Drunkenness, Anti-social Behaviour, Class, Gender and Alcohol in the Making of the Habitual Drunkards Act, 1870–79

Abstract

Being drunk can be understood as both social and anti-social behaviour. If-as Maty Douglas has stated — drink constructs the world, then the defining of boundaries between acceptable and unacceptable drunkenness is central to the making of culture (Douglas, 1987: 8). In Britain, by the end of the nineteenth century, an Inebriates Act granted the state powers to provide asylums in which habitual drunkards could be forcibly detained. In the discussions surrounding this legalization during the later decades of the century, ideas of biology and heredity were central to the understanding of the problem and the threat drunkards posed to the health of the ‘race’ was much discussed. Studies show that 80 per cent of the population of these institutions were women, a finding that has posed ‘a particular puzzle for historians’ (Hunt et al. 1989: 244 and Zedner, 1992: 6). By tracing the origins of the inebriate asylum movement in Victorian Britain and the ideas on drink, class and gender that surrounded it, this chapter aims to contribute towards solving that puzzle.