Overview

What is a 'drink map'? It may sound like a pub guide, yet it actually refers to a type of late nineteenth-century British map designed specifically to shock and shame people into drinking less. This book explores how drink maps of particular cities were published in an attempt to fight increasingly rampant alcohol consumption, from Liverpool, Manchester and Sheffield to Oxford, London and Norwich. Featuring red symbols to indicate where alcohol was sold, these special street maps were posted prominently in public places, submitted as evidence, sent to Members of Parliament and published in newspapers to show just how inebriated a neighbourhood could be. They promoted the message that having fewer places to buy alcohol was the answer to reducing widespread crime, poverty and sickness. And they worked - at first. After consulting a drink map in one town, judges decided to close half the licensed shops because even then no one had to walk more than two minutes to buy a beer. Illustrated with original maps, advertisements and temperance propaganda, the story of their brief history is told amidst a tangle of licensing laws, rogue magistrates, irate brewers, ardent temperance organizers and accounts of the complex role alcohol played across all levels of Victorian society.

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9781851245789

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Reviews

To anyone with an interest in the sheer variety of cartography, Butler’s passion project will be a refreshing addition to the…bookcase. Works such as this preserve areas of map history that have been…overlooked, and leave one thirsty for more.’ -- Edward Brooke-Hitching '[This] book will certainly appeal to cartophiles, illustrated as it is with the maps of British towns and cities used by temperance campaigners. Indeed their beauty was part of the strategy...the campaigners realised that a picture can achieve more than a thousand words of argument.'  -- Mark Mason * Here be flagons * 'A rare set of maps that depicts Victorian Scotland's taste for drink - the beer houses, boozers and bottleshops that were open for business to meet the seemingly unquenchable thirst of the country - has emerged.' -- Allison Campsie * The 'drink maps' that plotted Scotland's deep thirst for alcohol' *

"""A brilliant, intoxicating book about the alliance of maps and the temperance movement in Victorian England. Butler has produced a powerful and beautifully illustrated account of the power of maps and the scale of addiction in nineteenth-century England, and in the process has identified a whole new cartographic genre.""--Jerry Brotton author of ""Fifty Maps and the Stories they Tell"""

To anyone with an interest in the sheer variety of cartography, Butler’s passion project will be a refreshing addition to the…bookcase. Works such as this preserve areas of map history that have been…overlooked, and leave one thirsty for more.’ -- Edward Brooke-Hitching

Author Information

Kris Butler is a lawyer, past president of the Boston Map Society and currently serves on the board of the Washington May Society.

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