How gin escaped from Gin Lane

In the mid-18th century, London was awash with gin. Socially-conscious members of the bourgeoisie believed that this was the root of all evil, contributing to crime and depravity. Fielding and Hogarth combined to denounce gin as responsible for ‘the reigning vices peculiar to the lower classes of the people’. Both of them hoped to persuade the lower orders to drink less gin and more beer. They extolled beer’s rustic health-giving properties, rather in the way that Burns exalted the nourishing virtues of haggis. In a different age, Hogarth’s cartoons of Gin Lane seem more comic than sermonising, but they are still powerful.

In various countries, the early phases of distillation were menaced by disapproval and harassment. The crude corn whiskey of the American frontier provided material for condemnations from many a pulpit. This must have been especially effective on Sunday mornings, when hangovers would have lowered the topers’ resistance. The same was true in the Highlands of Scotland, where drinkers and deplorers were — and still are — often polarised, even within families. It is not uncommon to find alcoholics on one generation giving birth to teetotallers in the next, followed by a reversion to alcoholism, and so on.

Out on the hill a’chasing the deer, one will come across the remains of shielings abandoned during the clearances. These often had their own still. One head stalker, renowned for his ability to embellish the beauties of his ground with myth and legend, which never discouraged American guests from tipping generously, would claim that a small pile of rubble had been the still where Bonnie Prince Charlie had enjoyed his first dram.

Gradually, the rough taste of illicit Highland distilling gave way to the glorious drams we enjoy today. Gin too has escaped from Gin Lane and mother’s ruin.