Concern about alcohol consumption was not unique to the nineteenth century. Even in the early modern period, pubs were frequently targeted for encouraging excessive alcohol consumption, as evidenced by the extensive historiography on the history of drink and drinking establishments in early modern Europe. Previous historical research has translated the prominent place of alcohol in society into research on the production, sale, and consumption of alcohol. Much attention has been paid to social control and discipline. This historiography was fuelled by the use of criminal records, which historians considered particularly useful for researching the social life surrounding drinking establishments.²⁰ Peter Clark, in his work on alehouses in England at the beginning of the nineteenth century, described how stricter regulation led to a reduction in the number of public houses, with the small neighbourhood taverns in cities being eclipsed by larger establishments.²¹ Thomas Brennan, looking at French drinking culture, showed that in the seventeenth century, pubs were increasingly associated with the waste of money and time and with absence from work, but that it was only in the eighteenth century that drunkenness was condemned.²² Beat Kümin and Beverly Ann Tlusty focused on how, in Central Europe, the aristocracy increasingly criticized the drinking habits of the lower social classes. They also pointed out that this elitist association of the public drinking establishment with crime has been taken up too readily by historians. Drunkenness in this period was not (yet) necessarily considered abnormal or disorderly.²³ Others, however, have seen the pub as more than a source of disorder. Maarten Hell, for example, has shown how, in the early modern period, Amsterdam’s taverns were important places for conflict resolution and the restoration of harmony.²⁴ Lynn Martin signalled how the growing popularity of strong drink changed drinking patterns in Europe in the eighteenth century and how this led to concerns about its social and medical ill effects.²⁵

Various historians have pointed out that in the eighteenth century, increased polarization between the social classes and the problematization of alcohol were precursors of the large-scale offensive against alcohol consumption led by the bourgeoisie in the nineteenth century.²⁶ Opinions differ about the role of industrialization in alcohol abuse and in the problematization of alcohol. Jaap van der Stel, in his book on five centuries of combating alcohol abuse, pointed out that binge drinking existed in the eighteenth century and was therefore not a by-product of industrialization, whereas Jan-Willem Gerritsen, in his study on the regulation of alcohol, saw industrialization as the main cause of widespread alcohol abuse.²⁷

In any case, impoverishment in growing, industrializing cities increased the visibility of misery and spurred the temperance fight in various countries. In England, attention to the temperance movement has resulted in a vast historiography,²⁸ and in the Netherlands, too, historians have focused on the anti-alcohol movement, which was an important part of the nineteenth-century civilizing offensive by which bourgeois groups tried to enforce moderation, a certain work ethic, thrift, and cleanliness among the working class.²⁹ Van der Stel and Gerritsen have looked at this moral crusade over the long term,³⁰ while Maartje Janse, using archives and publications, showed that the reform focus of the temperance movement shifted from personal reform to legal reform.³¹ Gemma Blok looked at the struggle from the perspective of the history of addiction, describing the process of medicalization of drunkenness at the end of the nineteenth century.³² Initiatives to ‘cure’ drunks were strongly driven by moralism, while government intervention was primarily aimed at limiting the public disturbance that drunks caused. Janse showed that although reformers considered drinking women to be morally worse than drinking men, in their propaganda they depicted women as victims and alcohol abuse as a male, working-class evil.³³ Framing alcohol abuse as a problem of the male labourer clearly influenced the political debate and the nature of the measures taken to regulate drinking, as will be shown below.

