar Nicholas II's abdication. In 1918, the city would be turned into a fiercely contested battleground. A forty-year-old Bolshevik named Joseph Stalin was given authority to lead the fight for Tsaritsyn. His brutal methods proved controversial on both sides, but they worked. The revolutionaries won the battle for the city in 1920. One hundred years ago this Thursday, 10 April 1925, the city was renamed Stalingrad. Between 1941 and 1943, during World War II, the city would be associated with another brutal encounter, the Battle of Stalingrad. The Soviets produced the first significant defeat of Nazi Germany in the war. 2,000,000 lives were lost. What is Stalingrad called today?
And Finally…
One afternoon, two hundred and five years ago this Tuesday, 8 April 1820, the Greek farmer Yorgos Kentrotas was tending to his farm on the island of Milos. He regularly gathered rocks from an area around some recognised ancient ruins to repair stone walls. On this particular day, he stopped in his tracks when he noticed something a little unusual. After carefully pushing back the surrounding earth, Yorgos exposed an artefact. Realising that it may be of great value, he informed the authorities as quietly as possible. The statue Yorgos had uncovered is what we know today as the Venus de Milo, an Ancient Greek marble sculpture dating back to 150 BCE during the Hellenistic period. The statue depicted Aphrodite (or Venus to the Romans), the goddess of love famed for her role in the Trojan War. Venus stood 6 feet 8 inches tall, holding an elegant pose. She wore a drape around her hips and legs, leaving her upper torso exposed. At the time of discovery, she had no arms, which has helped build the piece’s interest and mystery over the years.
Venus de Milo, Louvre Museum, Paris.
Out of curiosity…
The Hellenistic period blossomed after the death of Alexander the Great in 323 BCE and lasted through to the Roman conquest in 31 BCE. It was a period when Greek culture and ideas spread south to Egypt and as far west as parts of Asia. Its fascination lay in the way it blended and merged with local cultures and traditions. The term ‘Hellenistic’ comes from a word meaning ‘one who uses the Greek language’. The period is significant because the culture, architecture, science, philosophy and literature developed during this time were widely adopted by the Romans, forming the foundation of modern Western civilisation.
Yorgos’s efforts to hide the artefact failed, and word of his discovery had spread. At the time, Milos was under the control of the Ottomans, but the French navy was close by and laid a claim to the statue. A localised disagreement led to the deaths of 200 Greeks, after which the French and reluctant Ottomans agreed on a sale. Milos officials received 250 francs and Yorgos 750 francs. The French likely felt satisfied with their trade, having payed $5,000 (in today’s value) for a priceless Ancient Greek artefact. The French transported the Venus de Milo back to Paris and presented it to King Louis XVIII. The benevolent king donated the sculpture to the Louvre Museum in Paris, where it can still be seen today.
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Stalingrad was renamed Volgograd in 1961 by Soviet President Nikita Khrushchev, to mitigate the glorification of Stalin. Today, although the majority of Volgograd citizens have repeatedly voted against a further name change, a movement still exists to reinstate the name Stalingrad.
ATTRIBUTIONS
The interior of the Corn Exchange, Mark Lane, London, 1808: Thomas Rowlandson (1756–1827) and Augustus Charles Pugin (1762–1832) (after) John Bluck (fl. 1791–1819), Joseph Constantine Stadler (fl. 1780–1812), Thomas Sutherland (1785–1838), J. Hill, and Harraden (aquatint engravers)[1], Public domain, via Wikimedia Commons
Gin Lane by William Hogarth, 1751: British Museum, Public domain, via Wikimedia Commons.
The Glorious Revolution. William of Orange III Lands at Brixham in 1688: Johan Herman Isings, Public domain, via Wikimedia Commons.
The School of Athens (1509-1511), Raphael. A fresco in the Raphael Rooms, Apostolic Palace, Vatican City: Raphael, Public domain, via Wikimedia Commons.
Statute of Anne, 1710: British Government, Public domain, via Wikimedia Commons.
Rossa Matilda Richter, ‘Zazel’, the human cannonball, 1887: original: Photo is credited to London Stereoscopic Co. in The Strand, but author is unknown (cropped/adjusted by User:Rhododendrites), Public domain, via Wikimedia Commons.
William Keith Kellogg, c1900: Unknown author, Public domain, via Wikimedia Commons.