Introduction
In November 1734, an advertisement for the London Punch House was included in the first edition of the London Daily Post and General Advertiser. The author, James Ashley (c. 1698–1776), boasted of making punch to the ‘greatest perfection’, at a cheaper rate than his competitors:
… the best old Batavia Arrack, Jamaica Rum, and French Brandy, are made into PUNCH, viz. a Quart of Arrack made into Punch for 6s. a Quart of Rum or Brandy for 4s. […] (before which, the Price of a Quart of Arrack made into Punch was 8s. a Quart of Rum or Brandy 6s. and seldom less than a Bowl of 1.s 6d. to be had).1
Ashley added that he was ‘the first who undertook the making and selling of [punch] in this Manner’. But there was a troubling paradox at the heart Ashley’s advertisement. He courted ‘gentlemen who are Lovers of PUNCH’, despite the fact advertising could be construed as an impolite practice.2 Better to present oneself as an ‘honest’ tradesman, maintaining a reasonable living in line with one’s station, than an individual seeking to maximise profit.3 This was especially pertinent for publicans, who had long been portrayed in popular print as dishonest charlatans, swindling ‘good fellows’ of their ‘full measure’.4 Second, by lowering his prices, Ashley could be perceived as committing ‘the height of commercial indiscretion’: a point confirmed by Daniel Defoe in The Complete English Tradesman (1726).5 Third, in the context of the so-called ‘Gin Craze’, questions over access to distilled spirits were of paramount importance to a society wrestling with the social and economic repercussions of this relatively ‘new’ intoxicant.6
Recent research into the history of intoxicants has sought to explore the impact of new substances – such as distilled spirits, coffee, tea, tobacco and opium – on the development of metropolitan and colonial societies in the early modern period.7 Unlike earlier research, this historiography focusses on the intoxicants themselves, rather than the institutions where they were consumed.8 These substances, it has been argued, possess a uniquely ‘heterogenous and fluid identity’ that cannot easily be identified or mapped.9 Similarly, the rituals associated with their consumption were variable, and contingent upon the social contexts in which such practices took place.10 Consequently, pre-existing attitudes towards the social and cultural use of substances which already possess a lively historiographical record – such as distilled spirits – require considerable revision.
Alcohol was not a ‘new’ intoxicant in eighteenth-century England. But unlike ale or wine, distilled spirits did not possess the same rich, cultural traditions.11 James Nicholls considers this as integral to the development of spirit consumption in eighteenth-century London: these substances ‘reverse’ the relationship between themselves and their social context ‘so that culture reacts to new materials, rather than only acting upon them’.12 Although Nicholls is concerned with gin, punch should be assessed in a similar light. It was a new substance, alien to the social context it found itself in. Individuals had to make their own assumptions about punch and decide for themselves what role – if any – it should play in society.
Fundamental to this narrative is the human propensity to draw ‘artificial boundaries’ between intoxicants; tolerating and even encouraging the consumption of some substances, whilst actively prohibiting others.13 These decisions are not arbitrary, as argued by Benjamin Breen, but rooted in ‘deep-seated epistemological, commercial, and social structures’ that intensified during a period of early modern globalisation known as the ‘psychoactive revolution’.14 But questions remain as to who, historically, possessed the ability to draw these ‘artificial boundaries’: were they exclusively dictated by social and cultural elites, or did others have a role to play in shaping what should or should not be consumed?
This article argues that James Ashley, proprietor of the London Punch House on Ludgate Hill from 1731 until his death in 1776, played a fundamental role in transforming contemporary attitudes towards the retailing of punch in eighteenth-century London. It posits that through printed advertisements, in tandem with more familiar marketing techniques, Ashley was able to rehabilitate the image of punch making as a respectable occupation and a public service. This transformation was twofold. First, Ashley and his contemporaries did not merely use printed advertisements to publicise their establishments and emphasise the quality of their product to consumers, but also as a vehicle for communication amongst themselves. Printed advertisements quickly and effectively alerted publicans across the metropolis and beyond on changes to their respective retailing practices. In turn, the medium allowed publicans to standardise aspects of their trade. Prices could be set, premium liquors could be acquired, and problematic middlemen could be curtailed. As the leader of his trade, James Ashley set the standard for his competitors to follow.
Second, Ashley’s experience indicates that more familiar marketing techniques, based on an individual’s reputation and the appeal of one’s shopfront, were still crucial to the success of a publican’s enterprise. In this respect, public house-keeping reflected broader trends witnessed in the retailing and grocery trades over the course of the eighteenth century.15 Whilst Peter Clark’s pioneering study of the alehouse has demonstrated that alehouse-keeping had ‘the makings of a fully-fledged, respectable trade in its own right’ by the early eighteenth century, the influence of distilled spirits has yet to be considered within this process.16 Ashley’s punch-house, adorned with the Latin motto, pro bono publico,17 notably caught the attention of his contemporaries. In effect, Ashley’s marketing techniques, in print and on the exterior of his establishment, made him akin to merchants in pre-Revolutionary Paris, who Natacha Coquery has defined as ‘skilled manipulators of taste’.18 After discussing the wider context of punch drinking in eighteenth-century London, this article will turn to consider these two developments in turn. The use of micro-historical case studies to re-construct aspects of everyday life in early modern England has previously been used to great advantage, and this article intends to contribute to this field of scholarship.19
Punch in Context
Any attempt to chart the growth of punch consumption in eighteenth-century England is fraught with complications. Unlike beverages such as gin, beer, or coffee, punch was not a distinct commodity, but a literal cocktail of ingredients. The word itself stems from paanch, the Hindi word for five, in reference to its key ingredients: water, sugar, fruit, spices, and a form of liquor.20 Nevertheless, there is evidence that the consumption of punch was on the rise.
First, the consumption of distilled spirits – the primary ingredient in punch – abounded during this period. John Chartres has rightly argued that distilled spirits were ‘the sole dynamic element in the domestic drink market before the 1750s’.21 Until the middle of the eighteenth century, distilled spirits alone ‘showed the most rapid and consistent growth among all alcoholic beverages sold in England’.22 As the century progressed, a healthy domestic distilling industry was complemented by a rapidly expanding market for imported liquors; namely French brandy and Caribbean rum.23 This increase in domestic manufacture and foreign import prompted the estimated market share of distilled spirits to increase from five per cent in 1700 to a peak of 21.9 per cent in 1745.24 From data surveyed in the Old Bailey Proceedings, there is also circumstantial evidence to suggest that punch was an increasingly popular beverage in London (Figure 1).25 However, this data should be assessed with caution. The Proceedings never provided an unfiltered transcript to their readers, and their methods of reporting were inconsistent. Changes to note-taking in the 1720s and 1730s, for example, had a significant impact on what was recorded and subsequently published.26 This undoubtedly contributed to the dramatic rise in references to punch between 1731 and 1735.