The study of the geographical distribution of public houses in urban areas, which pre-dates the spatial turn and is relatively easy to map out thanks to the extensive system of licensing, is still consistently popular, especially in English historiography.³⁴ For the Netherlands, the potential for such research is also great. In any case, however, the rise of alcohol consumption in nineteenth-century Netherlands has been debated by historians. Whether ’t Nut’s 1803 complaint that as much as a quarter to half of a labourer’s daily wage was spent on alcohol³⁵ was justified is difficult to ascertain because sources on wages are rare.³⁶ Still, on the basis of excise statistics, historians have shown that alcohol consumption did increase over the course of the nineteenth century.³⁷ By the beginning of the nineteenth century, beer was no longer the people’s favourite drink; coffee³⁸ and especially jenever had replaced it. By far the most alcohol drunk was the distillate jenever (or Dutch gin). The annual consumption varied but was exceptionally high in the first decades of the century, with peaks of more than five liters of spirits per capita. After this apex, consumption declined steeply until the 1840s, when consumption again began to rise.³⁹ Van der Bie has pointed out the paradox that although alcohol abuse was consistently associated with poverty, consumption increased significantly in the 1840s when the rise in real wages made it possible for more people to buy spirits.⁴⁰ In the 1870s, spirits consumption rose rapidly; the average Dutchman drank 7.5 liters in 1871, and over nine liters in 1874.⁴¹ In the following decade, spirits consumption declined, but beer consumption rose again slightly.⁴² These patterns were calculated on the basis of national figures but, according to Van der Bie, tell only part of the story. There were large regional differences. In Limburg and large parts of Brabant and Zeeland, relatively small amounts of spirits were consumed (2.1-5.5 liters of spirits per year per person), but Leiden – along with the four largest Dutch cities, the province of Groningen, and large parts of Friesland – belonged to the 25 percentile of greatest consumers and had an average per capita consumption of more than 9.9 liters per year.⁴³ A local perspective is therefore important. But before we turn to Leiden, let us first look at the run-up to the Liquor Act.

Initially, the fight against alcohol abuse was carried out by various local municipal temperance associations. On 12 September 1842, at a meeting in Leiden, the national NV was founded.⁴⁴ This association targeted strong drink, advocating total abstinence of spirits, and presented beer as a healthy alternative.⁴⁵ It primarily focused on creating awareness through propaganda, but politics was not excluded as a strategy to combat alcohol misuse. Already at its inaugural meeting in Leiden, the question was raised whether the association could be formed without the cooperation of the government.⁴⁶ Although it was believed that ‘the very source of evil’ could only be stopped ‘by a voluntary decision based on moral and religious principles’,⁴⁷ the chairman, Dr. Willem Egeling, considered the government’s cooperation to be essential. The government could contribute to the fight by making drunkenness a punishable offense, reducing the number of sales outlets for strong drink, combating poverty, restricting or prohibiting strong drink in institutions managed by the government, and prohibiting festivals.⁴⁸

NV worked at getting legal measures passed by lobbying the Dutch parliament.⁴⁹ The anti-alcohol law passed in 1851 in the American state of Maine, forbidding the trade and sale of spirits, bolstered NV’s call for government intervention.⁵⁰ Perhaps more importantly, the rise in jenever consumption in the 1870s further fuelled the insistence on government intervention.⁵¹ Support for legislation came from ’t Nut and the Volksbond.⁵² This more moderate association fighting alcohol abuse, founded in 1875 and led by Hendrik Goeman Borgesius, a member of parliament, pushed for political action. The Volksbond saw alcohol abuse not only as a cause of poverty but also as its consequence, and advocated for improved living conditions of the working class. Unlike NV, which by the end of the century was focusing on total abstinence, the Volksbond advocated moderation and fought primarily against the abuse of strong drink. Goeman Borgesius saw the state as an important ally in this campaign.⁵³

This advocacy in support of legal alcohol regulation was not without controversy. In 1855, following a proposal for a parliamentary inquiry into alcohol abuse, the subject was debated in the Tweede Kamer, but the possibility of government intervention was soon rejected. The subsequent inquiry into the drinking habits of the Dutch led to an inventory of legal options for limiting drinking, but no legislation. NV persevered, and the continuing rise in consumption led to a change in attitudes about government intervention. In 1875, the Dutch Minister of the Interior Jan van Heemskerk, himself an active advocate for liquor control, commissioned J.L. de Jonge, member of parliament and chairman of NV, to draft a bill, which was presented to the Tweede Kamer in 1880.⁵⁴

