Geographies of drink culture in Liverpool: Lessons from the drink capital of nineteenth-century England

Abstract

This paper explores the faith that different agencies, state and social, placed in police data detailing drunkenness, how that data was extracted, and, as a consequence, those who would make claims based on the data. Statistical rankings both reflected and reinforced a nineteenth-century geography of drunkenness, which revealed Liverpool to be the drink capital of England; this paper reveals how that geography was propped on problematic figures, which were reworked in contemporary discourses of drink and crime, and argues for a spatial contextualization of drinking and drunkenness.

Notes

Notes

[1] The Times, 23 May 2006, ‘City of outlaws leads the league of crime hotspots’; Nottingham Evening Post, 23 May 2006, p. 4, ‘It's lies, damn lies and statistics—blast from city leader’.

[2] British Parliamentary Papers (BPP) 1878, XIV. On the map those counties with a rate of drunkenness apprehensions of less than 37 per 10,000 inhabitants are bordered in blue, and those above 37 in red. All towns with more than 82 per 10,000 are marked in red. All 23 counties lying south of the line have blue borders. Of the 58 towns north of the line, 49 are marked red; of the 48 south of the line, 45 are marked blue.

[3] Liverpool Record Office (LRO), H 352 COU 1898–99. Report on the Police Establishment, and the State of Crime.

[4] The policing of class and race has been debated since Storch's much-cited 1976 article.

[5] Liverpool Critic, 22 July 1876, p. 103, ‘When is a Man Drunk?’ suggested that ‘… a man may be both drunk and sober. If the legs be all right but the head all wrong, how can the entire man be intoxicated? If a staggering man is so clear-headed that he steadies himself at the approach of another man, or if laughter almost idiotic be accompanied by offensive actions or foolish language, why should he be reproached? … The only safe test is, was he unable to take care of himself? and the only proof of this is, that a man has come to grief. That a policeman or other bystander has noticed stammering, staggering, or loud language is not sufficient; and therefore we affirm that before our magistrates more courteous consideration should be accorded to the explanations proffered by accused persons’. See Mutch (2003) for more on Liverpool's independently-minded magistrates.

[6] 1872 [Bill 198] Intoxicating Liquors (Licensing). [House of Lords].

[7] LRO, H 352 COU 1869 and LRO, H 352 COU 1875.

[8] The 1902 Licensing Act formalised a distinction between ‘drunk’, and ‘drunk and incapable’; the latter charge justifying arrest instead of mere summons, meaning that drunkards could be kept in legal custody and would be discharged only upon bail to appear before the magistrates. Following the Act the number of apprehensions was 2454 cases (or over 40%) higher in 1903 than in 1902 (7377 vs. 4923). (Licensing Act, 1872, s. 12 and Licensing Act, 1902, s. 1, cited in LRO, H 352 2 WAT 1907).

[9] The Times, 1 January 1875, p. 3, ‘Public houses and drunkenness at Liverpool’.

[10] Liverpool Citizen, 25 February 1888, p. 11, ‘Cornering a Teetotaller. [By the Author of ‘Men in Blue’]’.

[11] Liverpool Citizen, 25 February 1888, p. 11, ‘Cornering a Teetotaller. [By the Author of ‘Men in Blue’]’.

[12] The Liverpool Social Reformer, 1 May 1873, p. 137, ‘Major Greig to his Recruits’.

[13] LRO, H 352 2 WAT 1908. Leonard Dunning claimed that by 1908 there was, ‘a truer appreciation of the value of these figures, as a measure of anything else than the mere action of the police’. This is not to say that the figures had become more representative, but that people were better evaluating their worth.