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Untitled Article
'It must not , however , be concluded that workmen were , * t any time , c drunkards to the extent it has been common for writers and talkers to i represent them as being . It will be apparent * on the least consideration , tthat the wages of working men were at no time sufficient to enable them 1 to neglect their work , in consequence of drunkenness , for two or three ( days every week , as it has been pretended was the common custom * Drinking to excess is expensive , and more and more expensive as the
habit becomes confirmed , from the increased quantity of liquor requisite to produce drunkenness ; add to which , that a drunkard is seldom able to follow his employment until some time after he has become sober again ; that drunkenness necessarily produces illness , dismissal from employment , and poverty ; and , consequently , that these were causes sufficient to prevent workmen * generally , from being drunkards to any thing like the extent imputed to them . Not so many as half of the immense number of working men in London have constant employment all the year round . '
The principal documents for showing the positive amount of such drunkenness as obtrudes itself on public notice , are the police reports . Ou these Mr . Place comments as follows : — 4 By the annual statements of the Commissioners of Police , it appears that the number of drunken cases which came under their cognizance were— Males , Females . Total . ' In 1831 19 , 148 11 , 593 31 , 341
• In 1832 20 , 304 12 , 332 32 , 636 1 In 1833 18 , 268 .... 11 , 612 29 , 880 * I believe that in 1831 the district over which the Police had jurisdiction was much less than it was in 1832 and 1833 . * The accounts of the Police Commissioners , bo far as they are correct evidence , seem to show that drunkenness is not increasing in the metropolis . 4 It should be remembered that the above numbers relate , or at the
least that those of the two last years do , to a district containing more than a million and a half of people . 4 The numbers also relate to cases and not to persons , and thus the same person may furnish a great many cases in the course of the year ; some have furnished two , and even three cases within twenty-four hour 3 .
The whole miscreant population of this great metropolis and its environs are Included . Beggars , vagabonds of every description * dissolute people of all sorts . The Irish of St . Giles , St . Luke , and Whitechapel . Sailors and loose people alongshore . * Among the females are common , wretched , helpless , hopeless , reckless prostitutes , the most pitiable class of persons in England , if not in Emope ; nearly all the cases of females must be miscreant outcasts , as must likewise be a very considerable portion of the male eases . 4
Among the males many are what are called respectable men , who have drank too much At parties , at public dinners , ami at many other jollifications .
Untitled Article
Improvement of the Wotking People 62 ?
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Citation
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Monthly Repository (1806-1838) and Unitarian Chronicle (1832-1833), Sept. 2, 1834, page 627, in the Nineteenth-Century Serials Edition (2008; 2018) ncse.ac.uk/periodicals/mruc/issues/vm2-ncseproduct2637/page/23/
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