Prior to the legislation, the Tweede Kamer vigorously debated whether combating alcohol abuse was the responsibility of government.⁵⁵ According to some in the Tweede Kamer, the immediate availability of alcohol was the main reason for public drunkenness, and it was therefore necessary to limit the number of venues that sold alcohol. Wassenaer, a delegate from Leiden, was one member who argued that liquor was too readily available.⁵⁶ The attention paid to limiting venues is worth noting. Protection by the state was, according to Heemskerk’s successor De Savorin Lohman, one of the reasons for the existence of the bill. It was not only house fathers who needed support, because they could not shield household members from the temptation of available alcohol, but also shopkeepers. Many felt compelled to sell alcohol in order to retain their customers, the minister argued, but would prefer nothing more than to see the sale of alcohol banned.⁵⁷ Member of Parliament Goeman Borgesius, remarkably, argued that prohibiting the combination of liquor sales with the sale of other commodities, such as groceries, would help prevent alcohol abuse by women. Although the number of female drinkers was small, women, claimed the MP, could too easily slip a bottle of gin or brandy into the basket they used for groceries, whereas their ‘finely developed’ sense of shame kept them from entering a liquor store. After all, examples from large English cities like Liverpool showed that low alcohol consumption by women was not a ‘law of nature’ and, as a result, such a first step on the wrong road had to be prevented.⁵⁸

After a long debate, the Liquor Act was finally passed. In a vote on 24 May 1881, the law was adopted with 68 votes for and seven against. The Drankwet, ‘regulating the retail sale of liquor and providing for penalties for public drunkenness’,⁵⁹ prohibited the sale of strong drink to young people under sixteen years of age, criminalized public drunkenness, and limited the number of sales venues. On the first two points, as we shall see, there had already been some local legislation in Leiden but now matters were regulated nationally. The introduction of the third measure, the limitation of the number of drinking establishments, was new and most difficult to implement. The government imposed a maximum of one license per 500 inhabitants in municipalities with a population of over 50,000 and one license per 400 inhabitants in municipalities with a population of 20,000 to 50,000.⁶⁰ Leiden, with 41,238 inhabitants, fell into the latter category, which meant a maximum of 103 permits. The city far exceeded this limit: in 1881, Leiden had around 350 drinking establishments.⁶¹

The debate about alcohol regulation was not only a national matter. In the second half of the nineteenth century, alcohol consumption was an issue that regularly came up for discussion in Leiden’s city council meetings. For example, there was a discussion about whether the time-honoured custom of serving spirits to fire fighters as ‘refreshment’ at the scene of a fire should be maintained.⁶² During the discussion of the proposal to increase school fees, cynical reference was made to the fact that both workmen and decent and distinguished people spent ‘tons of gold’ on ‘pleasure and wealth’, ‘cigars, wine, and strong liquor’ but kept their purses closed when it came to educating children.⁶³ The restriction, or even abolition, of the local festival was repeatedly on the agenda of the city council because the event led to great ‘abuse of strong drink’.⁶⁴ One councillor protested vehemently to a request from a certain Van Wijk to use municipal land to store his wheelbarrows, when it was discovered that he was not only a shopkeeper and landlord but also a pub owner. According to the councillor, the pub was not a reputable inn, but a ‘pinch pub’ with a separate back entrance ‘where amateurs, who are still somewhat ashamed to visit a pub openly, as it were, sneak in unnoticed to take a so-called pinch and in that way become established tipplers’.⁶⁵ The councillor was not convinced by the council’s investigation that found it was Van Wijk’s wife who had the patent as a barkeeper and operated a liquor store, that ‘irregularities never occurred’ in the taproom, and that permission to store his wheelbarrows should therefore be granted.⁶⁶ He cynically called it ‘gallantry’ but believed that it made no difference whether a man or a woman ran the business and maintained that the municipality could not grant land for a pub.⁶⁷ The very fact that the sometimes heated discussion about the consumption of alcohol also flared up in debates that were not directly about alcohol or the prevention of alcohol abuse shows not only how much the issue occupied people’s minds but also what an important role alcohol abuse was thought to play in all kinds of social ills, at least by some councillors. These concerns, however, did not always lead to far-reaching legal restrictions; the proposals coming out of the above council discussions were all rejected by the council.

Nevertheless, alcohol sales were occasionally regulated. The general police regulations of Leiden of 1856 and 1861 imposed a registration requirement on owners of liquor stores, barkeepers, pubs, and other houses, as well as prohibited the sale of liquor between 11 p.m. and 6 a.m. (in summer)/7 a.m. (in winter). In addition, it was forbidden to sell alcohol to drunken persons, persons in charitable institutions, children under fifteen years of age and, in the event of a fire, to serve alcohol within the cordoned-off area.⁶⁸

Drunkenness was also prosecuted. The Leydse Courant regularly carried reports about people who were ‘obviously drunk’ being removed from the street following judgements handed down by the cantonal court.⁶⁹ In 1860, a year for which we systematically examined judgements, half (507) of the more than 1,000 judgements handed down by the Leiden cantonal court concerned public drunkenness.⁷⁰ They were almost exclusively against men (97 percent) and, in view of the large number of repeat offenders, those who caused public nuisance.

