Gin: The Much Lamented Death of Madam Geneva: The Eighteenth Century Gin Craze

by Dillon, Patrick

  And now a new danger had emerged. If informers were set on by mobs, they would no longer dare to come forward. The flow of information would dry up. The ‘dangerous and desperate crew’ would crawl back into the woodwork. On 20 August, the same day the woman informer was dragged under the Guildhall pump, the Commissioners of Excise wrote to the Treasury to tell them what was going on. ‘Several mobs,’ the Commissioners warned, ‘have of late assembled themselves in a riotous manner and have greatly insulted and abused divers persons concerned in detecting the retailers of spirituous liquors … some of whom have been in great danger of losing their lives.’ The fear was that ‘outrages of this kind … must necessarily deter all persons whatsoever from giving the like informations for the future.’29

  Nor was it only informers. ‘The Constables and Officers belonging to this Revenue,’ the Commissioners went on, ‘when imployed in suppressing the like illegal practices, have been assaulted in the same outrageous manner, and some of them very much wounded.’ If there was anything Londoners hated more than an informer, it was an Excise man. Within days of the Gin Act coming in, the Daily Journal had reported that a Southwark Excise man ‘going through St Olave’s Street … without meddling with anybody, some people who were drinking gin in an open shop thereabouts knew him, and thinking he was watching the house, or intended to go in, came upon him, and beat him in so barbarous a manner, that he is now under the surgeon’s hands.’30 Three more Excise men had been beaten up on their rounds in June.

  The message, that August, was that the whole apparatus of enforcement was under threat. Informers were being attacked and Excise men abused. Maybe it was to boost morale that the Excise Office released figures for the numbers of unlicensed gin-shops they had managed to prosecute since the Gin Act came in. There were 587 of them, all liable for the £100 fine.31 The trouble was that even the enforcement measures against gin-shops and distillers were running into difficulties. The Commissioners of Excise only made themselves unpopular by targeting respectable citizens like Dr Sayer Rudd, a Unitarian minister and physician with a diploma from the University of Rheims, convicted for selling half a pint of colic water to a patient in November 1736. His £100 penalty was, as the Daily Post sarcastically put it, ‘a fine sum for an Exciseman’s breakfast.’32 The Excise Office had started out by refusing all requests for the huge fines to be reduced (‘Their honours,’ the Daily Post reported, ‘stick close to the letter of the act’).33 But most owners of spirit-shops found it impossible to pay up. Five hundred and eighty-seven may have been liable for the fine, but all too few had managed to pay it. Now the Commissioners were forced into a U-turn. Summoning those who had already been charged, ‘after admonishing them … and desiring them to take care for the future, they were pleased to mitigate their fines, some to £20 and others to £30 … The remaining part of their … sums were returned to them.’34 They would soon just about give up trying to get the £100 penalty out of unlicensed gin-shops. Most shopkeepers and distillers were taken along to the magistrates instead, and fined £10 as if they were street-hawkers.

  In response to the Excise Commissioners’ worries about attacks on informers, the Treasury offered a reward to help catch those ‘guilty of insulting persons concerned in detecting the retailers of spirituous liquors.’35 If they thought that would be enough to safeguard the informers, they were about to be disappointed. On Tuesday 20 October, an informer was cornered by a crowd outside a cook’s shop in Aldersgate Street. ‘They laid hold of him and dragged him through all the channels along Aldersgate Street,’ the London Evening Post reported, ‘beat him with sticks, kicked him about in a terrible manner, dragged him to a dunghill in Bishop’s Court, St Martin’s, and there buried him for some time with ashes and cinders.’ The man’s wife and a friend came to the rescue and were beaten up themselves. A tradesman who tried to help had to escape into his own shop. Thomas De Veil committed the owner of the cook’s shop to Bridewell, but for the informer it was too late. He died of his injuries a few days later. Opposing the Gin Act was no longer just a matter of cheeking the authorities. The scale of protest was escalating.

