The Licensed City

Regulating drink in Liverpool, 1830-1920

David Beckingham

Liverpool University Press

No another book attempts such a detailed survey of licensing as a mode of regulation - its inputs, its impulses, its effects, which is particularly important for social and cultural historians as well as a critical legal studies audiences
Considerable depth in the study approach, seen in the broad temporal scope of the work and the ability to excavate the localism that made nineteenth-century liberalism
A fascinating study on the social reform agenda that made civic life in Liverpool
In terms both of presentation and analysis, the book is imaginative and innovative in its consideration of drink maps

The Licensed City

Regulating drink in Liverpool, 1830-1920

David Beckingham

Liverpool University Press

Description

In nineteenth-century Britain few cities could rival Liverpool for recorded drunkenness. Civic pride at Liverpool's imperial influence was undercut by anxieties about social problems that could all be connected to alcohol, from sectarian unrest and prostitution in the city's streets to child neglect and excess mortality in its slums. These dangers, heightened in Liverpool by the apparent connections between the drink trade and the city's civic elite, marked urban living and made alcohol a pressing political issue. As a temperance movement emerged to tackle the dangers of drink, campaigners challenged policy makers to re-imagine the acceptable reach of government. While national leaders often failed to agree on what was practically and philosophically palatable, social reformers in Liverpool focused on the system that licensed the sale of drink in the city's pubs and beerhouses. By reforming licensing, they would later boast, Liverpool had tackled its reputation as the drunkenness capital of England. The Licensed City reveals just how battles over booze have made the modern city. As such, it confronts whether licensing is equipped to regulate today's problem drinking.

The Licensed City

Regulating drink in Liverpool, 1830-1920

David Beckingham

Liverpool University Press

Author Information

David Beckingham is 1596 Foundation Fellow and College Lecturer in Geography, Sidney Sussex College, University of Cambridge.

The Licensed City

Regulating drink in Liverpool, 1830-1920

David Beckingham

Liverpool University Press

Reviews and Awards

"The questions with which Beckingham engages, such as that of the tension between individual freedom on the one hand and the perceived need for restriction on the other, or of the response which civic authorities made to the problems thrown up by the growth of cities, are challenging ones. Nonetheless, they are subjects with which he deals in a readable way and a non-specialist reader is guided through developments clearly. This book is warmly recommended." --Paul Jennings, The Local Historian

'This massively documented book is more than a local history of drink ... Beckingham disposes of several myths (for instance, that the impoverished Irish were responsible for most of the drinking) and explains the limitations of the police statistics that shape elite opinion ... Recommended.' -- D. M. Fahey, CHOICE

'In The Licensed City, David Beckingham explores the municipal licensing of drinking establishments in the 19th Century British city of Liverpool to bring a fascinating, nuanced perspective on urban historical and political geography - the book is meticulously researched and referenced. An impressive range of local and national archives is used. The amount of material synthesized for this historiography is truly impressive. Footnotes appear at the bottom of the page to make more lateral and non-linear reading of the text easy. This research is the culmination of many years of meticulous, thoughtful and intrepid scholarship. ... an excellent book.' -- Michael Brown, Social and Cultural Geography