It has been suggested that Hogarth's art stretched far beyond his time and that his masterful engravings are as relevant to our society as they were to his (Think of any UK City Centre on a Saturday night).
Gin Lane shows shocking scenes of infanticide, starvation, madness, decay and suicide, while Beer Street depicts industry, health, bonhomie and thriving commerce, but there are contrasts and subtle details that some critics believe allude to the prosperity of Beer Street as the cause of the misery found in Gin Lane.
William Hogarth's Gin Lane and Beer Street Engravings side by side, 1750
William Hogarth, 1697-1764
Hogarth's etching of Gin Lane takes me back to Secondary School History classes. It is arguably one of his most famous works of engraved art. The well known scene is set in the poverty-stricken area to the north of Covent Garden which can be identified by the tower of St George's, Bloomsbury in the background. Gin Lane addressed a very real problem in mid eighteenth century England -- the abuse of spirits by the working classes and the poor.Gin had been considered to be the plague of London in the first half of the C18th. Controls on consumption were lifted at the turn of the century and stills proliferated with the result that by 1750 more than one in six houses in this part of London sold gin. Gin was said to be responsible for a lowering of the birth rate and an increase in infant mortality and despite immigration to London the population began to fall.
Hogarth's Beer Street
The rest of the scene is populated with doughty and good-humoured English workers. The only business that is in trouble is the pawnbroker: Mr Pinch lives in the one poorly-maintained, crumbling building in the picture, a direct contract to Mr Gripe in Gin Lane. The rest of the scene is populated with doughty and good-humoured English workers. The inhabitants of both Beer Street and Gin Lane are drinking rather than working, but in Beer Street the workers are resting after their labours—all those depicted are in their place of work or have their wares or the tools of their trade about them-while in Gin Lane the people drink instead of working.Beer Street is a celebration of Englishness depicting the benefits of the nourishment of the native beer. No foreign influences pollute what is a fiercely nationalistic image. An early impression showed a scrawny Frenchman being ejected from the scene by the burly blacksmith who in later prints holds aloft a leg of mutton or ham.
Failure of Parliament
When it became apparent that copious gin consumption was causing social problems, efforts were made to control the production of the spirit. Parliament passed Acts of 1736 and 1743 which were ineffective. A new campaign in 1750 was launched - of which Hogarth's print was a part - leading to the Gin Act of 1751 which introduced licensing of retail premises and finally reduced consumption. Various loopholes were exploited to avoid the taxes, including selling gin under pseudonyms such as "Ladies' Delight", "Bob", "Cuckold's Delight" and the none-too-subtle "Parliament gin".
Hogarth's Gin Lane Etching
In the etching In the right foreground, an emaciated ballad singer has just passed away, recalling the medieval figure of death. His left hand still clutches his bottle. A half-naked drunken woman fails to notice that her child is falling to its death in front of the Gin Royal Tavern. Beyond, a craftsman pawns the tools of his trade and a woman her cooking pots highlighting how important Gin had become to them in their lives compared to everything else. The sour faced pawn broker is appropriately named, "S. Gripe". Both his wealthy home and clothes stand in direct contrast to the ruination around. Only pawn brokers, coffin makers and distillers profit in such a society.Also in this detailed engraving you can see a boy sleeping while a snail crawls on to his shoulder, another boy shares a bone with a dog, a baby is impaled, the lame and the blind fight each other and everyone drinks gin, from babies to young charity girls (identifiable by their uniform caps and aprons and the badges on their sleeves). An old woman confined to a wheelbarrow, an early version of a wheelchair?
Various scenes of mayhem fill the street in the behind the main figures. Murder and other forms of unacceptable violence seem to be common. Above, a unmaintained building is about to collapse. In the ruins of another house (to the right) a man has committed suicide by hanging. Below him, the 'Kilman Distiller' has made a thriving trade by selling its gin to school children.
Hogarth's Gin Lane, published in 1750, had the intended immediate impact. During the same year it was published, parliament passed the Gin act which regulated the sale of alcohol. The middle classes would have seen the pictures as a straight comparison of "good" and "evil" while the lower classes would have seen the connection between the prosperity of Beer Street and the poverty of Gin Lane.
Other Gin related blog posts:
- It's Gin o'clock- See how Gin is made in London
- The start of the Georgians
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