The Tale of Terrible, Terrible Hooch -- Craze: Gin and Debauchery in the Age of Reason

November 20, 2002

Despite last tasting gin at the age of five -- when she immediately threw it up after drinking from an unattended gin and tonic at her parents' cocktail party -- Jessica Warner long knew there was a good book to be written about the craze for drinking gin in 18th century England. Many years after publishing her first academic papers on the period, Warner is now the author of the critically lauded and very readable Craze: Gin and Debauchery in the Age of Reason , (Four Walls Eight Windows).

Sharp-eyed readers will quickly delight, realizing that they are in hands of an author willing to take a poke at sacred cows. In her acknowledgments, Warner writes that the staff at the British Library -- in contrast to many other helpful librarians -- "could scarce find time or energy to help readers humbler than themselves."

When asked to enlarge upon her problems, Warner said in a recent interview that getting into the library was difficult. "You are made to wait at several junctures; you, your person, and your character, are searched at several junctures; and the staff, while in a constant state of panic, nonetheless shuffle at a pace that defies measurement." But she didn't want to say too much more, as she was "worried that I will be turned away the next time I attempt to enter the sacred precincts.…"

Originally from Washington, D.C., Warner studied in Berkeley, and she has lived in Toronto for seven years. "Enough time," she said, "to watch the people you know grow old and go to fat. Of course, this statement doesn't apply to me. No, no, no." She is a professor of history at the University of Toronto and a research scientist at the Center for Addiction and Mental Health. She became a Canadian citizen two years ago.

Warner has been gratified at the reception Craze has received. "For a first book, this has been a pretty amazing experience," she acknowledged. Of course, it helps that "Canadians are partial to anything written in Canada," and she admits that "Canadians definitely warm up to criticisms of American social policies."

Social policies, the U.S. "War on Drugs," and those who insist they know what is good for other people are on the receiving end of some sharply worded observations from Warner: "A drug war presents a simple solution to complex social problems. Take away drugs, and away go all the bad behaviors that we associate with young people, black people, Latino people -- in short, anybody who doesn't fit into the political and cultural mainstream."

In Craze, Warner likens the British government's response to gin (there were eight Gin Acts between 1729 and 1751) to the U.S. response to crack cocaine. In the book, she argues that the reasoning behind a Drug War "effectively absolves government of the responsibility to do something about the sorts of environments that make drugs attractive in the first place."

Warner said she wrote Craze because "nobody else had." While there had been some academic treatments of the phenomenon -- usually somewhat heavy on the sociological jargon -- "nobody seemed to make any connections between [the gin craze] and more recent drug epidemics."

Of course, the gin of today is very different from the gin of 18th century England, when mass production made distilled liquor available to the masses for the first time. "The stuff that 18th-century Brits produced," Warner explained, "was gin in name only. It was terrible, terrible hooch, made from moldy grains, with fruits and other flavors added to mask its harsh and musty taste. Basically, gin was an ersatz form of punch."

Warner lived in London for four months to research Craze, and, although she "expected everybody to have either a Cockney or an Oxbridge accent," outside of the British Library she did not get into too much trouble. Not drinking gin probably helped, although she enjoyed the U.K. pub culture -- something she noted was sadly lacking in the U.S. or her hometown, Toronto, where all bars are under the strict control of the Liquor Licensing Board.

Warner is practical about writing. She tries to write for about six hours a day, and, while she said, "Most of the time nothing happens," she believes that "if you are doing it right, you are always striving."

Warner is currently working on a new book, "a parable about terrorism" about "a very stupid young man" who met George III, Edmund Burke, Horace Walpole, even Thomas Jefferson, and who "committed acts of terror on behalf of the American Revolution." Warner said that when she summarizes it for people, "their jaws drop, and they say, 'That's fiction, right?'" It's not, but, as Craze shows, Warner is a historian with a eye and an ear for a good story, and the skills to tell it. -- Gavin J. Grant

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