On March 8, Mr. William Pulteney affixed a duty of 20s. per gallon on gin, on the grounds of ancient use and sanction, and of its reducing many thousands of families at once to a state of despair.
Sir Robert Walpole had no immediate concern in the laying of this tax on spirituous liquors, but suffered therefrom much unmerited obloquy. The bill was presented by Jekyll from a spirit of philanthropy, which led him to contemplate with horror the progress of vice that marked the popular attachment to this inflammatory poison. The populace showed their disapprobation of this Act in their usual fashion of riot and violence. We are told in Coxe’s Walpole that numerous desperados continued the clandestine sale of gin in defiance of every restriction.
The duty of 20s. per gallon was repealed 16 Geo. II., c. 8. On the 28th of September, 1736, it was deemed necessary to send a detachment of sixty soldiers from Kensington to protect the house of Sir Joseph Jekyll, the Master of the Rolls, in Chancery Lane, from the violence threatened by the populace against this eminent lawyer. Two soldiers with their bayonets fixed were planted as sentinels at the little door next Chancery Lane, and the great doors were shut up, the rest of the soldiers kept garrison in the stables in the yard.
This agitation gave rise to many a ballad and broadside, such as the “Fall of Bob,” or the “Oracle of Gin,” a tragedy; and “Desolation, or the Fall of Gin,” a poem.
The Lamentable Fall of Madame Geneva.—29 Sept., 1736.[65]
The Woman holds a song to yᵉ tune to yᵉ Children in yᵉ Wood.
“Good lack, good lack, and Well-a-day,
That Madame Gin should fall:
Superior Powers she must obey.
This Act will starve us all.”