Gin: The Much Lamented Death of Madam Geneva: The Eighteenth Century Gin Craze Read Online Free Page A

people. The replacement of the unknown fifty-five-year-old German who sat on the throne with the late Queen’s half-brother seemed perfectly plausible.
    By 1736, it didn’t seem so any more, or only to people like Robert Nixon and Samuel Killingbeck. After twenty years of Hanoverian stability, the Stuarts had receded several steps into the realm of myth. A French-speaking king didn’t seem any more desirable than a German-speaking one. And although he had ditched much of the baggage of absolutism, James Stuart had stubbornly refused to turn away from Rome. The world had moved on. The opposition had found other ground on which to fight its battles.
    Jacobitism had become something more diffuse; the king acrossthe water was wreathed in mist. The mist was partly made up of romantic memories and partly of dreams for a better future. Nine years later, in 1745, when the mist briefly evaporated and a real Jacobite army was marching through England behind a real Stuart prince, the main emotion among English Jacobites was one of alarm. The Pretender didn’t realise it himself, but after twenty-one years Jacobitism in England had turned into something quite different from a campaign to restore him.
    Instead, it had become a general form of protest against those in power. As long as there was Jacobitism, there was an alternative to the Hanoverians. Jacobitism became a way of withholding support. That way, the King of England and his ministers, like everyone else, had to live with uncertainty. It had metamorphosed into a general spirit of subversion. Disgruntled Tory squires toasted the ‘King over the Water’ to express their disenchantment with London, the times and Walpole’s ministry. Jacobite songs like ‘The King Shall Enjoy His Own Again’ became a way to cheek anyone in authority. 8 Smugglers adopted Jacobite oaths and slogans. Wesley, attending an execution at Tyburn, saw that two of the condemned men had white cockades in their hats. In the great age of popular satire, it was easy to find ways of annoying the establishment without going so far as to overthrow it. The accession of James II on 11 June could be marked by a sprig of rue and thyme; the Pretender’s birthday, four days later, by a white cockade.
    And if the aim was to give those in authority sleepless nights, Jacobitism certainly had its effect. Sir Robert Walpole, for one, could never convince himself that his position was secure. ‘I am not ashamed,’ he told the House of Commons in 1738, ‘to say I am in fear of the Pretender.’ And there was still enough of real substance in Jacobitism to keep the fear alive. In 1734 there were disturbances in Suffolk Street on the anniversary of Charles I’s execution. The divisions of the Civil War and the GloriousRevolution were still there, and so were French armies, Jacobite cells, and Jacobite plots.
    It wasn’t just Robert Nixon’s packet of phosphorus that alarmed Walpole, or his blurry paper attacking government legislation. It was what lay ahead. The Gin Act was due to come in on Michaelmas Day – 29 September – and already that looked like a flashpoint. ‘There are great endeavours,’ he wrote to his brother, ‘to inflame the people, and to raise great tumults upon Michaelmas Day, when the Gin Act takes place … These lower sorts of Jacobites appear at this time more busy than they have for a great while. They are very industrious, and taking advantage of everything that offers, to raise tumult and disorder among the people.’
    Tumult and disorder followed the Westminster bomb by no more than a fortnight. In the event, the alarm was given by the Deputy Lieutenants of Tower Hamlets. They were barricaded inside the Angel and Crown tavern in Spitalfields, on Tuesday 27 July, and calling desperately for reinforcements. Outside, the East End had erupted in violence. 9
    It was feeling against the Irish that triggered it. London was full of Irish workers. They flooded into the capital in search of jobs