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03 November 2022Karen Harvey is the only historian thus far to grapple with the social and cultural role of punch in this period. Through a focussed methodology, centred around the material culture of the punch bowl, Harvey has demonstrated punch’s intimate connection to notions of raucous masculine sociability and its subsequent assimilation into more refined and domestic environs: a space where social norms could be licked into shape. 27 Punch drinkers, Harvey attests, belonged to an ‘indistinct middling group’.28 But punch did not simply migrate indoors to be tamed by prevailing notions of politeness and respectability, and Harvey is right to assert the substance’s ambivalent identity. It still played a pivotal role in the public house, where its identity was contested.
The Old Bailey Proceedings provide a vivid patchwork of establishments where punch was consumed (Figure 2).29 Although the majority of these can only be loosely categorised as a ‘public house’, punch was a vital component of urban drinking culture, in public and private spaces alike. Many institutions even included ‘punch’ in their name, suggesting the proprietors might have specialised in its sale. The Sugar Loaf and Punch Bowl in St Katharine’s, the Red Lion and Punch Bowl in Old Brentford, the Ley Hoy and Punch Bowl in Coverley’s Fields, and the Hare and Punch Bowl in Lime Street provide a smattering of examples across the breadth of the city and its outlying areas.30 There were also a small number of punch-houses: establishments dedicated to the sale of punch.31 In the late seventeenth century, punch-houses could be found in English settlements throughout the Indian Ocean.32 It is unclear when they first appeared in England, but the Westmorland squire George Hilton recalled visiting a London punch-house twice in June 1702.33 By 1743, punch-houses were considered the best venues for quality punch. John Askew of the George Inn in West Smithfield advertised that he would ‘make PUNCH as cheap, and better than any Punch-House’.34 Despite their ambiguous maritime origins, it has been suggested that punch-houses functioned in a similar manner to coffeehouses and catered to London’s emerging ‘middling’ sort.35 Yet their very existence reveals that public drinking spaces were undeniably ‘barometers of shifting consumer preferences’, responding to changes in the market, and providing Londoners with an opportunity to distinguish themselves by the liquor they drank.36
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03 November 2022As Figure 2 demonstrates, selling punch was not the exclusive domain of punch-houses. James Ashley and his fellow punch-house-keepers did not have a monopoly on its sale. Nevertheless, the persistence with which punch-houses were written about and advertised in print suggests that their influence on the landscape of consumption was profound. This influence manifested in the character and reputation of James Ashley. The remainder of this article, therefore, considers Ashley’s London Punch House in this context, and argues that publicans were capable of manipulating attitudes towards the retailing of punch in eighteenth-century London.
Advertising Punch
The lapse of the Licencing Act in 1695 brought a deluge of cheap print in its wake. Newspapers or ‘newsbooks’, which had first come into being in 1620, were part this development, and witnessed an extraordinary boom. By 1712, there were ten single-sheet newspapers printed in London every week, each selling roughly 25,000 copies.37 Thanks to its size and influence, the city presented a ‘market of unique scale and coherence’ that publishers were keen to capitalise on. As a source of revenue, advertisements were critical in facilitating the proliferation of newspapers, and from 1712 were taxed a duty of one shilling apiece.38 Previously, publicans – like any other trade or profession – relied on their good name and their shopfront to inform and encourage individuals to patronise their establishment.39 But following the development of a coffeehouse culture, which saw groups of individuals from across the city coalesce around specific establishments, victuallers of all stripes were arguably more attentive towards attracting an audience beyond their locale.40 Although guides such as Ned Ward’s A Vade Mecum for Malt Worms (1715) ‘point[ed] out Places o’er and o’er, | Where the best LIQUOR’S to be had’ for avid tipplers, there was no systematic way to ascertain the character of a public house beyond word of mouth.41 Thus, printed advertisements offered publicans the opportunity to signpost the location of their establishment, its character, and its stock.
Although one should be wary of presuming a proliferation of advertisements directly correlated to an uptake in consumption,42 one should not discount the vital function that advertisements did play for affluent eighteenth-century publicans. The fact that James Ashley was so committed to the practice suggests there were identifiable benefits to this marketing technique. A survey of Ashley’s printed advertisements, assessed alongside those of his fellow punch-house-keepers, reveals they were essential to defining, maintaining, and defending one’s business. Publicans used the medium to both update the public of changes to their business practices and to converse and compete with one another. In the context of punch-houses, James Ashley was at the forefront of this development.
James Ashley’s engagement with print was extraordinary, especially in comparison to his competitors. Between 1731 and 1776 there are 427 extant advertisements made by Ashley and his business associates (Figure 3).43 However, only 35 per cent of those advertisements explicitly reference the retailing of punch. After 1750, Elizabeth Ashley took charge of the punch-house, leaving her husband to focus on ‘the Wholesale Brandy, Rum and Arrack Trade’.44 The significance of this wholesale enterprise cannot be underestimated. By 1752, some 63 per cent of Ashley’s 208 debtors lived outside of Middlesex and the City of London, suggesting he catered to a considerable provincial market.45 Nevertheless, this article will focus on the first decade of printed advertisements, when retailing accounted for the majority of Ashley’s work. Between 1730 and 1740, 71 per cent of all printed advertisements concerning punch-houses were made by James Ashley and his business partner Benjamin Lee, who from October 1736 conducted the pair’s wholesale operations.46 Ashley and Lee advertised across a spectrum of newspapers, but primarily in London-based daily papers, such as the Daily Courant and its successor, the Daily Gazetteer. Advertisements in papers with a broader, national reach, such as the Country Journal or The Craftsman were also present, but always included reference to the wholesaling of distilled spirits, suggesting that Ashley and Lee made a conscious choice to shift attention towards this aspect of their business when dealing with a provincial audience.
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03 November 2022A Benchmark of Quality
Ashley’s chief motivation for producing these advertisements was to present an image of himself and his business that would appeal to London’s burgeoning middling sort.47 Historians have already demonstrated how newspaper advertisements influenced the mental landscape of consumption in the eighteenth century. Tradesmen, for example, would capitalise on their reputation to enhance the appeal of their shop and their product.48 Similarly, they would address their clients in polite and obliging terms.49 Ashley’s experience fits comfortably into this model. He claimed that he had established the London Punch House, ‘solely for the better Accommodating of all Gentlemen who are Lovers of PUNCH’.50 His liquor was ‘the best that is imported’ and his punch was readily available, ‘which Gentlemen may have made as soon a Gill of Wine can be drawn’.51 This was an establishment where the best quality punch could be made quickly and to the utmost quality.
The presence of alcohol at Ashley’s punch-house did not significantly alter the reputation of his establishment and the ‘gentlemen’ he courted, even when anxieties over the consumption of spirits were on the rise. Although contemporary debates raged over the term ‘gentleman’ as a social signifier, excessive drinking did not prohibit the title being applied to men of a middling rank.52 Drinking – even to excess – amongst those of a higher station had been normalised by contemporary elites since the seventeenth century.53 Similarly, by retailing punch in smaller measures, Ashley likely avoided many of his contemporaries’ anxieties over excess. Henry Baker even claimed Ashley’s punch-house was a ‘convenient Receptacle for Gentlemen in waiting’.54 Neither was Ashley the only publican to emphasise his establishment’s sense of respectability. By 1742, Amos Wenman hosted concerts at his punch-house behind the Royal Exchange, described by one commentator as a ‘great resort of Gentry’.55 Undesirables were consciously excluded. ‘All care’, an advertisement stated, would be taken to keep those of ‘ill repute out of the House’.56 These punch-houses had become focal points for polite society, betraying a sense of distinction lacking from other watering holes littered across the capital.
