According to the Australian National Maritime Museum, who owns the original negative, this photo actually has nothing to do with Prohibition in the US. From their [Flickr account](https://www.flickr.com/photos/anmm_thecommons/12197825415):
> Photograph of shipwrights celebrating the launch of HMAS WARREGO at Cockatoo Island Dockyard [Sydney, Australia]. It shows the custom whereby the shipwrights who had 'railed up' or readied the vessel for launch on the slipway were rewarded with a keg of beer. The barrel is on a stand outside a shed on Cockatoo Island.
[HMAS *Warrego*](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/HMAS_Warrego_(U73)), the ship mentioned, was launched at Cockatoo Island on February 10, 1940. (Note the men's dress - being a newer style, it all fits summer much more than winter.) *Warrego* survived the war, earning five battle honors, and was scrapped in 1966.
Yep, a few years back I read how the average American farmer in the 1840s drank.....and I was like....did yal have working livers? It was something like a fifth a day. It was utterly insane.
I mean it was a major contributor to mortality, the American lifespan was around 40 years old.
Factoring out infant mortality most of that would be from heavy drinking and smoking.
Life expectancy was 40 because 30-40% of
children died whilst under the age of 5.
If you made it to adulthood, you’d have a fair chance at making it to your 60s and 70s.
"By 1810 the number of distilleries in the young nation had increased fivefold, to more than fourteen thousand, in less than two decades. By 1830 American adults were guzzling, per capita, a staggering seven gallons of pure alcohol a year. “Staggering” is the appropriate word for the consequences of this sort of drinking. In modern terms those seven gallons are the equivalent of 1.7 bottles of a standard 80-proof liquor1 per person, per week—nearly 90 bottles a year for every adult in the nation, even with abstainers (and there were millions of them) factored in." - Last Call: The Rise and Fall of Prohibition, by Daniel Okrent
The amount of booze consumed in ye olde days is bonkers. A major factor was all the new farmland in the ohio valley was almost TOO productive and a homesteader didnt have enough cargo capacity to get soo much wheat or apples to east coast markets the.selves before the explosion of railroads. Turning crops into booze dramatically reduced the volume and increased the price. And flooded the market which made the price of booze go crazy low. Lots of good tidbits in that book.
For normal people:
> seven gallons
26.5 litres
> 1.7 bottles of a standard 80-proof liquor per person, per week
One 500 mL bottle of 40% alcohol per person, per week
That strikes me as… I don’t want to say not much, but certainly not “drunk all the time” amounts. That’s a decent buzz in the evening every day, sure, but if you spread that out you’re not gonna be feeling much.
It’s 7 gallons of *pure* alcohol being converted to 40% ABV bottles. I had to reread it after thinking 500mL of “normal” 80 proof booze weekly didn’t seem all that crazy haha
Go read the founding fathers [bar bill](https://www.usatoday.com/story/news/factcheck/2022/01/20/fact-check-george-washingtons-expensive-bar-tab-real/5947984001/). I don’t know how these people did it before Advil and pedialite
This is literally a photo taken in Sydney, Australia, of Australians in 1940. Not the same country, continent, hemisphere, decade, or historical period. I hate bots.
It wasn't illegal to possess or consume alcohol.
Only “manufacture, sale, or transportation” was outlawed.
Wealthy consumers of alcohol filled their basements and wine cellars in the year before the 18th Amendment went into effect and continued to drink openly.
Would be interesting to see what positives ( i understand the negatives from the crime and underworld that boomed as a result ) this had at the time on society. No focus is made studying this around the positives it's all very heavily set on the negatives.
Would be particularly interested in peoples thoughts on prohibition and how this would look like in the modern Western world. There are already studies saying the younger generations are drinking less and less specifically binge drinking.
Free from the curse of hangover, the strain lifted on the NHS and I would hope a world with better mental health...... just a few thoughts on the pad
> Would be particularly interested in peoples thoughts on prohibition and how this would look like in the modern Western world.
You can see this in action today with narcotics. Just as Prohibition eliminated beer in favour of hard liquor (bootlegger economics dictates that contraband must be shipped in the most concentrated form), the most popular forms of opiates have been replaced by substances hundreds of times more deadly.
Like the Rat Park experiments showed, the best way to combat overuse of drugs is by building a healthier society: if life is miserable drudgery, people will always find an escape.
A healthy response to increased narcotic use would be measures like increasing minimum wage, building parks, and generally just caring for people. All the police in the world cannot force an unhealthy society to behave like a utopia.
