Mothers Ruin

[Wispy68]

Why exactly, is gin referred to as 'Mothers Ruin'? I was told a long time ago that it's because, as it was a very cheap drink, many housewives would drink it to ease stress and end up addicted to it. Have I heard right or is there more to it than that?

[Don Quixote]

Gin is made from juniper berries, believed to induce abortions.

[Hippy]

That Hogarth picture, "Gin Lane" also shows a mother so consumed with alcohol that she cares not that her baby is tumbling from her arms down a stairway to its death. Like a lot of people on first seeing the picture, I found that the most terrible and frightening part of the crowded scene, and one that has stayed with me for years.

 

I fancy that the picture illustrates an already acknowledged truism that gin has the potency to undo the strongest bond known to humans, that between mother and child; truly a ruinous influence when seen in its context.

 

The 18th century started with many stiff drinks available, especially French brandy and Dutch gin, but it was the English, or so-called Geneva gin, that became popular as a mass narcotic. Women in large numbers both drank and sold gin. It was a ready market for the grain producers who set up their own distilleries and thus realised greater profit in a depressed grain market. The government joined in by taxing and later licencing production. The gin craze was fuelled by economic protectionism.

 

The eight Gin Acts passed in Britain between 1729 and 1751 cynically maintained the flow of revenue while showing sham concern for public drunkenness; love the sin but loathe the sinner! That bastion of Georgian corruption, Sir Robert Walpole, played a key role in this balancing act.

 

The craze ended as it had begun, because of economic circumstances, not government legislation. The price of grain rose in 1751 so landowners could afford to abandon the stills. Rapid population growth and some disastrous harvests depressed wages and increased food prices, thus choking money available for alcohol. The now largely dead gin craze suffered one final blow in 1757, when the government banned the manufacture of spirits from domestic grain.

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[DanStone]

Hello this is off topic is i t n o t ? Mother's ruin is how it should be spelt and if you know anything about english then you know what i mean. It is the fear that mothers give their children , in this case GIN it could be anything else we use Gin to make it clear that it is a dangerous substance IF IT IS ABUSED. Mothers tell us off when we do something fun such as a sip of gin or a look inside the hood of a car this is what ruins us phycologically although it may not have driven us mad had we not been told off in the first place apparantly on the other hand it would have killed us at the time but after we lose our ability to move i.e. clinically dead we can still feel forever afterward untill the universe scatters us in any unknown manner and then we are reborn when most of our original electrons (that make up our brain) are gathered together in a new body in a new time beyond the reckoning of almost every single mortal in existance, except me coz i know it

[DanStone]

what im really trying to say is that this old wives tale is the most sexist thing i have ever heard or read like all so called old wives tales.

[pinkwink]

danstone is a ********

[pinkwink]

danstone is a ****** eejit