Ashley was also conscious to represent himself as a man of refinement. This inclination was encapsulated in his trade card (Figure 4). Dressed in a three-piece suit, with his hand tucked into his waistcoat, his portrait dominates the card. Behind him, Palladian columns evoked a country-house setting. Clearly, he perceived himself as a polite and respectable businessman.57 The two punch bowls on pedestals, in imitation of those outside his establishment, emphasised the relationship between printed image and physical shopfront. As Maxine Berg and Helen Clifford have demonstrated, trade cards had a palpably material quality. They could be passed from person to person and kept as mementos. Similarly, their visual appeal conveyed a clear message to those who were illiterate.58 In this respect, the trade card was a material and a visual marketing tool. One wonders whether Ashley’s portrait was a rebuke to other etchings, such as William Groves’ (Figure 5).59 Although both images are similar and highlight the relationship between punch and publican, Groves’ struck a jovial tone with the inclusion of a short poem declaring him to be the ‘prince of topers and merry souls’. Unlike Ashley, Groves’ portrait includes an image of a real, rather than an ornamental, punch bowl, complete with rinds of lemon, emphasising the flavour and quality of his product. By contrast, Ashley’s card seems to avoid any notions of intoxication. This was a man of quality and moderation: characteristics that were reflected in his product.
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03 November 2022Figure 4. James Ashley, c. 1740, © The Trustees of the British Museum. All rights reserved.
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03 November 2022Figure 5. On Mr Groves, 1734, © The Trustees of the British Museum. All rights reserved.
Indeed, there was a long-standing assumption that punch was not simply poured but made. The composition of the drink had a profound influence on its taste, quality, and strength. As early as 1699, Ned Ward, a victualler himself, remarked that ‘if Compounded of good Ingredients, and Prepar’d with true Judgement’ punch ‘Exceeds all the Simple Potable Products in the Universe’.60 Similarly, in May 1726, the Somerset physician Claver Morris recalled in his diary that he drank a ‘Bowl of the finest Punch, very much commended, & made after my manner’.61 The craft of the individual punch-maker was central to the liquor’s reception. In 1761, a letter submitted to the St James’s Chronicle compared Ashley’s punch-making to the act of writing criticism. The author advised his fellow critics to observe:
… how judiciously our friend Ashley chooses, prepares, and mixes his several ingredients: he is careful to temper the Sour with the Sweet, and first pares off the rind of his oranges, lest there should be too much of the bitter, […] If my brethren will studiously attend my friend Ashley’s lectures […] all will be put in good-humour and high spirits, and will view the last line of their criticism with as strong a desire for more, as the critics themselves will have for another tiff when they see the last drop in the bottom of the punch-bowl.62
The author highlights that finesse, balance, and quality ingredients were fundamental to the composition of good punch. What is more, although the piece is a work of metaphor, the author alludes to some of the practical steps necessary to make good punch. Ashley’s decision to remove the rind of his oranges, for example, demonstrates an attentiveness towards the finished product that went beyond the act of pouring and serving.
The assumption that Ashley’s punch was of the highest quality even informed attitudes towards other punch-sellers. When Thomas Leach converted the Rainbow Coffee House on Fleet Street into the Temple Punch House in October 1743, he assured readers that his punch ‘shall at least equal, if not excel, any Thing of the Kind hitherto sold’.63 The day after opening, one commentator noted that Leach’s punch ‘was in every Respect to such perfection as not to be excell’d at Ashley’s’.64 Ashley’s punch-house, and the punch sold therein, set a standard for others to follow. Both publicans and punch drinkers assessed the liquor with Ashley in mind.
Challenges and Opportunities
Notions of politeness, quality, and respectability were not guaranteed for punch-house-keepers such as James Ashley or Amos Wenman. Both men were likely aware of broader contemporary attitudes towards their profession and the consumption of punch, especially during the ‘Gin Craze’. Whilst debating the Gin Act of 1736 in parliament, the bill’s chief architect, Sir Joseph Jekyll, complained ‘how considerably the number of our punch-houses have increased within these few years’. Punch drinking, he argued, had become ‘too excessive’ amongst ‘persons of all degrees’.65 That same year, perhaps in response to the success of Ashley’s punch-house, Erasmus Jones decried that punch-house-keepers, alongside their fellow publicans, were ‘the immediate Ministers to a Million of Vices and Bad Habits’.66 Although neither Jekyll nor Jones were necessarily representative of any wider public opinion – Jekyll, for example, had strong connections with the Society for Promoting Christian Knowledge – they provide a palpable example of how contemporary attitudes towards alcohol consumption were deeply contested.
James Ashley did not have control over the content of the newspapers he chose to advertise in. In February 1736, one of his many notices was set alongside an advertisement for Thomas Wilson’s essay, Distilled Spirituous Liquors the Bane of the Nation (1736).67 Surely, it was more than a mere coincidence that advertisements for Ashley’s punch-house came to a climax in the same few years that pamphleteers began to feverishly denounce the practice of drinking spirits.68 Indeed, nine months later, in an aborted attempt to ameliorate contemporary attitudes to punch, Ashley offered to pay the Grub Street Journal to publish a ‘copy of verses in praise of Punch’ alongside advertisements for the London Punch House and Amos Wenman’s London Bridge Punch House ‘alternatively, till forbidden’.69 The editors refused, and believed the poem promoted ‘Drunkenness and Lewdness’.70 Although Ashley’s attempt had failed, it does indicate how publicans might be able to manipulate public opinion for their benefit, akin to ‘puff’ pieces, where advertisements were disguised as news.71 Indeed, the editors admitted that any decision to include Ashley’s poem would present the ‘appearance of only puffing Punch’.72 Additionally, the incident suggests that publicans could also cooperate through print, coordinating where and when they would display their advertisements to mutual advantage.
Ashley also sought to defend his reputation from more local attacks to his profession. By 1734, he had competition from a rival punch-house in Ludgate Hill ‘four doors down’ from his own establishment.73 This challenger, The Star Punch House, boasted their punch was made ‘to the greatest perfection’, in a manner similar to Ashley’s.74 The Star even appeared to copy Ashley’s sign: ‘three Punch Bowls on Iron Pedestals before the Door’.75 Ashley remarked that the copycat design ‘hath occasioned many mistakes, as well to the Disappointment of Gentlemen’.76 He complained that his ‘reputation’ had suffered as a result, and reminded readers that his house served the best liquor.77 That the Star’s owner considered it an economically sound decision to establish a punch-house so close to a rival suggests that there was a considerable market for punch in the Ludgate area. Ashley could hardly cater to everyone.