Against this background it is remarkable that in 1873 the city of Leiden did not want to maintain the ban on serving alcohol to drunk persons and children.⁷¹ During the discussion of the police regulations in that year, these provisions were the subject of debate, along with whether drinks could be served to those in charitable institutions and to people who were inside the fire cordon at the scene of a fire. What initiated the discussion is unknown, but the arguments recorded in the proceedings of the council show what the councillors wanted; control of the facts was considered ‘a kind of patronage’ that should not be in the hands of the police. The police should not be entrusted with enforcing the alcohol regulations. To determine who was and who was not drunk was difficult. Moreover, it was felt that the law would always remain a dead letter: ‘are there in the history of the bars in Leiden examples of drunk people who have been refused drinks on account of police regulations?’ With regard to serving children, it was said that it was difficult to determine whether ‘a young person had reached the ripe old age of sixteen years and had therefore acquired the right to drink’.⁷² It was not until the Liquor Act of 1881 that the lower age limit of who could be sold alcohol was changed to sixteen.

In determining how to implement the Liquor Act, it was mainly the limitation on the number of alcohol outlets that demanded the attention of the Leiden city council. The sale of alcohol required a license. Because alcohol sellers were also subject to the patent law, the obvious solution was to issue licenses via the patents, but in the end the council refrained from linking the two. Patent law was subject to change and therefore was not useful as a basis for the licensing instrument. Another important consideration was that the patent registration was linked to the right to vote. Increasing the price of patents for barkeepers, that is, owners of bars, by the cost of the right to vote would increase the number of people entitled to vote, and that was considered undesirable.⁷³ For this reason, it was decided nationally to introduce a separate licensing fee. The license was to be sold for not less than ten and not more than 25 guilders for every 100 guilders of the rental value of the licensed premises.⁷⁴

Leiden decided to issue the licenses for the maximum amount of 25 guilders.⁷⁵ The regulation also offered a discount on the licensing fee for drinking establishments that did not sell strong drink between Saturday 6 p.m. and Monday 6 a.m., as an incentive to lessen the effect of the so-called Blue Monday.⁷⁶ From the convictions of the Leiden district court, it is clear that Blue Mondays were a serious problem. For 1861, it is known that the greatest number of public drunkenness offenses took place on the weekend, more specifically, on Sunday evenings (over a third).⁷⁷

The council discussion that led up to establishing the cost of a liquor license is interesting in view of the consequences of the law for Leiden’s alcohol venues. Councillor Buys was remarkably attentive to the fallout from the law and showed particular concern for small liquor vendors. He believed that the maximum charge of 25 guilders would ‘weigh heavily on the small public houses’ and argued for a graduated levy so that bar proprietors of such establishments would have the opportunity to look for another business.⁷⁸ In this way it would be possible to work towards a ‘slow removal’ of pubs and to act in the spirit of the legislation, which meant respecting existing licenses. The chairman also saw that the high costs would lead to the disappearance of drinking establishments, but in his opinion, this did not conflict with the intention of the law, given that the number of drinking establishments was to be reduced from 350 to just over 100. In his opinion, the businesses that would be eliminated first would be ‘the mass of establishments for the consumption of alcoholic beverages, established either as a side line to another business or by persons who exercise some sort of trade and have one of the members of their household, as they usually express themselves, take a patent to earn a few pennies on the side’.⁷⁹ These people had already indicated that they could not pay the licensing fee because the earnings from their public houses were too small. However, since these barkeepers claimed that their earnings were ‘as good as nothing’, the mayor stated, the regulation that might make it impossible for them to continue their profession ‘would not noticeably affect them’.⁸⁰ This raises not only the questions of if and how the Liquor Act changed Leiden’s drinking establishments, but also which owners of drinking establishments had the most to fear. This is what we focus on below.

