Artificial drinking usages of North Britain / by John Dunlop.

  • Dunlop, John, 1789-1868.
Date:
1836
Catalogue details

Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: Artificial drinking usages of North Britain / by John Dunlop. Source: Wellcome Collection.

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    the boy is about to leave his father’s roof-tree, the parent reiterates, redoubles, concentrates his in¬ struction ; above all, he obtests him to flee the tav¬ ern as he would a pest-house : with the same breath, he draws from his purse a sum, varying from ten shillings to seven pounds sterling, which he bestows for the express purpose of initiating his child into a course of dissipation, that may ensure unhappi¬ ness in after life ; and this he is bound and fettered to do: and the poor apprentice-slave must table the entry-money to his companions, or take the risk of such a course of maltreatment as in some cases it would be nearly as much as his life is worth to un¬ dergo. Perhaps no such case of inconsistency is to be found in the manners of any nation. How happy would anxious parents be, whose sons are consigned to business, to college, or elsewhere, distant from their fathers’ controul, could they be assured, that by the influence of Temperance Association, they were saved the dread of even occasional drinking matches, and the long fearful train of guilt that in¬ temperance retains, coiled up, within its own plastic and never-failing energies. In the cotton mills, when a spinner changes his wheels, or gets new wheels, he pays five shillings ; to which the other spinners add sixpence a-piece, and the whole, and sometimes much more, is spent in whisky. When a calico printer changes his colour, that is, leaves one department of work for another, he pays a fine in drink. Till very lately, from apprentice boys to the printfields, there was extorted the enor¬ mous sum of seven pounds sterling each, which, being put into a fund, when it amounted to about