However, rather than exclusively viewing advertisements as a channel of communication between retailer and consumer, one can also see them as a means for publicans from across the metropolis to adapt and respond to changes made by their competitors. Central to this development was Ashley’s decision to reduce the price of punch. As stated above, he consistently claimed that he was ‘first’ to lower its price, ‘as a pattern for others […] raising its reputation’ and bringing it into ‘universal esteem’.78 This new model of selling punch, in smaller portions and at a lower price, was quickly copied by others, all of whom gave credit to Ashley for introducing the change. In 1734, Amos Wenman confirmed he would also reduce the price of punch in line with Ashley’s model.79 In 1735, Wenman, alongside the victuallers Arthur Hand, Edward Lucas, William Twigger and Jeffrey Orson, produced a joint advertisement stating that they would all ‘engage in the same undertaking’ as Ashley.80 In 1736, Mr Gordon, who ran a punch-house on the Strand, echoed this, praising Ashley for his ‘laudable undertaking’.81 Although such flattery was most likely an attempt to borrow from Ashley’s reputation, the fact remains that at least seven London establishments had copied Ashley’s model by 1736.82 Printed advertisements were instrumental in coordinating prices across the capital. James Ashley had unequivocally capitalised on the use of printed advertisements and altered the nature of retailing punch in the process.
Ashley even caught the attention of publicans outside of London. In 1735, an advertisement appeared in the Country Journal or The Craftsman stating that a punch-house in Bristol, was ‘open’d solely for the better accommodating Gentlemen who are Lovers of PUNCH’. It was ‘the first that undertook the making of it HERE in small Proportions, and reduc’d the extravagant Price, after the Example of Mr Ashley, in London’.83 In January 1738, one W. Cooke made notice that he would establish a punch-house in Dublin, where punch ‘will be made to the same Perfection, at the same prices and Proportions as by Mr Ashley at the London Punch-house’.84 Even in their language, these publicans echoed Ashley’s commitment to ‘accommodating’ gentlemen, matching him in style, substance, and price. Ashley’s influence was undeniable.
Ashley also used advertisements to communicate with other publicans. In June 1735, he advised that those who ‘value their own Credit […] have no Dealings with Apple Brandy Makers, [distillers], nor with Brandy Adulterers of any Sort’.85 Earlier that year, Ashley notified ‘all VICTUALLERS, COFFEE MEN, AND TAVERN-KEEPERS’ that he was preparing a petition against the tax on coal, which victuallers believed was unfairly imposed upon them.86 Although both examples cited here were likely self-serving, they also demonstrate Ashley’s concern for broader, public issues. This was an interest that extended to politics and warfare. Upon a visit to the London Punch House, The Busy Body (1759), a satirical periodical purportedly authored by Oliver Goldsmith, witnessed Ashley discussing a hypothetical siege of Paris with his guests. The author drily remarked that ‘the old waiter […] usually serves his customers with politics and punch’.87 Even by mid-century, reputations were still – to a lesser extent - ‘established and regulated publicly’.88 Ashley’s public behaviour, therefore, witnessed physically and orally at his punch-house, played a fundamental role in the development of his reputation. Presenting himself as a public-spirited tradesman, both in person and in print, was central to this process.
Pro Bono Publico
Although Ashley’s enthusiasm for advertisements was prolific, and dwarfed the efforts of his contemporaries, it was through his reputation as a public-spirited tradesman, and the design of this shopfront that catalysed an interest in his name and his trade amongst contemporaries. But Ashley used these marketing techniques in a novel way. He aligned his business with notions of public duty and political economy, enshrining for all to see that punch had a vital role to play in the economic development of the nation.89
Changes to legislation were of crucial importance. The Gin Act of 1736, for example, placed heavy duties on the sale of distilled spirits. To retail them, publicans were required to pay an annual licence fee of £50.90 James Ashley and Amos Wenman were the only punch-house-keepers wealthy enough to pay this considerable fee. Consequently, both men emphasised that their punch was made ‘by LICENCE, Pursuant to Act of Parliament’. Ashley even commented that he was ‘determin’d’ to make punch ‘in all exact and just Observance of the Laws, hoping that many others […] will join with me in so publick a Service’.91 Wenman’s advertisements echoed Ashley’s, and reassured patrons that punch would be made ‘to the same great Perfection, Prices and Proportions as Mr Ashley at the London Punch-House’.92
Punch’s status as an economically lucrative substance was fundamental to this narrative. Rather than rankle at the duties placed on his liquor, Ashley declared in 1769 that thanks to his work ‘raising’ the reputation of punch, duties on the importation of brandy and rum had expanded from £30,000 per annum before 1731 to £500,000 ‘for fifteen years past’.93 The statement was corroborated by contemporaries. In the Annual Register for 1776, the year of Ashley’s death, the author claimed that Ashley was indeed ‘the first to introduce the selling of punch in small quantities; by which he not only made a large fortune, but greatly promoted the interest of the British islands, and the increase of the revenue’.94 In one respect, Ashley was Bernard Mandeville’s ideal citizen; capitalising on private vices for public benefit.95 Punch was a luxury with innate economic and social value. Ashley tied the success of his business to the nation’s economic success, making his work a sort of patriotic duty.96
This attitude was epitomised in Ashley’s slogan: pro bono publico.97 The motto, displayed on a sign above the London Punch House, was part of his shopfront, or ‘façade’. Quite literally, it ‘bridged the public-private divide’: signalling to the public what lay within, whilst simultaneously rooting the punch-house within a wider sphere of leisure, politeness, and consumption.98 The use of Latin, the contemporary language of intellectual discourse, likely buttressed this point. Ashley was not the first to employ the term. It had been infrequently used in legal and political tracts, such as Charles Viner’s General Abridgement of Law and Equity, over the course of the century.99 Short pamphlets or notices could also be printed ‘pro bono publico’, suggesting they dealt with issues of public concern.100 By mid-century, the phrase was also used in satirical pamphlets and songs.101 Ashley’s sign demonstrated how he saw his occupation as something of public worth, economically benefitting the nation, and bringing joy and good cheer to his neighbours. The motto and its message evidently caught the attention of his contemporaries. Between 1743 and 1794, Ashley was referenced in relationship to his motto in 29 separate publications, including newspapers, periodicals, and printed play-texts. Although many satirised his ‘lofty inscriptions’, others appear to have supported his enterprise.102
One of Ashley’s advocates was The Student (1751); a short-lived, Oxford-based periodical influenced in tone by The Spectator.103 By selling punch pro bono publico, Ashley – the author claimed – acted ‘for the service of his countrymen’ rather than for himself.104 Ashley was aware of the publication, and in a later edition, The Student received ‘a very polite letter from that eminent retailer’ accompanied by a ‘cag of excellent shrub’.105 By 1757, Ashley’s reputation as the man who reduced the price of punch had once again crossed the Irish Sea with one Dublin-based commentator wishing for ‘some public-spirited man’ to ‘vend this valuable nectar [sherbet] pro bono publico’.106 The repetition of Ashley’s motto, regardless of intent, suggests that the punch-house-keeper had fostered a considerable degree of renown. Since the mid-seventeenth century, the idea of an ‘imagined public’ had been invoked for political purposes.107 Although Geoff Baldwin’s argument focusses on its usage amongst more established political writers and commentators, the popularity of pro bono publico indicates that Ashley had recycled a powerful rhetorical tool for himself. He had made punch political. His statement was a call to arms: drink punch at my house and fill the coffers of the nation while doing so. It was this intimate connection between punch and public that elevated Ashley’s renown and that of his product.