The Liquor Act of 1881 stipulated that Leiden could have no more than one drinking establishment for every 400 inhabitants. As we saw earlier, the density of public houses and thus the availability of alcohol played a role in the temperance debate. As early as 1843, Dr. Herckenrath noted in his pamphlet Over het onmatig gebruik van sterken drank, en de middelen om hetzelve te keer te gaan (On the Immoderate Use of Strong Drink and the Means of Combating It) that the density of drinking establishments in Amsterdam was very high compared to cities such as Berlin and Paris. With 1,252 barkeepers, 648 pub owners, and 26 coffeehouse owners, Amsterdam’s alcohol establishments had no fewer than 1,929 owners of an alcohol sale outlet in the year 1837/1838, which for a population of 200,000 was equivalent to 104 inhabitants per drinking establishment, not counting liquor stores. In large cities such as Berlin and Paris, the numbers were considerably higher, 130 and 260, respectively.⁸¹ Leiden sat between the two. If, like Herckenrath, we exclude liquor stores and innkeepers (who did not exclusively sell drinks but also offered a bed and possibly meals),⁸² we arrive at 123 inhabitants per establishment in 1820, and 171 for the year 1849/1850. If we include liquor stores and innkeepers, the density for these years is 118 and 147 inhabitants per establishment, respectively.

Because the patent registers do not always mention what the patented barkeepers or liquor stores sold, the number of sellers of spirits for the period up to 1881 cannot be identified with complete certainty. However, the number of sellers specified before 1881, for instance, as wine and beer barkeepers was extremely small. Since the total number of patented sellers of alcohol in 1879/1880 was almost as large as the number of alcohol outlets that the Leiden city council licensed in 1881, we can assume that before 1881 spirits were also available from almost all non-specified sellers.

The overview of the number of alcohol outlets based on the patents shows the change in the size of the Leiden alcohol trade (see Table 1). While the number of alcohol sellers in Leiden in 1849/1850 remained stable in relation to the reference year 1820, the number rose sharply after the middle of the century. This rise reversed the relative decline that had occurred between 1820 and 1850. In 1880, the number of inhabitants per outlet was back at the 1820 level. However, compared to 1820, by 1880 discussions about the availability of alcohol had also increased. The relative increase in the number of drinking establishments suggests that complaints about the general availability of alcohol were well-founded. On the eve of the introduction of the Liquor Act, Leiden had around 350 drinking establishments, more than three times the number allowed by the act. Nationally, the number of drinking establishments had to be reduced by eliminating at least 66 percent of the premises; in Leiden the percentage was slightly higher at 71 percent.⁸³

The Leiden city council was well aware that the number of drinking establishments had to be drastically reduced. Presumably for this reason, the council opted for the maximum amount for the licensing fee. The number of premises declined steadily in the decade that followed. In the patent register of 1893/1894, it rose again. This was, as we shall see, due to the increase in the number of vendors of low-alcohol drinks, such as beer and wine. The sharp increase in the number of premises in 1896 must be attributed to the large area around the city that Leiden annexed that year. With the addition of 8,500 inhabitants, Leiden thus closed a disproportionately large number of drinking establishments, as can be seen from the decrease in the number of inhabitants per drinking establishment.⁸⁴

The number of patents and liquor licenses issued shows that in the years following the passing of the Liquor Act, the number of sales outlets for alcohol in Leiden decreased even if the legal target of one per 400 inhabitants at the end of the century was far from achieved. Thus, Leiden was not explicitly failing to implement the law. The Liquor Act offered a loophole on one important point: existing premises that were in compliance with the rules could only be refused a permit after twenty years, and active proprietors could continue their business for the duration of their lives.⁸⁵ This tied the hands of the council, and NV’s petition – submitted in 1892 with expressions of support from the church councils of various municipalities, asking the council to reduce the number of licenses to the maximum stipulated by law as quickly as possible – was therefore rejected.⁸⁶ The board of the Leiden branch of NV had not taken the loophole into account. The fact that existing premises could not be refused a license meant that the decline in the number of premises until 1901 was not caused by forced closure but by other factors. First, the legislation disrupted the normal ebb and flow of commercial dynamics in which businesses closed and new ones were established; the number of new businesses declined but were no longer automatically replaced by new ones. In addition, the high cost of a license must have played a role in the decrease in the number of premises serving alcohol. What the implications of this were for the alcohol trade in Leiden, along with who was affected, are examined below.

