Gin: The Much Lamented Death of Madam Geneva: The Eighteenth Century Gin Craze (47 page)

29
   Dickens,
Sketches by Boz
, 1836, ‘Gin-Shops’, pp182–7

EPILOGUE

  
1
   Sinclair,
Prohibition: The Era of Excess
, p31

  
2
   F Scott Fitzgerald,
The Crack-Up
, 1945, p15

  
3
   Lippmann,
Men of Destiny
, 1927, pp28–31, quoted in Sinclair,
Prohibition: The Era of Excess
, p23

  
4
   Sinclair,
Prohibition: The Era of Excess
, p70

  
5
   Sinclair,
Prohibition: The Era of Excess
, p185

  
6
   Behr,
Prohibition, the thirteen years that changed America
, p173

  
7
   Sinclair,
Prohibition: The Era of Excess
, p278

  
8
   Sinclair,
Prohibition: The Era of Excess
, p206

  
9
   Coffey,
The Long Thirst
, p316

10
   N Clark,
Deliver Us from Evil
, p165

11
   Gordon,
The Return of the Dangerous Classes
, p144

12
   Clutterbuck,
Drugs, Crime and Corruption
, pp123 & 156

13
   PH, House of Lords debate, 24 March 1743, p1257

14
   Quoted in the
Guardian
, 14 June 2001

*
Dr Johnson himself had a complex relationship with the bottle. ‘Sir,’ he admitted, ‘I have no objection to a man’s drinking wine, if he can do it in moderation. I found myself apt to go to excess in it, and therefore … thought it better not to return to it.’ Elsewhere he confessed that he himself had drunk ‘to get rid of myself, send myself away.’

*
First Lord of the Treasury, 1721–1742.

**
Brother-in-law of the above. Secretary of State 1721–1730.

*
Now known as Frith Street. Leicester Fields is now called Leicester Square.

*
He carried one end of a sedan chair.

*
Seven Dials.

**
A loaf.

*
Rum.

*
i.e. in London.

*
Some modern analysts have tried to find an explanation in the influenza epidemics of 1728–9 and 1741–2, although even they struggle to explain the long population stagnation at a time of cheap food.

*
Misson had been equally perceptive about English football: ‘This is kicked about from one to t’other … by him that can get at it, and that is all the art of it.’

*
Meaning civil regulation.

*
He also pioneered the umbrella and fell out bitterly with Dr Johnson over the merits of tea-drinking.

*
Unfortunately, Cooke was one of his own best customers. In September 1743 he recorded in his diary, ‘Whereas for about 6 years past I have been grievously tormented by drinking strong liquors, therefore for the future I intend by God’s assistance to drink nothing but to lead a temperate life.’ Five broken deadlines followed.

*
By the time of his death, Wayne B Wheeler was one of the most influential power-brokers in Washington. ‘Wayne B Wheeler had taken snuff,’ commented Senator Bruce of Maryland, ‘and the Senate, as usual, sneezed. Wayne B. Wheeler had cracked his whip, and the Senate, as usual, crouched.’