“By G–d, he drinks like a man!”

Abstract

In his memoirs, published in 1858, the Reverend Edward Bannerman Ramsay of the Scottish Episcopal Church recounted a story that was told to him by his friend, the author Henry Mackenzie (1745–1831). As the story goes, Mackenzie was involved in “a regular drinking party” sometime around the turn of the nineteenth century, and “was keeping as free from the usual excesses as he was able.” After hours of imbibing wine, Mackenzie noticed “companions around him falling victims to the power of drink,” so he “dropped off under the table among the slain, as a measure of precaution. Lying there, his attention was called to a small pair of hands working at his throat; on asking what it was, a voice replied, ‘Sir, I’m the lad that’s to lowse the neck-cloths.’” “Here, then,” remarked Ramsay, “was a family where, on drinking occasions, it was the appointed duty of one of the household to attend, and when the guests were becoming helpless, to untie their cravats in fear of apoplexy and suffocation.”¹