Ashley was also referenced onstage: an active and lively medium, catering to rich and poor alike.108 In Frederick Pilon’s Illumination; or, the Glazier’s Conspiracy, two characters conspired to ‘finish the night at Ashley’s Punch House, where we may smoak Rowley and get drunk pro bono publico’.109 Despite the satirical tone, Ashley, his motto, and his punch-house were recognisable features of the city’s cultural landscape. Earlier, in 1769, the celebrated actor, writer, and theatre manager David Garrick referenced Ashley in the prologue of The Jubilee, a hugely successful ‘commercial wheeze’, commissioned for a festival in Stratford-upon-Avon.110 Garrick, playing a waiter, compared the qualities of two taverns: ‘two Magpies by name’:
‘tis said the old house had procur’d a Receipt
To make a choice mixture, of sour, Strong & Sweet,
A jubilee punch, which right skilfully made
Insur’d the Old Magpie a good running Trade
But think we mean to Monopolize? No, no!
Were like Brother Ashley, pro, public, bono [sic]111
The reference is fleeting, but it is likely Garrick would not have included Ashley’s name unless he was sufficiently well-known by the audience.
Such subtle onstage winks demonstrate the extent to which Ashley and his punch-house had penetrated London’s cultural landscape by the close of the eighteenth century. Although his public image differed from his self-image, Ashley’s motto, pro bono publico, provoked a relatively favourable contemporary reaction. Its influence was twofold. First, it suggests that contemporaries were willing to appreciate, or at least acknowledge, the vital social and economic role punch played in the urban economy. Punch was presented as a civilised drink, providing it continued to be consumed by respectable middling sorts and taxed effectively. Second, the motto made Ashley almost synonymous with his product. One could not think of punch without a nod to the man who reduced its price – ‘ad populum’ as one commentator remarked – in 1731.112 It had taken four decades, but Ashley had clearly altered public perceptions of punch, and himself, in the process.
Conclusion
It is hardly surprising that the history of distilled spirits in eighteenth-century London is dominated by the so-called ‘Gin Craze’. The proliferation of gin in the capital between 1729 and 1751 prompted a flurry of polemical prints, arguing for and against the regulation of this suspect commodity. Contemporary anxieties were intensified by the assumption gin frequently made its way into the hands of women and the working poor. I do not intend to deny this historical phenomenon. But gin was only one part of the story. Through a case study of James Ashley and the London Punch House, one can begin to re-evaluate the role of distilled spirits in eighteenth-century London on a micro-scale. Distilled alcohol was a substance with a ‘heterogenous and fluid identity’ that cannot easily be summarised as a problematic parasite or an intoxicating pleasure. When made into punch, sold in reputable houses, and marketed by publicans such as James Ashley, distilled spirits took on a new lease of life.
The ‘artificial boundaries’ circling the consumption and retail of distilled spirits in eighteenth-century London were not fixed. Ordinary publicans, provided they had sufficient capital, could shape the boundaries of acceptable and unacceptable consumption. Thanks to a burgeoning trade in printed advertisements from the 1730s, publicans could not only create an image of their establishment as respectable, but they could also communicate with one another, setting standards for quality and price. In effect, a more nuanced assessment of advertising and its readership needs to be established. Publicans evidently read one another’s advertisements, and used information contained within such notices to their advantage. It is unlikely they were the only occupation to do so. Additionally, thanks to their relative affordability, printed advertisements provided middling tradesmen with an opportunity to contribute to wider debates over the status of ‘luxury’ goods. Ashley and his fellow punch-house-keepers positioned their liquor as an economically lucrative substance, imbued with a ‘progressive social force’.113
Nevertheless, this article has stressed that printed advertisements cannot be assessed in isolation. Although the historical record is limited, Ashley’s public-spirited behaviour played a crucial role in how he was perceived by his contemporaries. Print culture was merely a means through which local actions and reputations could reach a wider audience. Ashley’s trade card and its connection to his shopfront, for example, highlighted the relationship between print, visual, and material culture. Finally, it is worth stressing that Ashley’s renown was unique thanks to the ubiquity of his motto: pro bono publico. By tying the success of his enterprise so firmly to the economic development of the nation, Ashley was able to make his own voice heard in a period of rapid commercial expansion. For better or for worse, the publican had a vital role to play in the social, economic, and cultural landscape of the eighteenth-century city and the retailing of alcohol therein.
1. London Daily Post and General Advertiser, 4 November 1734. Hereafter LDPGA. All newspapers referenced in this article have been located using the Seventeenth and Eighteenth Century Burney Newspaper Collection, unless specified otherwise https://www.bl.uk/collection-guides/burney-collection> [accessed 17 August 2022].
2. Grub Street Journal, 1 March 1733. Hereafter GSJ; Claire Walsh, ‘The Advertising and Marketing of Consumer Goods in Eighteenth Century London’, in Advertising and the European City: Historical Perspectives, ed. by Clemens Wischermann and Elliott Shore (London: Routledge, 2000), pp. 79–95 (pp. 83–85).
3. Mark Hailwood, ‘The Honest Tradesman’s Honour’: Occupational and Social Identity in Seventeenth Century England’, Transactions of the Royal Historical Society, 24 (2014), pp. 79–103.
4. Crawford Ballad Collection, EB.45 (1640–1674). Facsimiles accessed online at http://ebba.english.ucsb.edu/> (English Broadside Ballad Archive, University of California, Santa Barbara). On the problematic role of the publican in early modern Europe see, Matthew Jackson, ‘A Contested Character: The Female Publican in Early Modern England and France’, Brewery History, 150 (2013), pp. 16–27; Michael Frank, ‘Satan’s Servant or Authorities’ Agent? Publicans in Eighteenth-Century Germany’, in The World of the Tavern: Public Houses in Early Modern Europe, ed. by Beat Kümin and B. Ann Tlusty (London: Ashgate, 2002), pp. 12–43.
5. Clemens Wischermann, ‘Placing Advertising in the Modern Cultural History of the City’, in Advertising and the European City, pp. 1–31 (p. 1); Daniel Defoe, The Complete English Tradesman (London, 1726), p. 180.
6. For an introduction to this literature see, Peter Clark, ‘The “Mother Gin” Controversy in The Early Eighteenth Century’, Transactions of the Royal Historical Society, 38, (1988), pp. 63–84; James Nicholls, ‘Gin Lane Revisited: Intoxication and Society in the Gin Epidemic’, Journal for Cultural Research, 7:2 (2003), pp. 125–146; Jonathan White, “The ‘Slow but Sure Poyson’: The Representation of Gin and Its Drinkers, 1736–1751’, Journal of British Studies, 42:1 (2003), pp. 35–64; Lee Davison, ‘Experiments in the Social Regulation of Industry: Gin Legislation, 1729–1751’, in Stilling the Grumbling Hive: The Response to Social and Economic Problems in England, 1689–1750, ed. by Lee Davison, Tim Hitchcock, Tim Kein and Robert B. Shoemaker (Stroud: Alan Sutton, 1993), pp. 25–48; Jessica Warner, Craze: Gin and Debauchery in an Age of Reason (London: Profile Books, 2003).
