The licensed city : regulating drink in Liverpool, 1830-1920 / David Beckingham.

Format:

Book

Author/Creator:

Beckingham, David, author.

Language:

English

Subjects (All):

License system--England--Liverpool--History.

License system.

Drinking of alcoholic beverages--England--Liverpool--History.

Drinking of alcoholic beverages.

Alcoholic beverages--Social aspects--England--Liverpool--History.

Alcoholic beverages.

Temperance--England--Liverpool--History.

Temperance.

Alcoholic beverages--Social aspects.

History.

England--Liverpool.

Genre:

History.

Physical Description:

xii, 289 pages : illustrations, maps ; 24 cm

Place of Publication:

Liverpool : Liverpool University Press, 2017.

Summary:

In nineteenth-century Britain few cities could rival Liverpool for recorded drunkenness. Civic pride at Liverpool's imperial influence was undercut by anxieties about social problems that could all be connected to alcohol, from sectarian unrest and prostitution in the city's streets to child neglect and excess mortality in its slums. These dangers, heightened in Liverpool by the apparent connections between the drink trade and the city's civic elite, marked urban living and made alcohol a pressing political issue. As a temperance movement emerged to tackle the dangers of drink, campaigners challenged policy makers to reimagine the acceptable reach of government. While national leaders often failed to agree on what was practically and philosophically palatable, social reformers in Liverpool focused on the system that licensed the sale of drink in the city's pubs and beerhouses. By reforming licensing, they would later boast, Liverpool had tackled its reputation as the drunkenness capital of England. The Licensed City reveals just how battles over booze have made the modern city. As such, it confronts whether licensing is equipped to regulate today's problem drinking. Book jacket.

Contents:

1 Liverpool: The making of a licensed city 1

2 Liberty on licence 27

3 Between teetotalism and free trade: The rise of temperance politics in Liverpool 49

4 Mapping drink: The spatial logic of social reform 85

5 Attacking the licensing system: The 'twin evils' of drunkenness and prostitution 125

6 Women and the public house 161

7 The reformed licensing system: Slum clearance and social reform 183

8 'Liverpool's temperance lesson to the nation? The challenge of compensation 203

9 The licensed city at war 229

10 Conclusions: Liberalism's local logic 247.

Notes:

Includes bibliographical references (pages 263-283) and index.

ISBN:

178138343X

9781781383438

OCLC:

992503510