The seven curses of London

by James Greenwood

The honourable member explained that the Bill did not in any way interfere with or touch the licensing system as at present existing; where it was the wish of the inhabitants that licenses should be granted, licenses would continue to be granted as at present. But what the measure sought to do was, to empower the inhabitants of a neighbourhood, or the great majority of them, to vote within that neighbourhood the granting of any licenses at all—to crystallise public opinion, as it were, into law. The first objection that had been taken to the measure was, that it would be impossible to carry out prohibition in England; but why should that be impossible in this country which had been successfully carried out in America, in Canada, and in Nova Scotia? All he had to say upon the revenue question was, that no amount of revenue to be derived from the sale of intoxicating drinks should be allowed for a moment to weigh against the general welfare of the people; and that, if the present Bill were passed, such a mass of wealth would accumulate in the pockets of the people, that the Chancellor of the Exchequer would meet with no difficulty in obtaining ample funds for carrying on the government of the country. It was further objected that great inconvenience would be inflicted upon the minority by the operation of the Bill; but there, again, the balance of advantage and disadvantage must be looked at, and the convenience of the few should not be allowed to counterbalance the benefit that would be conferred upon the great mass of the people. Then it was said that every year there would be a great fight upon the question; but was not an annual moral contest better than nightly physical conflicts at the doors of the public-houses? The movement in favour of prohibiting the sale of liquor had proceeded from the poor, and it had been supported by what he might call the aristocracy of the working-classes. He asked the House whether it would not be wise, when the future of this country must be in the hands of the working-classes, to pay some attention to their demand for a straightforward measure of this sort, which was intended to put an end to an acknowledged evil of great magnitude.

“What,” says the Times, when commenting on Sir Wilfred Lawson’s argument, “would it matter to Sir Wilfred Lawson, or to any of the gentlemen who figure on the temperance platform, if all the public-houses of their districts were closed to-morrow? Their own personal comfort would be in no way affected; not one of them probably enters a public-house, except at canvassing times, from one year’s end to another. But it would matter a great deal to those humbler and poorer classes of the population who make daily use of the public-house. If it were closed, their comfort would be most materially affected. A large proportion of them use strong liquor without abusing it, and have therefore as much right to it, both legal and moral, as they have to their meat or clothes. Many of them could not get through the work by which they gain their own and their children’s bread without it; and their only means of procuring it is provided by the present public-house system. They have not usually capital enough to lay in for themselves a stock of liquor; and even if they had, this plan would be not only wasteful and inconvenient, but would tempt them to commit the very crime which it was employed to avoid. They find it both cheaper and more comfortable to get their liquor in small quantities as they want it, and they can only do this at a public-house. Besides, it should not be forgotten—though well-to-do reformers are very apt, from their inexperience, to forget it—that to many of these poor people living in overcrowded, ill-ventilated, ill-lighted rooms, the public-house is the only place in which they can enjoy a quiet evening in pleasant, and perhaps instructive, intercourse with their neighbours after a hard day’s work. To drive them from this genial place of resort would be in some cases almost as great a hardship as it would be to the rich man to turn him out of both private house and club. We shall perhaps be told that all this may be true, but that the question reduces itself to a choice of evils, and that, on the whole, much more misery results to the poorer classes from the use of the public-house than would result if they were deprived of it. But, even if we grant this for the sake of argument, it seems to us strangely unjust to debar one man forcibly from a privilege at once pleasant and profitable to him, simply because another abuses it. The injustice, too, is greatly heightened by the fact that those who take the most prominent and influential part in debarring him feel nothing of the suffering they inflict.”

Following Sir Wilfred Lawson in the House of Commons came Mr. Besley, who declared that something like one hundred millions sterling was annually expended in this country in intoxicating drinks; and in our prisons, our lunatic asylums, and our workhouses, large numbers of the victims of intemperate indulgence in those drinks were always to be found. Mr. Besley believed that the present mode of restricting the sale of liquors was anything but a satisfactory one. In this respect the people would be the best judges of their own wants—of what their own families and their own neighbourhoods required; and he believed that if the decision was placed in their hands, as it would be by this Bill, the evils of intoxication would be very much mitigated. He did not entertain the hope that we should ever make people sober by Act of Parliament, but he did believe that it was in the power of the Legislature to diminish the evil to a very great extent. Supposing the expenditure on intoxicating drinks were reduced one-half, how usefully might not the fifty millions thus saved be employed in the interests of the poor themselves! He believed that dwellings for the poor would be among the first works undertaken with that money. For fifty millions they might erect 250,000 dwellings, costing 200l. each, and this was an expenditure which would cause an increased demand for labour in a variety of trades.

I cannot do better than wind up these brief extracts by reproducing the loudly-applauded objections of the Home Secretary, Mr. Bruce, to the Permissive Prohibitory Liquor Bill.