7. Kathryn James and Phil Withington, ‘Introduction to Intoxicants and Early Modern European Globalisation’, Historical Journal, 65 (2022), pp. 1–11; Phil Withington, ‘Introduction: Cultures of Intoxication’, Past & Present, 222: Issue Suppl_9 (2014), pp. 9–33.
8. For examples see, Peter Clark, The English Alehouse: A Social History 1200–1830 (London: Longman, 1983); Brian Cowan, The Social Life of Coffee: The Emergence of the British Coffee House (New Haven: Yale University Press, 2005).
9. James and Withington, p. 9.
10. Philip J. Stern, ‘Alcohol and the Ambivalence of the Early English East India Company-State’, Historical Journal, 65 (2022), pp. 185–201; Thomas Brennan, ‘General Introduction’, in Public Drinking in the Early Modern World: Voices from the Tavern, 1500–1800, Vol. 1, ed. by Thomas Brennan (London: Pickering and Chatto, 2011), pp. vii-xxii. See also, Thomas M. Wilson, ‘Drinking Cultures: Sites and Practices in the Production and Expression of Identity’, in Drinking Cultures: Alcohol and Identity, ed. by Thomas M. Wilson (Oxford: Berg, 2006), pp. 1–24.
11. Rod Phillips, Alcohol: A History (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 2014), p. 110.
12. James Nicholls, The Politics of Alcohol: A History of the Drink Question in England (Manchester: Manchester University Press, 2009), p. 29.
13. Benjamin Breen, The Age of Intoxication: Origins of the Global Drug Trade (Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 2019), p. 190.
14. Ibid, p. 7; David T. Courtwright, Forces of Habit: Drugs and the Making of the Modern World (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 2001).
15. See, Nancy Cox, The Complete Tradesman: A Study of Retailing, 1550–1820 (Aldershot: Ashgate, 2000); Jon Stobart, Andrew Hann, and Victoria Morgan, Spaces of Consumption: Leisure and Shopping in the English town, c.1680–1830 (London: Routledge, 2007); Jon Stobart, Sugar and Spice: Grocers and Groceries in Provincial England, 1650–1830 (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2013).
16. Clark, The English Alehouse, pp. 67–68, 205–209.
17. Commonly translated as ‘for the public good’.
18. Natasha Conquery, ‘French Court Society and Advertising Art: The Reputation of Parisian Merchants at the End of the Eighteenth Century’, in Advertising and the European City, pp. 96–112 (p. 96).
19. See for examples, Jeremy Boulton, ‘Microhistory in Early Modern London: John Bedford (1601–1667)’, Continuity and Change, 22:1 (2007), pp. 113–141; Brodie Waddell, “Verses of My Owne Making’: Literacy, Work, and Social Identity in Early Modern England’, Journal of Social History (2020), pp. 1–24; Tim Somers, ‘Tradesmen in Virtuoso Culture: “Honest” John Bagford and His Collecting Network, 1683–1716’, Huntington Library Quarterly, 81:3 (2018), pp. 359–386.
20. Paul Jennings, A History of Drink and the English, 1500–2000 (London: Routledge, 2016), p. 14; Karen Harvey, ‘Ritual Encounters: Punch Parties and Masculinity in the Eighteenth Century’, Past and Present, 214 (2012), pp. 165–203 (p. 174).
21. John Chartres, ‘No English Calvados? English Distillers and the Cider Industry in the Seventeenth and Eighteenth Centuries’, in English Rural Society, 1500–1800: Essays in Honour of Joan Thirsk, ed. by John Chartres and David Hey (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1990), pp. 313–342 (p. 317).
22. Ibid, p. 324.
23. Frederick H. Smith, Caribbean Rum: A Social and Economic History (Gainesville: University of Florida Press, 2005), ch. 3.
24. Chartres, p. 319.
25. This is based on a survey of 316 cases from the Old Bailey Proceedings Online, where individuals were said to have sold, bought, stolen, or consumed punch and its constituent accessories between 1680 and 1780. Tim Hitchcock, Robert Shoemaker, Clive Emsley, Sharon Howard and Jamie McLaughlin, et al., The Old Bailey Proceedings Online, 1674–1913 www.oldbaileyonline.org> version 7.0, 24 March 2012. Hereafter OBP.
26. Robert B. Shoemaker ‘The Old Bailey Proceedings and the Representation of Crime and Criminal Justice in Eighteenth-Century London’, Journal of British Studies, 47:3 (2008), pp. 559–580.
27. Karen Harvey, ‘Barbarity in a Teacup? Punch, Domesticity and Gender in the Eighteenth Century’, Journal of Design History, 21:3 (2008), pp. 205–221; ‘Ritual Encounters’, pp. 165–203.
28. Harvey, ‘Ritual Encounters’, p. 180.
29. Due to the inconsistent nature of the data, the type of establishment was not always specified in the Proceedings. Totals for ‘Public House’, ‘Domestic Space’ and ‘Retailing Shop’ have been inferred through the author’s analysis of each individual case. ‘Public House’ is defined as any establishment where there is clearly a licence to sell alcohol. All other establishments are described as such in the Proceedings.
30. OBP, January 1742, Charles Corner (t17420115–36), April 1752, Thomas Ashley, (t17520408–53), June 1773, Samuel Meakham, (t17730626–27), January 1759, John Shirley (t17590117–40).
31. James Ashley specified that he sold punch exclusively, with ‘no other Liquor being therein sold’. Daily Journal, 14 January 1734. Historians have already cited Ashley’s London Punch House as being the most prominent punch-house. See, Jennings, p. 41; Harvey, ‘Ritual Encounters’, p. 178; ‘Barbarity in a Teacup?’, p. 207.
32. William Dampier, A New Voyage Round the World (London, 1697), p. 548; Francis Rogers, ‘The Journal of Francis Rogers’, in Three Sea Journals of Stuart Times, ed. by Bruce S. Ingram (London: Constable, 1939), pp. 145–230 (p. 182).
33. George Hilton, The Rake’s Diary: The Journal of George Hilton, ed. by Anne Hillman (Berwick-upon-Tweed: Curwen Archives Texts, 1994), pp. 40–41.
34. Daily Advertiser, 11 November 1743.
35. The London Punch House was identified by Bryant Lillywhite as a coffeehouse. Bryant Lillywhite, London Coffee Houses: A Reference Book of Coffee Houses of the Seventeenth, Eighteenth and Nineteenth Centuries (London: Allen and Unwin, 1963), pp. 338–341. On the coffeehouse see, Cowan, op cit; Eighteenth-Century Coffee-House Culture: The Eighteenth-Century Satire, ed. by Markman Ellis (London: Pickering & Chatto, 2006). See also, Woodruff D. Smith, Consumption and the Making of Respectability, 1600–1800 (London Routledge, 2002), ch. 5. Judith Hunter suggests punch-houses catered to affluent Londoners. Judith Hunter, ‘English Inns, Taverns, Alehouses and Brandy Shops: The Legislative Framework, 1495–1797’, in The World of the Tavern, pp. 65–82 (p. 74).
