Cognitive Surplus

What 21st-Century TV Watchers Have in Common with 18th-Century Drunks

During the 1720s, London was the sodden haven of drunks, specifically gin mill drunks who had recently migrated from the countryside to seek work in the sprawling capital. Gin was the perfect libation for these displaced, bewildered new urban citizens: It was cheap, easy to make and far more inebriating than beer. These former country folk used gin to anesthetize themselves against the pressures of life in a distressing, unfamiliar urban environment. Removed from their country kith and kin, these new Londoners lapped up gin to help them adapt to a strange, hostile metropolis and cope with the perplexing vagaries of city life. Gin consumption was a “reaction to the real problem – dramatic social change and the inability of older civic models to adapt.”

Alarmed by the gin drinkers’ public drunkenness, Londoners petitioned Parliament to fix the problem. It passed one law after another against gin “production, consumption or sale.” But the gin producers, merchants and drinkers found many clever ways around the new rules. The “cat-and-mouse game” of “Gin Craze” lawmaking continued for 30 years, and then...