GIN TEMPLES – The expense in fitting up gin-shop bars in
London is almost incredible, everyone one vieing with his neighbour in
convenient arrangements, general display, rich carving, bass work,
finely-veined mahogany, gilding, and ornamental painting. The carving at one
ornament alone in the Grapes gin-shop, Old-street-road, cost £100; the
workmanship was by one of the first carvers in London. Three gin-shops have
been lately fitted up in Red Lion-street, at an expense, for the bar alone, of
upwards of 2000l. Times was when gin was only to be found in by-lanes
and blind-allies – in dirty obscure holes, ‘ycleped dram-shops; but not gin is
become a giant demi-god – a mighty spirit, dwelling in gaudy gold-bespattered
temples, erected to his honour in every street, and worshipped by countless
thousands, who daily sacrifice at his shrine their health, their strength, their
money, their minds, their bodies, their wives, children, sacred home, and
liberty. Juggernaut is but a fool to him, for the devotees of Juggernaut,
though they put themselves into the way of being crushed to death beneath his
chariot wheels, are put out of their misery at once; but the devotees of the
great spirit Gin devote themselves to lingering misery; for his sake they are
content to drag on a degraded nasty existence – to see their children pine,
dwindle and famish, to steep themselves in poverty to the very lips, and die at
last poor, sneaking, beadle-kicked, gruel-swollen paupers! In these temples of
the great spirit Gin may be seen maudlin, unwashed multitudes, the ancient and
the infant of a span long, old men and maidens, grandsires and grandams,
fathers and mothers, husbands, wives and children, crowding, jostling, and
sucking in the pardons of the spirit which the flaunting priestesses dole out
to them in return for their copper offerings. – Sunday in London
The Times, 5
February 1834
