Gin Lane

Many of William Hogarth’s prints call attention to social ills within 18th-century British society, thereby paving the way for healing. Here, Hogarth represents the dire effects of gin consumption, which had risen steeply in the first decades of the 18th century. The print represents February 1, 1751, a day in one of London’s poorer neighborhoods, where every group, from the elderly to infants, is addicted to the substance and devastated by the consequences. In the middle ground, a woman in a wheelbarrow—no longer able to support her own cup—is served by supposed nurses who “charitably” assist her. Penury awaits everyone as figures pawn their last possessions. Gin is the cause of suicide (at right) and civic neglect (a house falls down in the middle distance), Hogarth argues. Children are neglected, abandoned, and killed. Paired with the print Beer Street, in which Hogarth envisions a healthy society that consumes a national and nutritional beverage, Gin Lane successfully helped to raise awareness of the necessity for civic regulations in the sale of gin, which came under increasing control that same year.