36. Beat Kümin and B. Ann Tlusty, ‘The World of the Tavern: An Introduction’, in The World of the Tavern, p. 9. On drink and distinction see, Adam Fox, ‘Food, Drink and Social Distinction in Early Modern England’, in Remaking English Society: Social Relations and Social Change in Early Modern England, ed. by Steve Hindle, Alexandra Shepard and John Walter (Woodbridge: Boydell Press, 2015), pp. 165–188.
37. Adam Fox, ‘Words, Words, Words: Education, Literacy and Print’, in A Social History of England, 1500–1750, ed. by Keith Wrightson (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2017), p. 145. See also, G.A. Cranfield, The Development of the Provincial Newspaper, 1700–1760 (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1962); News, Newspapers, and Society in Early Modern Britain, ed. by Joad Raymond (London: Frank Cass, 1999); Adam Fox, Oral and Literature Culture in England 1500–1700 (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 2000), ch. 7.
38. Michael Harris, London Newspapers in the Age of Walpole: A Study of the Origins of the Modern English Press (London: Associated University Press, 1987), p. 19.
39. Wischermann, p. 1.
40. Cowan, passim; Helen Berry, ‘Rethinking Politeness in Eighteenth Century England: Moll King’s Coffee House and the Significance of ‘Flash Talk”, Transactions of the Royal Historical Society, 11 (2001), pp. 65–81; Brennan, p. xi.
41. Ned Ward, A vade mecum for malt-worms: or, A guide to good fellows (London, 1715), p. 4.
42. Walsh, pp. 79–95.
43. Although the Burney Collection is considered the largest repository of newspapers for this period, it is not without its faults. On the challenges associated with the collection see, Andrew Prescott, ‘Searching for Dr. Johnson: The Digitisation of the Burney Newspaper Archive’, in Travelling Chronicles: News and Newspapers from the Early Modern Period to the Eighteenth Century, ed. by Siv Gøril Brandtzæg, Paul Goring and Christine Watson (Leiden: Brill, 2018), pp. 51–71. It is difficult to fully explain why Ashley’s advertisements fall dramatically during the 1740s. One can infer that due to the considerable cost of maintaining a retail licence under the Gin Act of 1736, followed by the departure of his business partner in 1742, Ashley was disinclined to continue the practice. His imprisonment for debt in 1752 would further suggest he suffered from financial difficulties at this time.
44. General Advertiser, 22 September 1750.
45. Data taken from James Ashley’s Debtors’ Schedule, composed in 1752. London Metropolitan Archives, CLA/047/LJ/17/039/008. Hereafter LMA. John Chartres has noted that the spirits industry was concentrated in London and its outlying areas. Provincial consumers were likely to purchase their liquor wholesale from merchants such as Ashley. See, John Chartres, ‘Spirits in the North-East? Gin and other vices in the long eighteenth century’, in Creating and Consuming Culture in North-East England, 1660–1830, ed. by Helen Berry and Jeremy Gregory (Aldershot: Ashgate, 2004), pp. 37–56.
46. Benjamin Lee’s name first appears in October 1736. See, London Daily Post and General Advertiser, 28 October 1736. Lee worked alongside Ashley and produced separate advertisements until his death in 1742, at which point Ashley took over the wholesaling of distilled spirits.
47. For an introduction to the middling sort in London see, Peter Earle, ‘The Middling Sort in London’, in The Middling Sort of People: Culture, Society and Politics in England, 1550–1800, ed. by Jonathan Barry and Christopher Brooks (London: Macmillan, 1994), pp. 141–158.
48. Stobart et al., pp. 171–175.
49. Stobart, Sugar and Spice, ch. 7.
50. GSJ, 1 March 1733.
51. Daily Journal, 19 February 1732; Daily Courant, 5 November 1733.
52. Peter Clark, Sociability and Urbanity: Clubs and Societies in the Eighteenth Century City (Leicester: Victorian Studies Centre, 1986); Valerie Capdeville, ‘The Ambivalent Identity of Eighteenth-Century London Clubs as a Prelude to Victorian Clublife’, Cahiers Victoirens & Edouardiens, 81 (2015), pp. 2–23 (p. 6). On gentility and the middling sort see, H.R. French, The Middle Sort of People in Provincial England, 1600–1750 (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2007).
53. Angela McShane, ‘Material Culture and “Political Drinking” in Seventeenth-Century England’, in Cultures of Intoxication, ed. by Withington, and McShane, pp. 247–276 (p. 276); Phil Withington, ‘Intoxicants and Society in Early Modern England’, The Historical Journal, 54:3 (2011), pp.631–657; ‘Renaissance Drinking Cultures and Popular Print’, in Intoxication and Society: Problematic Pleasures of Drugs and Alcohol, ed. by Jonathan Herring, Ciaran Regan, Darin Weinberg and Phil Withington (London: Palgrave Macmillan, 2013), pp. 135–152.
54. Universal Spectator and Weekly Journal, 16 March 1745. Barker wrote under the pseudonym Henry Stonecastle. See, G. L’E. Turner, ‘Baker, Henry (1698–1774), natural philosopher and teacher of deaf people’, Oxford Dictionary of National Biography.
https://www.oxforddnb.com/view/10.1093/ref:odnb/9780198614128.001.0001/odnb-9780198614128-e-1120> [accessed 4 August 2020].
55. Samuel Simpson, The Agreeable Historian, or the Compleat English Traveller (London, 1746), p. 488.
56. Bodleian Library, University of Oxford, John Johnson Collection: London Play Places 5 (36).
57. For a general introduction on politeness and its function amongst the middling sort see, Paul Langford, A Polite and Commercial People: England 1727–1783 (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1989), pp. 59–121. See also, H.R. French, ‘Ingenious & Learned gentlemen’ – social perceptions and self-fashioning among parish elites in Essex, 1680–1740’, Social History, 25:1 (2000), pp. 44–66.
58. Maxine Berg and Helen Clifford, ‘Selling Consumption in the Eighteenth Century: Advertising and the Trade Card in Britain and France’, Cultural and Social History, 4:2 (2007), pp. 145–170.
59. It is unclear whether Figure 5 is a trade card, considering the satirical content of the poem below Groves’ portrait. According to James Caulfield, Groves was ‘the very essence of a good fellow’ and elected president of the ‘Honourable Society of Non-common Pleas’, a humorous club. See, James Caulfield, Portraits, Memoirs, and Characters of Remarkable Persons, Vol. 3 (London, 1820), pp. 259–260. Newspaper reports suggest one ‘Mr Groves, Master of the great Pothouse in [Horselydown] Lane’ died ‘very wealthy’ in June 1739. It is unclear whether this is the same Mr Groves featured. See, Daily Post, 28 June 1739.
