Mother's Ruin: A Brief History of Covent Garden's Boozy Past
An article written for the third issue of Cubitts' bi-annual newspaper, The Spectacle.
Wide, open streets, sprawling piazzas, and Prets on every corner; the mere mention of Covent Garden conjures up images of the West End’s shiny, gentrified heart. But it hasn’t always been this way.
The bunting-festooned streets of Seven Dials, where we recently opened Cubitts Covent Garden, were described in the 18th century by poet John Keats as a place ‘where misery clings to misery for a little warmth, and want and disease lie down side-by-side, and groan together.’ And it was in these then miserable streets that the infamous ‘Gin Craze’ took hold.
A crude imitation of the imported Dutch spirit genever, the gin of Georgian London was a far cry from the juniper-infused delicacies we’re accustomed to today. The city’s distillers, both big and small, were using ingredients like turpentine and sulphuric acid, or - as they rather fittingly named it - oil of vitriol, to replicate the spirit’s flavour and warming effect. Those distilling in back rooms and bathtubs to turn a quick profit would throw in whatever they had to hand, and the effects were devastating.
Despite its unappetising ingredients, it was astoundingly popular. So much so, that by 1751 Holborn alone was home to 7,066 gin shops, not including its numerous inns, taverns, and alehouses, where the spirit was on sale too. These shops were open 24 hours a day, 7 days a week, contributing to the 2.5 million gallons of gin being produced and sold in the capital in the mid-1700s.
Many enterprising locals turned time in the gin shops from pleasure to profit, too. Offering their ‘services’ in exchange for a few pennies and a pint of gin, they’d leave their customers drunkenly snoozing on the clean straw and make off with whatever could be found in their pockets. Still, such services were almost as popular as the gin, and by the late 1700s there were so many prostitutes in Covent Garden that an annual directory was printed for almost forty years. Unsurprisingly, it proved to be a bestseller.
London’s horrified aristocracy and frequently ineffectual politicians tried to put an end to the gin-soaked madness, but it would take them sixty years to do so. Following the eighth and final Gin Act, only London’s biggest distillers stayed in business, selling their regulated spirits to those who could afford them, and exporting what is now a ubiquitously British product out around the world (the Philippines is now the world’s biggest market for gin, consuming 43% of all the world’s gin supplies).
It wasn’t until 2009, when Sipsmith’s founders applied for a licence to distill a small run of London dry gin, that it became evident that no one had thought to relax the laws post-craze. In fact, no one had applied for a small batch gin distilling licence since 1823, and the quantity that Sipsmith wanted to make legally qualified as moonshine. The founder spent two years securing a chance in the law, and in doing so opened the floodgates for the hundreds of craft distillers who have since popped up across the country. Amongst these boutique, small batch gin brands, many a nod to Covent Garden’s boozy heyday can be found, from St. Giles Gin to 7 Dials London Dry Gin.
So, with a dram of local gin (minus the turpentine and with a little more tonic water), we raise a glass to our new home. Cheers, Cubitts Covent Garden.
https://www.cubitts.com/journal/cubitts-guide-to-covent-garden/
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