The English Alehouse.

Peter Clark’s social history of the alehouse in English society raises questions about the position of the alehouse in society. Prior to the Glorious Revolution the position of the alehouse had been seen by the Elites as the home of trouble and dissent. It was frequented by the lower ends of society and the haven for violence and vice. Respectable society tended to stay away from them and targeted them for suspicion and repression.

However by the turn of the century the perception of the alehouse had undergone a change, spurred by the increasing wealth and respectability of its clientele. The workers' wages were increasing so the worker had more to spend in the alehouse, but these more financially stable workers were a less fertile ground for the dissent and trouble the elites feared and were thus a less threatening crowd. Landlords were increasingly more respected as a role in society and licensing was making them economically important figures. As wage-work became more common and regulated in society the alehouse also began to become a vital part of that culture. The popular practice of “drink tax” that existed in many work environments demonstrated the growing trend; any new purchase or happy event in a workers life would be allowed by his work colleagues only if it was accompanied by him buying drinks for them all.
The alehouse had, through social and economic change, garnered a degree of respectability.

There is an argument therefore that this respectability attached to the alehouse and its fasted growing new product “porter” (something between a Stout and a mild to today’s pallets and powerfully strong) would provide a stark contrast to the rise of gin and its less respectable retailers. If alehouses were acceptable to society then anything that subverted that would be unacceptable. There can be no argument that the main retailers of gin were of a distinctly less affluent and respected place in society and it is inevitable that they and their cheaper and courser product would lack the respectability of the alehouse. But to what extent is the disreputable nature of gin due, not to its own faults or societies dislike of its results, but due to it being seen in comparison to the more acceptable English alehouse?