Page "Gin Craze" Paragraph 6

By 1743, the people of England were drinking 2. 2 gallons ( 10 litres ) of gin annually per head of population.

As consumption levels increased, an organised campaign for more effective legislation began to emerge, led by the Bishop of Sodor and Man, Thomas Wilson ( who, in 1736, had complained that gin produced a ' drunken ungovernable set of people ').

Prominent anti-gin campaigners included Henry Fielding ( whose 1751 ' Enquiry into the Late Increase in Robbers ' blamed gin consumption for both increased crime and increased ill health among children ), Josiah Tucker, Daniel Defoe ( who had originally campaigned for the liberalisation of distilling, but later complained that drunken mothers were threatening to produce a ' fine spindle-shanked generation ' of children ), and – briefly – William Hogarth.

Hogarth's engraving Gin Lane is a well known image of the gin craze.