Drinking establishments came in all shapes and sizes. In the patent registers, drinking establishments were classified based on a combination of the type of sale (e.g., bottled or tap) and quantity of drink sold. The first category was herbergiers and logementhouders (trade #342), that is, tavern or innkeepers and lodging owners. Not all of them served alcohol, but if they did, they needed a separate patent for the sale of alcohol. In Leiden, the patents for herbergiers and logementhouders were regularly combined with licenses for serving and selling alcohol.⁸⁷ The next category was slijters (#384), owners of beer, wine, and spirits stores who sold alcohol on a small scale, that is, no more than eleven bottles or two barrels at a time. There is little information on the nature of the businesses of the small-scale tappers (#385), who served beer, wine, and liqueur ‘from their houses or shops’ and who did not stock more than eleven bottles or half a barrel of beer. Unlike slijters, drinks could be consumed on location. We can also assume that tapper premises were smaller in size than those of kroeghouders (#386), who were small pub owners, barkeepers, and liquor merchants. Finally, there were koffiehuishouders (#387) – coffeehouse keepers – as well as keepers of public inns (houders van openbare uitspanningen).⁸⁸

The patent tax was levied based on the estimated raw yield of the trade/business, in other words, on the revenue and not on profits. The Patent Act of 1819 importantly determined the classification of trade groups. In addition to classification of the drinking establishments by type, size was also relevant. The bandwidth of the tax classification, which determined how much an owner had to pay, was large. The classes with the lowest number were reserved for the largest companies.⁸⁹

The distribution of Leiden’s alcohol venues across the different classes (see Figure 1)⁹⁰ shows that in class 11 the Leiden alcohol trade was dominated by liquor stores and barkeepers, or a combination of these. The owners of these small public houses owed only eight guilders a year in patents.⁹¹ At the opposite end of the spectrum, class 2 comprised one well-to-do coffeehouse owner and a few businesses of wealthy alcohol sellers who combined a public house with a liquor store. Classes with the lowest licensing fees (13-14) were dominated by small pub owners who, presumably as take-away avant la lettre, sold a glass on the go from their window. For the very smallest alcohol outlets, in class 14, the tax was no more than fl. 1.75 a year.⁹²

Looking at the type of businesses in the various years (Figure 2), we can see several shifts in the Leiden alcohol trade. In 1820 most drinking establishments were taprooms (tapperijen), but in the following years the sector diversified. We cannot rule out that this shift reflects a change in how classifications were recorded. According to the data, in 1820 there were hardly any liquor stores, though many taprooms. In 1849/1850, the ratio was more similar, and there was growth in the number of businesses that combined the sale of draft beer and spirits. In the final three years (1879/1880 and 1883/1884 and 1893/1894), the large number of combined barkeepers and liquor stores is the most striking. Because the number of liquor stores in the city was considerable both in the eighteenth century⁹⁴ and in the later years of the nineteenth century, it seems unlikely that Leiden had only six liquor stores in 1820. Presumably, in 1820 and possibly also in 1849/1850 a number of barkeepers/ owners of liquor stores were designated as barkeepers only. However, since our sources do not allow us to make definitive statements on this subject, we must be careful in drawing conclusions about these two separate trades. As the earlier overview of the number of public houses showed, the number of patents issued just before to the introduction of the Liquor Act was remarkably high. This high number was almost entirely accounted for by the large number of combined liquor store and barkeepers. It was also in this classification that the city of Leiden profited the most from the Liquor Act: the considerable decrease in the number of combined premises was of great significance.

The significant fluctuations in the number of liquor stores/barkeepers (whether combined or not) should not obscure other, more nuanced developments. For example, the number of coffeehouse owners in Leiden increased from six in 1820 to fifteen by the middle of the century to 36 in 1879/1880. After the first coffeehouse license was issued in 1752, coffeehouse owners often combined their bar with a billiard table to increase their clientele, which is also evident in the patent registers of the nineteenth century.⁹⁵ Where initially drinks were also served in coffee houses, in the nineteenth century, the houses also played a role in the fight against alcoholism.⁹⁶ After the Liquor Act was passed, the number of coffee houses continued to increase slightly. Still, the few coffeehouse owners who until 1880 combined their business with a small barkeeper premises and a liquor store had probably decided to stop selling spirits. This type of space – the coffee house where liquor was sold –virtually disappeared after the passing of the Liquor Act.

