This open access book surveys drinking in Britain between the Licensing Act of 1869 and the
wartime regulations imposed on alcohol production and consumption after 1914. This was a period
marked by the expansion of the drink industry and by increasingly restrictive licensing laws.
Politics and commerce co-existed with moral and medical concerns about drunkenness and combined
these factors pushed alcohol consumers into the public spotlight. Through an analysis of public
and private records medical texts and sociological studies the book investigates the reasons
why Victorians and Edwardians consumed alcohol in the ways that they did and explores the ideas
about alcohol that circulated in the period. This book shows that they had many reasons for
purchasing and consuming alcoholic substances and these were driven by broader social cultural
medical and commercial factors. Although drunkenness may have been the most visible consequence
of alcohol consumption it was not the only type of drinking behaviour. Alcohol played an
important social role in the everyday lives of Victorians and Edwardians where its consumption
held many different meanings.
