Focus: Primary Source Materials

The exhibition Drink: the History of Alcohol, 1690-1920 opens at the National Archives today and runs until 31 March 2007.

Curator Philippa Glanville, Senior Research Fellow at the Victoria and Albert Museum, has selected items from the Archives that provide a good overview of the social and economic history of alcohol and which are bound to capture the imagination of the general public. Key themes include the development of the brewing industry, colonialism, the growth of the temperance movement and the therapeutic use of alcohol.

For those of us working in Alcohol and Other Drugs (AOD), the exhibition showcases the wealth of primary source materials held by the National Archives. Government and royal records include the inventory of George IV's household expenses during his visit to Scotland in 1822. At a preview yesterday, Glanville highlighted the amount of whisky added to the King's cellar during his trip, and pointed out that the tax on distillation of the spirit was lowered shortly after his return to London.

Whisky production is also reflected in the patent records on display, which include designs for improvements to the equipment used in the nineteenth century. Of greater significance is the Bass trademark registration, which, on 1 January 1876, became Britain's first ever registered trademark.

Featured alongside these items from the Archives' patent collection is an array of beer mats, retained to demonstrate the development of trademark design in which the brewing industry played such a strong part. Further examples of colourful brewing artwork are exhibited in a dedicated poster area, which has been arranged in themes showing 'Manufacture', 'Health', 'Morality', 'Empire and Nation' and 'Women'.

In keeping with its position as the leading archival institution in the UK, the National Archives avoids taking a position in presenting its treasures to us - the objective is clearly to introduce material and encourage us to delve further into the collections. However, it is difficult to avoid seeing the genderization of alcohol and inebriation in the Report on drinking conditions among women and girls in Woolwich and District, April to May 1918, one of a series of regular reports ordered by the Government to monitor patterns of alcohol use throughout the First World War.

The report also indicates a growing awareness of health and safety in the workplace - in the case alongside it are records of the drunken state of Irish workmen in the Isle of Wight which was the subject of an inquiry in the nineteenth century. Other political issues in which the exhibition walks the fine line of neutrality include the condition of the Navy (and the conversion of its stores from brandy to rum) and the pioneering treatment of convicts on Norfolk Island, whose Governor provided them with punch on the Queen's birthday 1840 to the uproar of officialdom.

A large section of the exhibition presents us with fine examples of temperance materials, including Cruikshank's Worship of Bacchus (on loan from the Museum of London) and William York's Ten Nights in a Bar Room, in which we see photographic models portray the effects of alcohol - an early photostory in the style of Cruikshank's The Bottle and The Drunkard's Children. In pride of place is a silver pledge medal from the height of the teetotal era.

There are yet more museum-quality objects on display. Glanville, the editor of, most recently, Elegant dining: four hundred years of dining in style (London: V&A, 2004) has brought her substantial expertise to the interpretation of the drinking vessels on display, and, at yesterday's preview, entertained us with speculation on how diners might have 'got round' the protocal of displaying the beer jug on the table at lunch but not dinner in the era when it was the staple drink of every family.

The regulation of alcohol is also covered - nowhere more vividly than in the 1816 Admiralty map of Portsmouth that dominates the display on smuggling - marked as it is with the known landing sites, together with the locations of riding officers, tide surveyors and Excise cutters, and listing the number of oars and men.

For those of us familiar with the history of AOD, this exhibition offers a refresher course in its main points and highlights a few topics that may repay further investigation. More importantly, it provides us with a key to the vast holdings of the National Archives - holdings that are broader and more varied in format and subject matter than I had realised before I attended yesterday's exhibition preview. As a calling card to the specialised AOD history sector, the National Archives could hardly have left anything more tantalising and I, for one, will be going back to Kew to visit the research rooms.

Anne Welsh
Information Officer - Cataloguing and Indexing

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Image used with permission.