After a remarkable growth in the number of small pubs and small liquor stores in the first half of the nineteenth century, the number of these outlets decreased considerably. It is not clear why only a few patents were issued for these small outlets in the years 1879/1880 and 1883/1884. The increase in this category in 1893/1894 is remarkable but can be explained. As we saw earlier, the Leiden city council had hoped that the Liquor Act would reduce the number of small sales outlets. However, where in earlier years this type of outlet had been registered as a kroeghouder (pub keeper) without specification, in 1893/1894 the patent holders from this category were registered as taproom proprietors (tappers). The registered specification of the drinks served indicates, after 1893/1894, that the twenty men and eighteen women who owned such establishments fell outside the law aimed at restricting the sale of spirits.

Did the smallest liquor sellers in Leiden in switching to the sale of beer act in the spirit of the law, and did they manage at the same time to avoid the feared subsequent income loss? No. Councillor Buys was right in his prediction that the cost of a permit would ‘weigh heavily on the small public houses’.⁹⁷ The combination of occupational groups, classes, and gender makes it clear where the greatest changes in the Leiden liquor trade took place and who was most affected by the liquor law.

The fight against alcohol had a strong class component. It was the alcohol consumption of labourers that was problematized, but what the consequences of the Liquor Act were for consumers, from whatever class, is difficult to determine. The consequences for sellers from the lower classes were obvious. With the introduction of the Liquor Act, the Leiden city council hoped to limit the number of small pubs, and they succeeded. The restriction on the number of small pubs was intended, and the subsequent loss of employment for small pub owners was probably anticipated. However, a closer look at the data shows who this impacted the most.

The percentage of women in the sale of liquor in Leiden had always been considerable. When we look at the gender of the patentees, it appears that for many women the sale of alcohol in Leiden was an important source of income. Marjolein van Dekken, who researched liquor sellers in Leiden in the early modern period, found that in the second half of the eighteenth century, the proportion of women among the sellers of brandy from the bottle or from the barrel grew to about 50 to 60 percent of total sellers.⁹⁸ The absence of institutional constraints or training obligations and the low level of investment capital needed made selling liquor an attractive source of income for women.⁹⁹

In the nineteenth century, women were also prominent in the liquor trade. Their share among the Leiden alcohol sellers increased in the nineteenth century (Figure 3). Whereas around the middle of the nineteenth century women accounted for the lion’s share of small pubs and serving establishments, 30 years later they dominated the combined barkeeper premises and liquor stores. By this time, in the sample years 1879/1880 and 1883/1884, almost half (47 to 48 percent) of the patented liquor sellers were women. Ten years later, however, their share had fallen to 34 percent.

Looking at the occupational groups, we can see that not all alcohol sellers were equally affected. The number of female barkeepers declined, but even more drastic was the decline in the number of women running combined barkeeper premises and liquor stores, from 123 in 1879/1880 to 114 in 1883/1884 to only 74 in 1893/1894. This decrease is all the more striking since the number of men increased in that last decade (see Table 3).

As mentioned above, just before the introduction of the Liquor Act, most combined liquor stores/barkeeper premises were in the hands of women, mainly married ones. These small businesses will not have been easy to run. Whereas the male barkeepers were equally divided across the different classifications, the female barkeepers were mainly in the tax classifications with the lowest rate (Table 4). As much as 70 percent of the keepers of liquor stores and barkeepers were in the two tax classifications with the lowest rates (19.8 percent and 5.6 percent); half of all female proprietors of liquor stores and barkeepers were subject to the lowest tax rate (class 11).

In particular, the number of small barkeeper premises and combined barkeeper premises/liquor stores run by women decreased sharply, slightly changing the gender composition of the managers. In 1879/1880 and 1883/1884, 74 and 75 percent of barkeepers and barkeepers/liquor store owners were married, respectively, and 15 and 16 percent were widowed, respectively. Yet in the final reference year (1893/1894), the share of married women had dropped to 63 percent. After the transitional arrangement, the composition of the kinds of alcohol outlets in Leiden changed. The decrease in the number of barkeeper premises was accompanied by a considerable decrease in the number of women with a liquor license. Apparently, it was particularly difficult for them to pay the required licensing fee of 25 guilders to sell liquor.

