Kill-grief and comfort: Madam Geneva and the London gin panic, 1720–1751

Hamerton, Christopher (2022) Kill-grief and comfort: Madam Geneva and the London gin panic, 1720–1751. In, Devilry, Deviance, and Public Sphere: The Social Discovery of Moral Panic in Eighteenth Century London. 1st ed. London. Palgrave Macmillan, 159–196. (doi:10.1007/978-3-031-14883-5_6).

Abstract

This case study chapter focuses on historical substance abuse as potential moral panic through exploration of the so-called gin craze which gripped London, and in spells its press, from the 1720s to the 1750s. This chapter includes an examination of the revenue imperative and the human cost of the gin craze. Of particular interest within this chapter is the use of reactive and incremental legislation to assuage moral concern, with a series of increasingly punitive statutes passed to regulate and attempt to control consumption in between 1729 and 1751 without apparent success. It is argued that the urban poor did not share the government’s view as to the serious nature of this particular outcry, and that it was only diminished by a combination of moral entrepreneurship, fear of crime, and recession.

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Author: Christopher Hamerton

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