  An informer in Bristol was tarred and feathered. A few days after the attack in Aldersgate Street, two informers tricked the landlady of the Black Horse in Grosvenor Mews into selling them a quartern of gin. They were caught on their way out. ‘The coachmen in the Mews being informed of the affair, seized them and dragged them through the channels into Bond Street, where one of them was run over by a chariot and bruised in a desperate manner. The other was carried to the stable yard in Hanover Street, where they ducked him several times, after which he was conducted by the Beadle to the end of Swallow Street, and attacked again by the mob, who used him so roughly that ’tis thought his life is in danger.’36

  It was all starting to get out of hand. A woman had been rescued on her way to Southwark Bridewell in September. On 2 November, when constables came for a gin-seller in the Strand, ‘she cried out informers, on which the mob rose, and the fellows who had laid the information ran away.’ Not all of them made it. One fell into the hands of the crowd. They dragged him along the street before beating him up, ‘and then making water in a pot … poured it down his throat; in short, they used him so ill, that tis said he cannot live.’37

  He couldn’t. ‘This is the second person that has been murdered this week,’ the Daily Post commented, ‘for informing against people for selling of gin.’38 There was even a riot at the funeral of the informer who had been killed in Aldersgate Street. ‘A prodigious mob attended [the coffin],’ reported the London Evening Post, ‘pelting it all the way it went, [and] would not suffer the burial service to be performed.’39

  And for all this trouble, it soon became clear that Madam Geneva was far from buried herself. When Excise figures were published in November, it turned out ‘that there never was so much spirituous liquors distilled in any three months as in August, September and October last, so that consequently,’ as the London Evening Post commented drily, ‘the people must drink more of it than ever, altho’ there are daily so many people sent to Bridewell for selling it.’40

  For all Thomas De Veil’s efforts, for all the riots and rescues and prosecutions and convictions, prohibition was having no effect. The authorities had got themselves into a no-win situation. The harder they tried to enforce the Gin Act, the more public anger they provoked. There had been a near-riot outside Thomas De Veil’s house late in October; a month later there was another. An informer had been beaten up and tried to take refuge there, ‘almost ready to expire, being [so] terribly beat, cut and bruis’d, and all over mire, that it was impossible to guess he was a man but by his walking, he being (as it seemed) one entire lump of dirt.’41 That night, Thomas De Veil had to read the Riot Act. A third informer was killed in Dean Street on 19 November. There was another riot outside St Mary-le-Strand which ended with shopkeepers boarding up their windows.

  As 1737 drew to a close, few could see the silver lining in fifteen months of prohibition. The Bridewells were crammed with gin-sellers – 350 of them at a time, according to one statistic. Even Sir Joseph Jekyll, the Gin Act’s sponsor, had to contemplate failure. He confided to Thomas Wilson that ‘there is no putting an end to the pernicious custom of drinking gin etc. without laying such a duty upon the still-head as will prevent its being retailed unless at an excessive price.’42

  But it was too late for the authorities to turn back. Giving up the Gin Act would have meant giving in to the mob. Even though he knew it couldn’t succeed, Sir Joseph’s instinct was still to force his legislation through. Instead of backing down gracefully, he had Thomas Wilson approach the Excise Office to discuss further enforcement measures. Nor was he the only one still thinking in terms of enforcement. ‘Sir R.W. and the Parliament,’ as Thomas Wilson noted in his diary, ‘would willingly come into any scheme to suppress it.’

  That didn’t stop rumours circulating as the year drew to a close. On Christmas Eve the London Evening Post reported that �
�in the next session of Parliament, we hear, there will be an alteration in the Gin Act.’ ‘We hear that no less than seven schemes are prepared for laying a duty on malt spirits,’ it added a few weeks later. A month after that, the paper thought ‘a duty will be laid on [spirits] at the still-head, in order to prevent the excessive drinking of it, and to put a stop to the many notorious riots upon informers.’43

  Informers were at the root of the problem. In the last months of 1737 a stream of stories was published to illustrate their methods. There were even signs that magistrates were getting sick of them. In late November, Thomas De Veil committed an informer for trying to extort a guinea from a gin-seller in Gray’s Inn Lane. A Southwark woman was bound over by Sir John Lade for bribing someone to bring false information against a distiller.

