Betwixt The Sheets: The History of Sex, Scandal & Society Drunk Victorians: Moral Panic & Meat Wine
Apr 30, 2024
Thora Hands, historian and author of *Drinking in Victorian and Edwardian Britain*, dives into the fascinating world of Victorian drinking culture. She reveals the strange allure of meat wine and the moral panic that surrounded alcohol consumption. Thora explores gendered norms, highlighting the stigma against women's drinking and their secret pub culture. She examines class distinctions in drinking, from gin palaces to medicinal alcohol, and the complex ties between alcohol, morality, and societal anxieties of the era.
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Mothers' Day Street Drinking
- Thora Hands recounts mothers who pooled money on Mondays to drink and dance in the street, calling it 'Mother's Day.'
- This shows working-class women's visible, communal drinking practices in late Victorian London.
Secret Purchasing Enabled Women's Drinking
- Middle-class women used licensed grocers to buy alcohol discreetly, creating a 'secret drinking' culture.
- Thora Hands found evidence of women hiding bottles or charging alcohol as other groceries to avoid stigma.
Temperance Varied From Cure To Control
- The temperance movement framed drunkenness variably as moral failing or disease of will, with factions from teetotalers to moderationists.
- This produced fuzzy definitions of drunkenness and resistance to full prohibition in Victorian Britain.
