1-237-222 - The London Archives (City of London)/Heritage Images

'Beer Street', 1751. Working people enjoying a tankard of beer outside the Barley Mow public house. The figures include two women with baskets of fish and a butcher holding a joint of meat, whilst above him an artist paints the inn sign. Fourth and final state of the plate. This print was published in support of a campaign directed against gin drinking among London's poor. Consumption of cheap spirits by the poor had soared in the early eighteenth century, with dire social consequences. Beer Street celebrates the virtues of the mildly intoxicating traditional national drink. Beer inspires artists and refreshes tradesmen and labourers. It can be drunk safely on rooftops. The newfangled foreign spirit gin, however, inspires violence and careless inebriation.