  The Craftsman launched its own attack on 3 December. ‘The most shocking circumstance of the Roman bondage under their emperors,’ it warned, ‘was the encouragement given to informers and accusers, who … carried their villainous practices to such an height, that all offices of friendship, conversation and society were in a manner extinguished.’44 The death of Madam Geneva had been meant to save society. Instead, prohibition was tearing society apart. Respectable apothecaries were branded as convicts; men and women informed on their neighbours; a whole industry had been driven underground. No one would pay a £100 fine if they could bribe their way out of it for a fraction of the amount.

  In the first week of January 1738 another informer was killed. This time it was a woman. The newspapers reported that ‘the populace used her with such severity, by beating, kicking, and cramming dirt into her mouth, that we hear she is since dead of her wounds. Even her own sex exposed her to great indecencies.’45

  But the troubles of the authorities were only just beginning. So far they had only seen murder, perjury and spectacular disregard for the law. Three weeks later they had a full-scale riot on their hands.

  CHAPTER TWELVE

  CLAMP-DOWN

  It started on a Friday afternoon in late January. Two informers, Elizabeth Beezley and Martha Sawyer, trapped a gin-seller called Elizabeth Voucher, and brought her to Thomas De Veil’s new house in Thrift Street. But before Elizabeth Voucher had even been committed, a troublemaker, ‘one Edward Arnold … went to the informer’s habitation, threatening to kill the said Beezley, and to have the house she lived in pulled down.’1 Someone brought news of this to De Veil, who immediately committed Arnold to Newgate. It was the wrong thing to do. Arnold had friends. He ‘brought such a mob with him to the Justice’s house, that in a very little time there were about 1,000 people assembled before his door.’

  There had been near-riots over informers before, but this was the real thing. Even allowing for press exaggeration, the scene in narrow Thrift Street must have been frightening. The crowd filled the street, climbing up on the projecting house signs, swarming over street-traders’ stalls. They were baying for blood, ‘threatening destruction to the said Justice; and that the informers, who were then in the house, should never come out of it alive.’ Inside Thomas De Veil’s house, the two informers crouched upstairs, listening in terror to the noise outside the shutters.

  Thomas De Veil did the only thing he could do. He read the Riot Act.

  It was the magistrate’s trump card. When a magistrate read the Riot Act, any crowd of more than twelve was supposed to disperse within an hour. But that night the Riot Act didn’t work. ‘Instead of dispersing the mob, [it] increased it greatly,’ the London Evening Post reported, ‘[the] riotous assembly remaining before the Justice’s house above three hours after he had read [it].’ Maybe that was why the authorities would become so worried about this latest escalation in the gin protests. The Riot Act was their cure-all, their nuclear option. They had uttered the magic words, but the genie of popular protest hadn’t gone back into the bottle. The Riot Act had lost its magic.

  Peering through the shutters, Thomas De Veil spotted a ringleader. No one ever accused De Veil of ducking a fight. ‘Observing among the rest a profligate fellow, who was the great encourager of this tumultuous assembly, (one Roger Allen) and who encouraged them to pull down the Justice’s house and kill the informers, [he] had him seized.’ But it took the army to disperse the crowd and escort the two informers to safety. Roger Allen was committed to Newgate under the Riot Act. He was ‘the first of that kind to be tried, since the Gin Act took place.’

  The authorities had every reason to be worried. It wasn’t only the failure of the Riot Act. Attacks on informers were getting more frequent. Within a week of an informer being murdered in Chelsea, two other women had been attacked, one in Brewer Street and one in Bond Street. When an informer hid from an angry crowd in a house in Phoenix Street, the crowd pulled the house down. There were more rescues as well. A few days before the riot in Thrift Street, a waterman’s wife had been convicted for selling gin near Christ Church Spitalfields, and sent to Bridewell, ‘but the mob having notice thereof rescued her just as the constable was delivering her into the keeper’s hands.’2 It happened again in Southwark a fortnight later.

  It couldn’t go on. A law was being disregarded. Rioting had broken out; informers had been killed; convicted criminals had been rescued and set free. It was time for the clamp-down to begin.

