It would be hard to say why historians have not rated the effect of strong drink as the significant factor in nineteenth-century history that it undoubtedly was. Its importance stands out from every page of the contemporary record. The most prominent factor in every disputed election was bestial drunkenness. . . . Drunkenness caused endless trouble to the employers of labour, as for instance the builders of the railways found to their cost. The results of strong drink were patent in disgusting forms at the appropriate times in most of the streets and market places of Britain. . . . In the background there was always present the degradation, the cruelty, particularly to the weak and defenceless, which resulted from drunkenness. The cause of its prevalence was no doubt an unfortunate historical tendency made much worse by intolerable living conditions. In many cases indeed the terms on which life was offered is a complete explanation of any drunkenness. — J. Kitson Claek, The Making of Victorian England
- Addiction in the Nineteenth Century
- Temperance and Teetotalism
- Ease of obtaining alcohol
- Drunkedness in the Navy and the Navvy
- Drunkedness at Funerals
- Christmas alcohol consumption
- “Great is thy power, O Gin” — G. W. M. Reynolds on the harm it does to the poor
- Public Drunkedness
- Drunkedness Cause of Accidental Deaths
- Drunkedness and Crime
- Drunkedness and Loss of Class Status
- The Effect of Alcoholism on Productivity
- The Victorian and Edwardian Public House (Pub)
- Instead of the Pub: Temperance Billiard Halls
Alcohol and Alcoholism in Literature and Art
- Charles Dickens
- London Gin Shops in Sketches by Boz
- Alcoholic Drink in Charles Dickens's Writings
- Alcoholism in Our Mutual friend
- Charles Dickens and Two Kinds of Punch
- Gin Punch and Wine in Dickens's Christmas Scenes
- Ford Madox Brown's Work
- “Where does your Mother get her Gin, My Dear?” (Punch, 1879)
- William Holman Hunt's The Flight of Madeline and Porphyro during the Drunkenness Attending the Revelry (The Eve of St. Agnes)
- Robert Braithwaite Martineau, The Last Day in the Old House
Last modified 16 March 2022