SOLD – Two Regency Penny Gin Glasses c1830

Description

Two late Regency Penny Gin Glasses which date to c1830 with thick round funnel bowls with lens printie cutting to the bowls. They stand on thick plain stem plain feet with polished pontils.

If you lived in a “Rookery” such as Jacob’s Island. Petticoat Lane or St Giles then the slums of London were home. They were brutal and crime ridden dens of criminality and vice. In the 18th century “Hollands” was the “opiate” of the masses. yes the same mothers ruin. gin. Hogarth depicts the scene in “Gin Lane”.

There were numerous distilleries and it it was sold from a dram shop. of which there were many thousands. It caused not only drunkenness but riots. madness and murder. In the case of Judith Dufour she murdered her own child to sell his clothes to buy gin. Drunk for a penny. dead drunk for tuppence. clean straw for nothing. By 1751 the government decided to act and the “gin craze” was taxed and its popularity waned

By the early Victorian gin was back. The population of London increased from 1.4M to 2.8M between the census of 1831 and 1861. Overcrowding. poverty. criminality. vice and despair. in the same slums as before.  you would need a gin ! These glasses are “Penny Gins” . A glass would cost but a penny. but it was not a set measure. The “sham dram” was born. both of these glasses are highly deceptive and the purchaser would receive less gin than anticipated.

English lead. no chips cracks or restoration. they measure 4 ¼ inches tall with a 1 7/8 inch bowls and 2 ¼ inch feet.