“The most complete remedy for drunkenness was to be found in the cultivation among the people of a better appreciation of their own interests, rather than in legislation. This had undoubtedly been the cause of the almost complete disappearance of drunkenness among the upper classes, coupled with an increased desire for and consequent supply of intellectual amusement among them. But, although education in its largest sense was the true remedy for drunkenness, there was no reason against the introduction of repressive or preventive measures in behalf of those in our manufacturing districts, especially that large class irregularly employed and often oscillating between starvation and occasional well-doing, to whom drunkenness was a refuge from despair. The question was, in whom should the power of restriction be reposed? Some thought in the resident ratepayers, others in the magistrates, and others in a body elected for the purpose. He could not say which proposal should be adopted, but confessed that there was some reason in the demand, that the number of public-houses should be uniformly regulated according to the population. He had been asked whether he would undertake to deal with the matter. To deal with the matter in the manner proposed by the honourable baronet would at once deprive some portion of the people of means of enjoyment, and the owners of public-houses of their property. That would be a proceeding unnecessary and unjust, because, although the admitted evils of drunkenness were very grievous, there was no doubt that public-houses, especially when well managed, really did furnish to a large portion of the people a means of social comfort and enjoyment. His objection to the Bill was, that it would not only cause a great deal of disturbance in many parts of the country, but would almost inevitably cause riot. Certainly the rigorous treatment proposed by the Bill was unsuited to people whose only pleasures were sensuous. The honourable member proposed that a majority of two-thirds of the ratepayers of a borough should be able to put the Bill in operation; but in this proposal he ignored a large proportion of those most interested. Two-thirds of the ratepayers left much more than one-third of the population on the other side, and the more important portion of the population as regards this matter, because it was made up in a great measure by those who lived in all the discomfort of lodgings. Again, it was suggested that the settlement of the question might in each case be left to a majority of the population; but here, again, it might be said that the question would probably be decided by a majority of persons least interested in the question—interested, that was, only as regards peace and order, and careless how far the humbler classes of society were deprived of their pleasure. What the Legislature had to do was, not to deprive the people of means of innocent enjoyment, but to prevent that means being used to foster crime and gross self-indulgence.”

However much one might feel disposed, in the main, to agree with Sir Wilfred Lawson and his colleagues, it is not easy to grant him the position he assumes at the commencement of his argument, that “statistics are unnecessary.” It is a singular fact, and one that everyone taking an interest in the great and important question of the drunkenness of the nation must have noticed, that amongst the advocates of total-abstinence principles “statistics” invariably are regarded as “unnecessary.” This undoubtedly is a grave mistake, and one more likely than any other to cast a deeper shade of distrust over the minds of doubters. It would seem either that the great evil in question is so difficult of access in its various ramifications as to defy the efforts of the statistician, or else that total abstainers, as a body, are imbued with the conviction that the disasters arising from the consumption of intoxicating drinks are so enormous, and widespread, and universally acknowledged, that it would be a mere waste of time to bring forward figures in proof. Perhaps, again, the drunkard is such a very unsavoury subject, that the upright water-drinker, pure alike in mind and body, has a repugnance to so close a handling of him. If this last forms any part of the reason why the question of beer-drinking v. water-drinking should not be laid before us as fairly and fully as two and two can make it, the objectors may be referred to social subjects of a much more repulsive kind, concerning which many noble and large-hearted gentlemen courageously busy themselves, and studiously inquire into, with a view to representing them exactly as they are discovered. In proof of this, the reader is referred to the sections of this book that are devoted to the consideration of Professional Thieves, and of Fallen Women.

There can be no question that, in a matter that so nearly affects the domestic economy of a people, statistics are not only necessary but indispensable. No man’s word should be taken for granted, where so much that is important is involved. The man may be mistaken; but there is no getting away from figures. A man, in his righteous enthusiasm, may exaggerate even, but a square old-fashioned 4 can never be exaggerated into a 5, or a positive 1 be so twisted by plausible argument as to falsely represent 2. Yet, somehow, those who urge even so complete a revolution in the ancient and sociable habit of drinking as to make it dependent on the will of Brown and Robinson whether their neighbour Jones shall partake of a pint of beer out of the publican’s bright pewter, afford us no figures in support of their extreme views.

