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Beer Street

Beer StreetWilliam Hogarth produced the twin engravings Beer Street and Gin Lane at the height of what became known as the London Gin Craze in 1751. They were printed at the same time as Hogarth's friend Henry Fielding published his contribution to the debate on gin: An Inquiry into the Late Increase in Robbers.

Beer Street depicts a hearty London scene - in stark contrast to the horrors of Gin Lane - in which contented workmen drink tankards of foaming ale, eat huge hams, and flirt with women. An old pawnbroker's house (which thrives in Gin Lane) is boarded up and crumbling. In an earlier version, Hogarth included a scrawny Frenchman being hoisted into the air by one of the workmen - a typical piece of Hogarthian Francophobia. This final version does, however, contain the unexpected image of an artist / signpainter dressed in the rags of Gin Lane and painting a bottle of gin. The Beer Street signpainter raises questions about what Hogarth was really trying to say in these engravings, which are otherwise pieces of stark didacticism.