DRINK AND DRUGS IN EUROPA DURING THE XIX CENTURY

Alcoholism

The nineteenth century was an age of high consumption of alcohol—compared with the late twentieth century, but not with the eighteenth century—plus consumption of opium and cocaine, both of which were legally available. The ravages caused to the human body by excessive alcohol or drugs were poorly understood, and physicians regularly prescribed narcotics as painkillers; some even recommended heavy alcohol consumption. Governments did little to control alcohol or opium sales in 1800. Laissez-faire capitalism, which opposed government restrictions on the market, perpetuated that situation. Furthermore, alcohol taxes kept most governments in business. In 1870 Britain had virtually no income tax but raised 35 percent of its total revenue on alcohol taxes. In Ireland, 54 percent of all government revenue was raised by taxes on alcohol.
End-of-the-century Russia raised even more income through a government monopoly on vodka. Heavy drinking was socially acceptable. William Pitt the Younger frequently addressed Parliament while drunk; on important occasions, he stepped behind the speaker’s chair and induced vomiting before making a critical speech. Even the more puritanical Gladstone drank a sherry mixture in Parliament, to ease his way through three-hour speeches. Another prime minister made himself light-headed with ether before speaking, and a fourth took a jolt of opium dissolved in alcohol. If the rich and powerful behaved that way, it is hardly surprising that people who lived in a world of epidemic disease, short life expectancy, seventy-to-eighty-hour workweeks, no welfare legislation or retirement, and minimal diets found solace and sociability in cafes, pubs, and beer halls.

Wine

A variety of records reveal the extent of nineteenth century drinking. The Antwerp study found that beer consumption in the 1820s averaged two bottles per day (twenty-three ounces) for every man, woman, and child in the population, plus approximately one bottle of wine and one bottle of gin each per month; by the 1850s nearly 10 percent of all calories consumed in the city came from alcohol. A similar survey of France in 1900 found a per capita annual consumption rate of 180 liters of wine (240 standard bottles), 27 liters of beer (more than three cases of 12-ounce bottles), and 4.7 liters of distilled spirits (more than 5 bottles of alcohol). Those averages include the entire population. If one excludes children below the age of fourteen (more than 30 percent of the population in 1900), every adult in France had to consume 325 bottles of wine per year; clearly, a significant portion of the population drank more than a bottle per day, all year long, much of it distilled to make a rough brandy.
A study of Russia found that spending on vodka exceeded total spending for education, books, oil, gifts, priests, the poor, weddings, and funerals, which may explain why the government chose to tax vodka instead of books.
Such drinking led to efforts to control sales of alcoholic beverages. The first European temperance society was organized in Ireland in 1818, and such groups spread across the British Isles during industrialization. Many motives could be discerned behind the temperance campaign: Some reformers were motivated by religious morality and saw drinking as sinful; others acted from the perspective of social class—sometimes to help families in poverty, sometimes in fear of the poor and crime, sometimes angry about alcohol and absenteeism from work. Although the upper classes were notoriously heavy drinkers, most reformers agreed with employers that drink was “the curse of [the] working class.” British law regulated the opening hours of ale-houses in 1828 and began the licensing of pubs in 1830. Scottish clergymen won the first prohibition of alcohol—no sales on Sundays—in 1853.

Opium

By the time that temperance leagues became active in European cities, advocates of social control were also becoming concerned about opium and cocaine. Opium, has been used medicinally since ancient Mediterranean civilizations; one of the oldest known Egyptian papyri praises its painkilling powers. A Swiss physician popularized medical opium in the sixteenth century in a compound he named laudanum (“highly praised”). Laudanum, a tincture of opium dissolved in alcohol, became a basic medication, and by 1800 it was widely consumed by all who could afford it.
Britain imported tons of opium every year. Most of this stock was reexported to the Far East, where the British were the world’s pushers—they had used opium addiction as a means of opening oriental markets and they fought two Opium Wars (1839–42 and 1856–58) to keep their drug markets open. Even subtracting the reexportation of opium, the British home market was enormous. Domestic consumption grew from 8.5 tons of opium in 1827 to 30.5 tons in 1859, spawning a network of respectable importers, auctioneers, brokers, and merchants. British governments shared in this lucrative trade through an opium tariff until 1860.
The abolition of the tariff cut the price of opium to approximately one shilling (twenty-five cents) per ounce, roughly an agricultural laborer’s weekly wages in 1860. Opium was initially a drug of the educated and upper classes, because of its cost and its circulation by physicians. In the early nineteenth century, addiction was far more common among famous writers than criminals or the poor. Virtually the entire literary community of romanticism used opium. Thomas de Quincey became famous for a book entitled Confessions of an English Opium Eater (1856), which bluntly said, “Thou hast the keys of paradise, O just, subtle, and mighty opium!” Coleridge became renowned for a poem (“Kubla Kahn”) that he composed after an opium-induced fantasy. Byron took a brand of laudanum called the Black Drop and satisfied references to it appear in his writing.

Shelley used opium to relieve stress. Keats consumed such large quantities that he even considered using it for suicide. Elizabeth Barrett Browning’s spinal problems made her dependent on a daily dose of opium, and her husband concluded that “sleep only came to her in a red hood of poppies.” Sir Walter Scott began taking huge quantities during an illness and wrote at least one of his novels under its influence. Similar lists could be drawn of political figures (the friends of George IV often found him stupefied by opium) or even famous preachers (William Wilberforce was an addict because of his ulcer medication). This situation lasted until the Pharmacy Act of 1868 introduced the first restrictions because the government feared that workers were starting to use opium for its pleasure-giving properties. Further restrictions appeared in the 1890s when the government began to fear that immigrants, especially the Chinese, congregated in “opium dens” and plotted crimes.

By Stephen Hause and William Maltby in the book 'Western Civilization' (A History of European Society), Thompson Wadsworth, 2005, p.444-446. Adapted to be posted by Leopoldo Costa.