Order a gin and tonic in London today and you’ll probably be handed a menu of craft gins, botanicals and fancy garnishes. Three hundred years ago, gin was blamed for wrecking the city. Here’s how London’s favourite spirit went from scandal to sophistication.
The Gin Craze
Gin arrived from the Netherlands in the late 1600s, and the government encouraged home-grown distilling. By the early 1700s gin was cheap, strong and sold almost everywhere in London. The period from roughly the 1720s to the 1750s is known as the Gin Craze, when drinking among the city’s poor reached levels that alarmed politicians and reformers.
That’s where the nickname “mother’s ruin” comes from: gin was blamed for neglected children, poverty and crime, and much of the panic focused on women drinking it.
Gin Lane
In 1751 the artist William Hogarth published Gin Lane, a print of a London street in chaos, alongside its cheerful counterpart Beer Street. The same year Parliament passed the Gin Act of 1751, which helped bring the craze under control by restricting who could sell gin.
The Victorian gin palace
Gin came back in style in the 1800s, with the arrival of the gin palace: glittering bars full of mirrors, etched glass, polished wood and gas lighting, designed to dazzle drinkers coming in from dark, dirty streets. A handful of Victorian pubs in London still have this kind of over-the-top interior, and they’re well worth seeking out.
London Dry and the gin revival
“London Dry” is a style of gin, not a place of origin: a dry gin where the flavour comes from botanicals added during distillation, with nothing sweet added afterwards. After decades as a slightly old-fashioned drink, gin had a big revival in the 2010s, and today London is full of small distilleries, gin bars and tasting rooms.
Where to drink gin with a side of history
- A Victorian pub with its original interior: look for etched glass, mirrors and carved wood bars.
- A distillery tour: several London distilleries offer tastings, so you can see how it’s made.
- A City pub on a weekday afternoon, when the office crowd hasn’t arrived yet.
Sip mother’s ruin with us
On our Pub Waddle you’ll sip mother’s ruin in a gin palace (that’s a G&T, btw), have a pint against a Roman wall and hear the gin-soaked history of one of the City’s most haunted pubs. It runs every Monday at 1:30 PM.
Fancy a G&T with your history? Book the Pub Waddle.
