Bradford pub historian's book traces the story of gin

Alcohol is so much more than a drink in a glass, but is embedded in our economy, society and culture. My new history of gin approaches it in that spirit and brings to that study many years of research into English drinking habits and drinking places, including those of Bradford. It is published by Historic England in association with Liverpool University Press in hardback and illustrated with over 60 images.

Gin has so many meanings. We have the expression ‘Mother’s Ruin’, which tells us immediately how much the spirit has been associated with women over the centuries. One thinks of course of Hogarth’s famous 1751 engraving of Gin Lane, with its central horrifying image of a drunk woman allowing her infant to fall to its death in front of the gin shop’s sign. This was at the height of the so-called Gin Craze of the early 18th century when consumption soared. It was still then a relatively new drink to England, having arrived from the Low Countries in the 16th century and slowly become popular in the 17th.

But it took a relaxation of any government controls and a favourable economic climate to produce an epidemic of heavy drinking and the immortal, if probably apocryphal, saying:

‘Drunk for a Penny

Dead drunk for two pence

Clean straw for Nothing.’

Drinking gin was something done by all classes, but above all the working class. Famous names produced it, like Gordon’s or Booth’s in London. But it was made all over the country. A brewery and distillery was opened in Bradford in 1757 on a site where the later Odeon cinema was to stand. In the late 18th and early 19th centuries new types of drinking place were developed to attract customers. In many places they were called dram shops and Bradford had several.

Bowling Green pub in Bradford, with dram shop to the left. Image: Bradford Local Studies (Image: Paul Jennings)

Paul Jennings' book explores the social history of gin (Image: Paul Jennings)

Some of the town’s old inns set them up in part of the premises, like the one to the left of the photograph of the Bowling Green Inn, which once stood in Bridge Street. These became the celebrated gin palaces, extravaganzas of fine woodwork, coloured tiles, glass and mirrors and gaslight, some of which survive to this day, like the Princess Louise in Holborn.

Sadly, not in Bradford, where the finest example, the Cock and Bottle in Barkerend Road, was gutted some years ago.

The 20th century, partly as a result of restrictions introduced during the First World War, saw a big drop in alcohol consumption. Working people ceased largely to drink gin. Instead, the better off adopted it in the vogue in the 1920s and 30s for cocktails, Noel Coward and all that.

Advert for a cocktail cabinet in the 1930s (Image: Paul Jennings)

Then after another war, gin came to be seen as a rather old-fashioned, conservative sort of a tipple, redolent of military men drinking their gin and tonics in an Empire soon to vanish or secretive elderly ladies hiding it from the neighbours. Its darker side was also foreground, including its use to bring on a miscarriage, as portrayed, for example, in the 1960 film Saturday Night and Sunday Morning. Among the young, vodka became the tipple of choice, while whisky had long been the favourite of middle-class men.

But then towards the end of the last century, gin again underwent something of a cultural shift. It once again became fashionable, part of a new liking more generally for craft or designer products and a result of growing affluence, for some. A plethora of new gins were produced by small distillers, permitted now to produce smaller amounts. Yorkshire has quite a few of them, like Slingsby Gin in Harrogate, or Whitby or York Gins.

Women were prominent among these new drinkers, enjoying their wine and gin, when once a nice cup of tea would have done the trick. Once again, this provoked concern about the consequences for their health of this ‘mummy drinking’ culture, as it was termed. There was even a series of novels by Gill Sims, beginning with Why Mummy Drinks in 2017.

So we see how gin has a unique history, one which has seen many changes over the four hundred years of England’s relationship with the spirit, and which it will without doubt continue to do. It is the aim of my book to tell, in a lively and accessible, but scholarly way, something of that relationship and its history.

* Gin and the English: An Illustrated History is available from bookshops, priced. £40. There is a 20per cent discount if it is ordered direct from the publisher at www.liverpooluniversitypress.co.uk