Nor is this deficiency observable only in those unaccustomed persons who mount the platform to make verbal statements, and with whom the handling of large and complicated numbers might be found inconvenient. Practised writers on teetotalism exhibit the same carelessness. I have before me at the present moment a goodly number of total-abstinence volumes, but not one furnishes the desired information. Among my books I find, first, John Gough’s Orations; but that able and fervent man, although he quotes by the score instances and examples that are enough to freeze the blood and make the hair stand on end of the horrors that arise from indulgence in alcoholic drinks, deals not in statistics. Dr. James Miller writes an excellent treatise on alcohol and its power; but he deals in generalities, and not in facts that figures authenticate. Here is a volume containing a Thousand Temperance Facts and Anecdotes; but in the whole thousand, not one of either tells us of how many customers, on a certain evening, visited a single and well-used public-house, went in sober, and came out palpably drunk. It would be coming to the point, if such information—quite easy to obtain—was set before us. Lastly, I have the Temperance Cyclopædia. Now, I thought, I am sure, in some shape or another, to find here what I seek; but I searched in vain. The volume in question is a bulky volume, and contains about seven hundred pages, in small close type. In it you may read all about the physical nature of intemperance, and the intellectual nature of intemperance, and of the diseases produced by the use of alcohol, and of the progress of intemperance amongst the ancient Greeks and Romans, together with the history and origin of the teetotal cause in America; but as to the number of drunkards brought before the magistrates and fined, or of the number of crimes shown at the time of trial to have been committed through drunkenness, the Cyclopædia is dumb. This last is an oversight the more to be deplored because we very well know that if the said numbers were exhibited, they would make a very startling display. It may be urged that, since we already have the testimony of magistrates, and jail-governors, and judges, of the enormous amount of crime that is attributable to strong drinks, it is unreasonable to ask for more; but this objection may be fairly met by the answer, that magistrates themselves, even when discussing the temperance question, occasionally make unreasonable remarks; as did a metropolitan magistrate the other day, who in open court declared, that “if publicans were compelled to shut up their shops, there would be no further use for his.” He must have known better. If it were as the worthy magistrate stated, it was equivalent to saying that teetotalers never appeared at his bar; but I think that he would hardly have ventured to that length.

In my belief, it is the tremendous steam and effervescence of language indulged in by the advocates of total abstinence that keeps them from making more headway. The facts they give us, like the drunkard’s grog, are generally “hot and strong,” though with very, very little of the sugar of forbearance. I find, for instance, in the temperance records before me, frequent allusion to the great number of drunkards who nightly are thrown out at the doors of public-houses where they have been passing the evening, and left to wallow in the kennel. Not only do we read of this in books, we have it from the mouths of preachers in the pulpit, and speakers on public platforms and in temperance lecture-halls. But I venture to declare that whoever believes anything of the kind, believes what is not true. Every man has a right to speak according to his experience; and I speak from mine. I think that I may lay claim to as extensive a knowledge of the ways of London—especially the bye and ugly ways—as almost any man; and I can positively say that it has never once been my lot to witness the throwing (“throwing” is the expression) of a man from a public-house-door, followed by his helpless wallowing in the kennel. What is more, it was by no means necessary for me to witness such a hideous and disgusting spectacle to convince me of the evils of intemperance, and of how necessary it was to reform the existing laws as applying to the reckless granting of licenses in certain neighbourhoods. It is quite enough, more than enough, to satisfy me of what a terrible curse a bestial indulgence in gin and beer is, when I see a human creature turned helpless from the public-house, and left to stagger home as he best may. To my eyes, he is then no better than a pig; and if he took to wallowing in the gutter, it would be no more than one might expect; but he does not “wallow in the gutter;” and it is not necessary to picture him in that wretched predicament in order to bring home to the decent mind how terrible a bane strong drink is, or to shock the man already inclined to inebriation into at once rushing off to a teetotal club and signing the pledge.

And now I must be permitted to remark that no man more than myself can have a higher appreciation of the efforts of those who make it the duty of their lives to mitigate the curse of drunkenness. What vexes me is, the wrong-headed, and not unfrequently the weak and ineffectual, way in which they set about it. As I view the matter, the object of the preacher of total abstinence is not so much the reclamation of the drunkard already steeped and sodden, as the deterring from reckless indulgence those who are not averse to stimulative liquors, but are by no means drunkards. Therefore they appeal as a rule to men who are in the enjoyment of their sober senses, and in a condition to weigh with a steady mind the arguments that are brought forward to induce them to abandon alcoholic stimulants altogether. Now, it must be plain to these latter—sound-headed men, who drink beer, not because they are anxious to experience the peculiar sensations of intoxication, but because they conscientiously believe that they are the better for drinking it—it must be evident to these that teetotal triumphs, exhibited in the shape of converted drunkards, are at best but shallow affairs. “Any port in a storm,” is the wrecked mariner’s motto; and no doubt the wretched drunkard, with his poor gin-rotted liver, and his palsied limbs, and his failing brain, with perhaps a touch of delirium tremens to spur him on, might be glad, indeed, to escape to a teetotal harbour of refuge; and it is not to be wondered at, if, reclaimed from the life of a beast and restored to humanity, he rejoices, and is anxious to publish aloud the glad story of his redemption. As a means of convincing the working man of the wrong he commits in drinking a pint of fourpenny, the upholder of total-abstinence principles delights to bring forth his “brand from the burning”—the reclaimed drunkard—and get him, with a glibness that repetition insures, to detail the particulars of his previous horrible existence—how he drank, how he swore, how he blasphemed, how he broke up his home, and brutally ill-treated his wife and children. All this, that he may presently arrive at the climax, and say, “This I have been, and now look at me! I have a black coat instead of a ragged fustian jacket; my shirt-collar is whiter and more rigid in its purity even than your own. See what teetotalism has done for me, and adopt the course I adopted, and sign the pledge.”