Drunk Victorians: Moral Panic & Meat Wine

Betwixt The Sheets: The History of Sex, Scandal & Society

History Hit

Society, Sex, Scandal, Education, History

4.8 • 1.6K Ratings

🗓️ 30 April 2024

⏱️ 46 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

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Summary

Glass of meat wine, anyone? That's right, the Victorians loved a glass of meaty wine.

They loved drinking so much that it became a moral panic, with whole movements of temperance cropping up around Britain.

What was drinking culture really like in the Victorian and Edwardian Britain? Were women able to drink as much as men? And what exactly went into that meat wine?

Helping Kate get to the bottom of this is Thora Hands, author of Drinking in Victorian and Edwardian Britain: Beyond the Spectre of the Drunkard.

This episode was edited and produced by Stuart Beckwith. The senior producer was Charlotte Long.

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Transcript

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0:00.0	Hello my lovely betwixters it's me Kate Lister how are you doing I'm doing just fine
0:06.7	I thank you so much for asking but to make sure that you're fine and I'm fine and the producers are fine and the lawyers are fine and everybody is fine. I have to give you the fair dues warning and here it is.
0:17.0	This is an adult podcast spoken by adults to other adults about adulty things in an adulty way.
0:21.0	Covering a range of adult subjects on you should be an adult
0:24.7	too. And now we have that lot out of the way. I think we're allowed to continue.
0:30.5	On with the show! It's fabulous to see you betwixters.
0:35.0	Come and sit with me at the bar.
0:40.0	As you might have guessed, we are down the booser in old Victorian London and there are some fabulous
0:46.9	drinks on the menu. Well there are some drinks on the menu. I'm a regular so I'll be doing the ordering.
0:54.0	Hmm, for you, let me see. I think you can do with a meat wine.
1:00.0	Yes, meat, meat, as, meat and potatoes wine.
1:03.9	What's not to love with that?
1:05.2	There's meat to satisfy your appetite
1:07.4	and extracts of malt to help you digest it.
1:10.3	Mm-hmm, tasty. And for me... it. Tasty.
1:14.0	And for me, a glass of Bookfast wine, made and sold by monks in 1885.
1:21.0	We do actually talk about Bookfast in the show and my producers being ever keen
1:26.4	have sorted me out an actual bottle of Buckfast. Here it is right in front of me. I think that you are always onto a winner when the
1:35.3	ingredients just says red wine based and a high caffeine content. Right, okay, here we go. This is me genuinely not pretending, genuinely trying, but screw top wines. Okay, here we go.
1:50.0	All right, so that's, I haven't tasted yet, but that smells like, that, um, Nay Palm?
1:57.0	All right, okay, here we go. Bottoms up, have a swig.
2:02.0	Oh. up. Have a swig. Oh no! Oh dear. God that'll strip the enamel off your teeth won't it?
	...

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