SOLD – Three Penny Gin Glasses c1830-50

Description

Three graduated Regency penny gin glasses 1830-50  with thick deceptive round funnel bowls with lens printie cuts. They stand on sturdy plain stems and 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 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 late Regency and early Victorian period 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 measure 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. This graduated set displays the inconsistency of a “penny’s worth” very well. They will provide a good talking point around the dinner table and a moral reminder as to the “virtues of modesty in consumption of the demon drink” for all good prsebyterian Scots.

English lead. no chips cracks or restoration. the tallest measures 4 ½ inches tall with a 2 1/8 inch bowl and the smallest measures 3 ¾ inches tall with a 1 7/8 inch bowl.