Foreword

In a 1726 pamphlet setting out A Brief Case of the Distillers, Daniel Defoe, author of Robinson Crusoe, wrote that: “The distilling trade, considered in its present magnitude, is one of the greatest improvements, and the most to the advantage of the publick, of any business now carried out in England”. Defoe was writing to defend English producers of spirits who were facing Dutch competition, especially from the newly-fashionable “Geneva water”, soon to be known as gin. The English distillers won their case, and soon gin was everywhere, with men and women even drinking together in public for the first time. The authorities soon came to regret their decision (as did Defoe) and over the next 25 years, the UK Parliament would pass no fewer than five Acts to try to put an end to what became known as the Gin Craze (Abel, 2001). The craze died out in the 1750s, although it was revived to some extent in the Victorian “gin palaces” of the following century.