The Liquor Act limited women’s ability to set up small businesses on their own, which, because of the combination of the small financial investment needed and the flexibility of the work, would have been an attractive way for women to earn an income. Whether this loss was compensated by employment in the larger drinking establishments is unknown. Still, it is important to realize that this work was different in nature in that it was waged labour, which most likely would not have provided relief to these women.

In 1881, the first national liquor law was introduced in the Netherlands to regulate alcohol consumption. The legislation came about because of strong pressure from the temperance movement, which was inspired by the temperance movements in the United States and the United Kingdom but had strong local roots. Shortly after the Liquor Act was passed, there were many complaints in Leiden that the measures had failed. It is possible that in this criticism we hear the disappointment of a group of increasingly fervent temperance campaigners that the eradication of all drinking could not come about fast enough. From the criticism of the temperance movement about the ineffectiveness of the measures implemented after 1881, one might conclude that nothing changed at the local level in the liquor trade. However, this conclusion is not justified.

In this article we examined the implementation of the Liquor Act in Leiden and its effects on the city’s alcohol sector. Prior to the implementation of the Liquor Act, the industrial city of Leiden had a high density of drinking establishments compared to the target number allowed in the act. Leiden certainly did not fall short of the national average. With the number of alcohol sales outlets registered in Leiden, there must have been an outlet of some kind on every proverbial street corner. These were many small drinking establishments, often operated by women, from which, presumably, mainly (Dutch gin) jenever was served, although the patent registers provide no information on this. The passing of the Liquor Act in 1881 changed this both in the short and long term.

In the twelve years following the passing of the act, the number of drinking establishments in Leiden decreased. However, the standard of one establishment per 400 inhabitants was nowhere near being enforced. This was not because of the ineffectiveness of the law or the lack of decisiveness of the local government charged with its implementation. More important was the extinction principle enshrined in the law, which stipulated that active proprietors of existing premises could keep their licenses for the time being. After 1881, the patent registers show a clear increase in the number of small beer barkeepers, who were promoted by the less strict advocates for liquor control as a good alternative to establishments that offered spirits.

In addition to the gradual reduction of the number of drinking establishments and the shift in the type of drinking establishments, the number of drinking establishments rapidly decreased. Despite the concerns expressed about the economic consequences for small barkeepers, the Leiden city council opted for the most expensive license of 25 guilders. This local interpretation of the national law meant that the smallest drinking establishments and liquor stores disappeared. It is ironic, however, that the Liquor Act, which was supposed to offer a solution to what was primarily framed as a male problem, had major consequences for working women. A peek behind the bar has revealed that it was mainly women who paid the price, with the loss of their source of income.

In short, the 1881 Liquor Act brought about a change in the alcohol sector in the impoverished industrial town of Leiden. Jenever was no longer obtained from one of the many small public houses run by women but from larger barkeeper premises, which, unlike small public houses, could not be found on every street corner. At the same time, beer houses were on the rise. Whether these shifts contributed to a net reduction in alcohol consumption and fewer social problems is another matter.

Ariadne Schmidt is Professor by special appointment of History of Urban Culture, in particular of Leiden, and Associate Professor of Economic and Social History at Leiden University. She specialises in the history of women and gender, labour, labour relations, households and crime in an urban context.

E-mail: a.schmidt@hum.leidenuniv.nl

Roos van Oosten is an archaeologist and historian by training and works as a university lecturer of urban archaeology at Leiden University. Since her Veni project, her research interests have included not only material culture, but also historical GIS. Together with Dr Marion Pluskota, she previously realised the project Dangerous Cities, which inspired the project Leiden’s Pubscape, 1816-1894.

E-mail: r.m.r.van.oosten@arch.leidenuniv.nl

Astrid Theerens (1996) recently completed her research master in European history from 1000 to 1800 at Leiden University to complement her bachelor’s in history at KU Leuven. As a researcher, Astrid has a strong interest in criminal history and the history of emotions in the early modern period. During her studies she worked as a student assistant to Prof. Ariadne Schmidt and Dr Roos van Oosten on the project Leiden’s Pubscape, 1816-1894, resulting in a strong interest in drinking history.

E-mail: theerensastrid@gmail.com