Gin was said to have been invented by a Dutch physician as a cheap diuretic. Within decades it had crossed the Channel, and by 1743, London was consuming 2.2 gallons of gin per person per year — every man, woman, and child in a city of 600,000.
This episode traces the history of gin from the Dutch Low Countries to the streets of Georgian London, where it became the first large-scale public health crisis of the industrial age. The city's poorest workers drank it because it was cheaper than food and safer than water. Parliament banned it, taxed it, and restricted it — and none of that worked until they regulated who could sell it.
William Hogarth published Gin Lane in 1751, showing a mother dropping her baby into a gin vault. Parliament passed the Gin Act the same year. The poverty that caused the crisis didn't go anywhere.
Full show notes, research sources, and transcript at thealchemistsbar.com.
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