60. Ned Ward, The London Spy. For the Month of December 1699, 2nd edn. (London, 1701), p. 11.
61. Claver Morris, The Diary of a West Country Physician, ed. by Edmund Hobhouse (Rochester: Stanhope Press 1934), pp. 131–132.
62. W.M., ‘Duty of a Critic’, in The Yearly Chronicle for M,DCC,LXI., ed. by Henry Baldwin (London, 1761), pp. 34–36 (pp. 35–36).
63. LMA, CLA/047/LR/03/P/1743/023/G; Daily Gazetteer, 15 October 1743.
64. LDPGA, 18 October 1743. Emphases my own.
65. ‘The second Parliament of George II: Second session (4 of 4, begins 12/4/1736)’, in The History and Proceedings of the House of Commons: Volume 9, 1734–1737 (London, 1742), pp. 193–238 (p. 195).
66. Erasmus Jones, Luxury, Pride and Vanity: The Bane of the British Nation (London, 1736), p. 5.
67. Daily Gazetteer, 7 February 1736; Thomas Wilson, Distilled Spirituous Liquors the Bane of the Nation: Being some Considerations Humbly offer’d to the Legislature (London, 1736).
68. See Figure 4; White, passim.
69. GSJ, 4 November 1736.
70. Ibid. The journal’s decision can be linked to Shoemaker’s argument that morality was one of the ‘central concerns’ of the press in this period. See, Robert B. Shoemaker, The London Mob: Violence and Disorder in Eighteenth-Century England (London: Bloomsbury, 2007), p. 269.
71. Walker, pp. 129–130.
72. GSJ, 4 November 1736.
73. GSJ, 1 August 1734.
74. Daily Journal, 14 September 1734.
75. Ibid. See also Daily Courant, 16 January 1734.
76. GSJ, 1 August 1734.
77. Ibid; Shoemaker, The London Mob, p. 249.
78. Middlesex Journal, 4 May 1769.
79. GSJ, 26 September 1734.
80. LDPGA, 10 October 1735.
81. LDPGA, 24 December 1735.
82. Jeffrey Orson ran two punch-houses.
83. Country Journal or The Craftsman, 21 June 1735.
84. LDPGA, 19 January 1735.
85. GSJ, 5 June 1735.
86. LDPGA, 21 January 1735.
87. Oliver Goldsmith, The Busy Body, 6 (London, 1759), p. 32. See also, Peter Dixon and David Mannion, ‘Goldsmith and the Busy Body’, Literary and Linguistic Computing, 22:3 (2007), pp. 435–446 (pp. 436–437).
88. Robert B. Shoemaker, ‘The Decline of Public Insult in London 1660–1800’, Past & Present, 169 (2000), pp. 97–131 (p. 97).
89. On the economic value of intoxicants and their impact on attitudes to consumption see, Phil Withington, ‘Intoxicants and the Invention of ‘Consumption’, Economic History Review, 73:2 (2020), pp. 384–408.
90. Clark, ‘The “Mother Gin” Controversy’, p. 73.
91. LDPGA, 7 October 1736.
92. Daily Gazetteer, 18 December 1736.
93. Middlesex Journal, 4 May 1769. For the earliest example of this language see, Gazetteer and London Daily Advertiser, 14 February 1756. See also, William J. Ashworth, Customs and Excise: Trade, Production, and Consumption in England, 1640–1845 (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2003), pp. 209–234.
94. The annual register, or a view of the history, politics, and literature, for the year 1776 (London, 1777), p. 169.
95. Bernard Mandeville, The Fable of the Bees: or, Private Vices, Public Benefits (London, 1723). See also, Roy Porter, ‘Consumption: Disease of the Consumer Society?’, in Consumption and the World of Goods, ed. by John Brewer and Roy Porter (London: Routledge, 1993), pp. 58–83, (p. 65).
96. Ashley’s success was likely aided by the assumption that arguments against luxury were ‘effectively demolished’ in the late-seventeenth and early-eighteenth centuries. See, Cox, p. 225.
97. Public Advertiser, 5 July 1753.
98. Stobart et al., pp. 113–116; Helen Berry, ‘Polite Consumption: Shopping in Eighteenth-Century England’, Transactions of the Royal Historical Society, 12 (2002), pp. 375–394 (p. 383). On the restructuring and development of provincial towns in this period see, Peter Borsay, The English Urban Renaissance: Culture and Society in the Provincial Town, 1660–1770 (Oxford: Clarendon, 2002). On criticism of Borsay’s argument, especially in relation to its lack of engagement with London see, Robert Tittler, ‘Review: Reconsidering the ‘English Urban Renaissance: Cities, Culture and Society after the Great Fire of London’, Journal of British Studies, 40:3 (2001), pp. 419–430.
99. Charles Viner, A General Abridgement of Law and Equity (London, 1742). Using data gathered from Eighteenth Century Collections Online, I have located 535 documents which refer to the term ‘pro bono publico’. Seven per cent of these documents refer to James Ashley or the London Punch House. This data includes all editions of documents with multiple print runs.
100. See for example, Hugh Speke, Some Considerations which have been humbly offer’d and laid before the Honourable House of Commons, (London, 1698).
101. See for example, Theophilus Cibber, A Lick at a Liar: or, Calumny Detected (London: 1752), p. 15.
102. The Library: or, Moral and Critical Magazine, Vol. 2 (London, 1762), p. 254.
103. Arthrell D. Sanders, ‘The Student: Matters of Publication’, CLA Journal, 45:1 (2001), pp. 69–86.
104. A. Liveryman, The Student: or The Oxford and Cambridge monthly miscellany, 2 (London, 1751), p. 305.
105. Ibid, p. 339. Shrub was a fruit liqueur, made with rum or brandy, sugar and the rinds of fruit.
106. The Centinel No. 12, (Dublin, 1757), p. 51.
107. Geoff Baldwin, ‘The “Public” as a Rhetorical Community in Early Modern England’, in Communities in Early Modern England: Networks, Place, Rhetoric, ed. by Alexandra Shepard and Phil Withington (Manchester: Manchester University Press, 2000), pp. 199–215 (p. 200).
108. For an introduction to the Georgian stage see, John Brewer, The Pleasures of the Imagination: English Culture in the Eighteenth Century (London: Routledge, 2013), pp. 261–338.
109. Frederick Pilon, Illumination; or, the Glazier’s Conspiracy (London, 1779), p. 14.
110. Brewer, p. 262.
111. David Garrick Papers, Hereford Museum, 1992-24/24, p. 2.
http://www.davidgarrickhereford.org.uk/wp-content/uploads/2016/07/1992-24_24.pdf> [accessed 20 June 2022].
112. Public Advertiser, 3 August 1776.
113. Maxine Berg and Elizabeth Eger, ‘The Rise and Fall of the Luxury Debates’, in Luxury in the Eighteenth Century: Debates, Desires and Delectable Goods, ed. by Maxine Berg and Elizabeth Eger (London: Palgrave Macmillan, 2003), pp. 7–27 (p. 15).
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Figure 4. James Ashley, c. 1740, © The Trustees of the British Museum. All rights reserved. |
Figure 5. On Mr Groves, 1734, © The Trustees of the British Museum. All rights reserved. |
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