  On 8 March 1738 the King issued a proclamation. It demanded measures ‘for putting in Execution the … Act against retailing of Spirituous Liquors, and for protecting the Officers of Justice, and all others … to assist the Magistrates therein.’ It called for ‘suppressing all Combinations and Confedaracies [which] encourage Disobedience to the said Law; and for punishing all Attempts … to insult and abuse those who give Informations.’ But the Gin Act was only half of its concern. It was also a proclamation ‘for putting in Execution the Act of Parliament made against Riots.’ The ministry was as worried about the failure of the Riot Act as the failure of the Gin Act. Now, more than ever, prohibition was about authority. Alongside the clamp-down on gin, there would be a general push on law and order. Fifty-two would be hanged at Tyburn that year.

  If they were going to win the battle, the magistrates needed more than proclamations, and Parliament was ready to give it to them. It was Sir Joseph Jekyll himself who, in the last week of March, brought in the ‘Act for enforcing the execution [of the Gin Act]’.

  It was a last-ditch measure. The Bill, the London Evening Post had no doubt, ‘will put an end to Puss and Mew, and all other tricks and artifices to evade the law, and entirely prevent the retailing of [gin].’3 It was a Bill against bootleggers. It attacked clandestine gin-sellers who ‘are not seen, but are hid behind some wainscot, curtain, partition, or are otherwise concealed.’ It was an Act against Dudley Bradstreet. Prohibition was leaking like a sieve, and desperately the Enforcement Act tried to plug the holes. It defended JPs against malicious prosecution. It sorted out licensing in tenements with multiple sub-lets. Rescuers and people who assaulted informers would be transported. Constables who ‘refused or neglected to be aiding or assisting in the execution of the … Acts’ would be liable to a £20 fine.

  The magistrates had new teeth and a Royal Proclamation to back them up. Now they were ready for the clamp-down. One by one, the various divisions of London justices gathered to agree their strategy. The Tower Hamlets magistrates, chaired by Sir John Gonson, decided on daily sittings to prosecute gin-sellers. In Westminster the magistrates gathered at the Court of King’s Bench in Westminster Hall. They found themselves sitting alongside the steps where Robert Nixon’s bomb had exploded. They resolved on a general meeting to instruct constables, and a standing magistrates’ court to meet three days a week.4 The Commissioners of Excise would be requested to give support. A clerk was appointed.

  Thomas De Veil was among them. For him, of course, it all meant more work and more trouble. He was getting used to that by now. When fellow freemason William Hogarth published Night, March 25, 1738 (the date was in the week of the magistrates’ meetings) it showed someone emptying a cha
mber pot on Thomas De Veil’s head. In February, De Veil had been rewarded with a sinecure in the Customs Office, but there must have been times when he wondered whether it was all worth it. A story in the papers the year before had had everyone laughing up their sleeves. A barrow-boy who was taking a quartern of gin to De Veil’s house to inform on a gin-seller met some friends on the way and ‘could not keep the secret, but told [them] of his design, and let them see the liquor.’ One of his friends diverted his attention while the others drank the gin, then ‘piss’d about the same quantity in the bottle.’ Unsuspecting, the boy took the bottle of urine to De Veil, ‘and told him he was come to inform against a person who had just sold him a quartern.’ Thomas de Veil ‘ordered a glass to be brought, and some of the liquor to be poured into it, which he tasted.’5 For magistrates, as well as for everyone else, the Gin Act could leave a nasty taste in the mouth.

  Higher up the political ladder, events were being monitored closely by the Duke of Newcastle, who had overall responsibility for affairs in Middlesex. He asked magistrates for monthly reports, with statistics. Tacked onto the end of each report he wanted remarks on how the constables were performing. The problem of the constables hadn’t gone away. The Westminster magistrates had agreed unanimously that one of their biggest problems was ‘the numbers of persons serving the office of High Constable, Constables & Headborough, who are dealers in liquor.’ But for once the authorities were prepared to put their own house in order. In May, the papers reported that ‘for the future no victualler, distiller, coffee-man, or any other person whatsoever dealing in spirituous liquors, will be permitted to serve the offices of constable or headborough.’6 It spelled the end for the gin-selling constables who had sabotaged the magistrates’ surveys and dragged their feet over enforcement. A constable called Percival, landlord of the Blacksmith’s Arms at Chelsea, had boasted that all through prohibition he had gone on selling gin at his pub undisturbed. Now his wife was hauled up for a £10 fine.7