Licensing and temperance in Sweden, Norway, and Denmark / by Edwin A. Pratt.

  • Edwin A. Pratt
Date:
1907
Catalogue details

Licence: In copyright

Credit: Licensing and temperance in Sweden, Norway, and Denmark / by Edwin A. Pratt. Source: Wellcome Collection.

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    became, not only a distillery, but a place for the sale and consumption of home-made spirits of the worst possible type. A royal ordinance enacting stringent regulations against drunken- ness was issued in 1813, but the evil was likely to remain as pronounced as ever so long as domestic stills were regarded as the natural right of every householder. Some attempt at interference with them was made in 1824, but with so little success that five years later the number of stills on which license fees were paid (in a country then having a population of only 2,850,000) was no fewer than 173,124. At that time the annual consumption per head of the population of spirits containing close on 50 per cent, of alcohol was about 7\ gallons. The farm hands were not infre- quently paid their wages in liquor, and drinking bouts were regarded in the light of patriotic gatherings, where every man present thought it his duty to drink as much spirits as he could in the special interests of agriculturists who other- wise would find it difficult to use up surplus pro- duce for which there was no market. ‘ The whole country,’ in the words of a traveller in Sweden at this period, ‘was deluged in spirits.’ The consequences were indeed deplorable, and symptoms of rapid physical, moral, and mental decadence spread with steadily increasing gravity on every hand. But these results wTere essentially due, not to the action of a recognised ‘trade’ under effective magisterial and police con- trol, but to the existence of national habits directly traceable to a baneful practice of
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