redcarbob
Well-known member
Nothing changed much then!!!
Evidence from the official statistics (from 1855 onwards) and the local press paint a dismal picture. Drunkenness, especially during holiday periods, disfigured the town and aroused the ire of the local opinion formers. The festivities of Christmas 1858 and New Year 1859 gave rise to "men in a beastly state of beer ... half-puddled walking about in their every-day toggery and black faces ... half-idiotic imbeciles, as they reeled along 'in all their glory'" while "there were assembled as vile a crew of 'roughs' as ever escaped the inside of Deptford hulks." As a consequence, parts of the town were "bespattered with filthy ejections from overburdened stomachs" and "bestial refuse met the eye at every turn, bearing the distinct testimony to the dregs of humanity which had been thereabouts." The emotiveness of the press is not contradicted by the dispassionate statistics of the criminal returns. In the five years centred on 1861 the drunkenness rate in the town was 1990 per 100,000, compared with a national average of c.400 and a national peak of c.850 in 1875.
Evidence from the official statistics (from 1855 onwards) and the local press paint a dismal picture. Drunkenness, especially during holiday periods, disfigured the town and aroused the ire of the local opinion formers. The festivities of Christmas 1858 and New Year 1859 gave rise to "men in a beastly state of beer ... half-puddled walking about in their every-day toggery and black faces ... half-idiotic imbeciles, as they reeled along 'in all their glory'" while "there were assembled as vile a crew of 'roughs' as ever escaped the inside of Deptford hulks." As a consequence, parts of the town were "bespattered with filthy ejections from overburdened stomachs" and "bestial refuse met the eye at every turn, bearing the distinct testimony to the dregs of humanity which had been thereabouts." The emotiveness of the press is not contradicted by the dispassionate statistics of the criminal returns. In the five years centred on 1861 the drunkenness rate in the town was 1990 per 100,000, compared with a national average of c.400 and a national peak of c.850 in 1875.