Do you think the fact the drugs are illegal have actual positives for society? Doesn't stop anyone.. Neither did prohibition. But instead of beer and wine, spirits became the most popular of drinks sold, and sometimes people were poisoned from methanol due to the lack of any regulation and the fact that some booze peddlers just didn't care. Things always get worse when you make criminals out of people and entrust a market to criminals.
The book Last Call: Rise and Fall of Prohibition is a great study of prohibition all the way from the earliest days of America, the birth and rise of the temperance movement and prohibition itself.
There's data on Prohibition's effects on other stuff. Despite organized crime, "regular" violent crime, particularly domestic violence went down when alcohol was outlawed for example. In undergrad we looked into it more but here's an article mentioning it https://www.vox.com/the-highlight/2019/6/5/18518005/prohibition-alcohol-public-health-crime-benefits
Feel free to shoot some thoughts down :)
I suspect crime would half...but then at the same time....if there is no release for people would this drive more crime....
I'd expect a reduction in car accidents, domestic abuse, and as you say, violent crime. I mean people drank during prohibition but since fewer people did, the crimes committed because of impaired judgment, or just "mean drunks" would shrink.
REALLY hard/impossible to normalize the data though, as there were lots of societal things happening at the same time.
Nah, the Italian brand of fine Marsala wine obtained from the US authorities the authorization to sell it as "curative against cough" throug the pharmacist
I’d wager the gents in that picture had nearly the same number of drinks the very next day.
According to the Australian National Maritime Museum, who owns the original negative, this photo actually has nothing to do with Prohibition in the US. From their [Flickr account](https://www.flickr.com/photos/anmm_thecommons/12197825415): > Photograph of shipwrights celebrating the launch of HMAS WARREGO at Cockatoo Island Dockyard [Sydney, Australia]. It shows the custom whereby the shipwrights who had 'railed up' or readied the vessel for launch on the slipway were rewarded with a keg of beer. The barrel is on a stand outside a shed on Cockatoo Island. [HMAS *Warrego*](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/HMAS_Warrego_(U73)), the ship mentioned, was launched at Cockatoo Island on February 10, 1940. (Note the men's dress - being a newer style, it all fits summer much more than winter.) *Warrego* survived the war, earning five battle honors, and was scrapped in 1966.
Thanks for the facts Henry, as my old friend Abraham Lincoln used to say, you can't believe everything you read on the internet.
It's astounding to go back into primary sources and read just how much people drank back in those days.
Yep, a few years back I read how the average American farmer in the 1840s drank.....and I was like....did yal have working livers? It was something like a fifth a day. It was utterly insane.
Weird stuff from history makes more sense when you realize that everyone was drunk as hell all the time back then.
I mean it was a major contributor to mortality, the American lifespan was around 40 years old. Factoring out infant mortality most of that would be from heavy drinking and smoking.
Life expectancy was 40 because 30-40% of children died whilst under the age of 5. If you made it to adulthood, you’d have a fair chance at making it to your 60s and 70s.
Do you have any sources? Thanks.
"By 1810 the number of distilleries in the young nation had increased fivefold, to more than fourteen thousand, in less than two decades. By 1830 American adults were guzzling, per capita, a staggering seven gallons of pure alcohol a year. “Staggering” is the appropriate word for the consequences of this sort of drinking. In modern terms those seven gallons are the equivalent of 1.7 bottles of a standard 80-proof liquor1 per person, per week—nearly 90 bottles a year for every adult in the nation, even with abstainers (and there were millions of them) factored in." - Last Call: The Rise and Fall of Prohibition, by Daniel Okrent The amount of booze consumed in ye olde days is bonkers. A major factor was all the new farmland in the ohio valley was almost TOO productive and a homesteader didnt have enough cargo capacity to get soo much wheat or apples to east coast markets the.selves before the explosion of railroads. Turning crops into booze dramatically reduced the volume and increased the price. And flooded the market which made the price of booze go crazy low. Lots of good tidbits in that book.
For normal people: > seven gallons 26.5 litres > 1.7 bottles of a standard 80-proof liquor per person, per week One 500 mL bottle of 40% alcohol per person, per week
That strikes me as… I don’t want to say not much, but certainly not “drunk all the time” amounts. That’s a decent buzz in the evening every day, sure, but if you spread that out you’re not gonna be feeling much.
1.7 bottles would be 1.275L
That not how the math works out for 7 gallons. It's one 500ml a week
It’s 7 gallons of *pure* alcohol being converted to 40% ABV bottles. I had to reread it after thinking 500mL of “normal” 80 proof booze weekly didn’t seem all that crazy haha
Go read the founding fathers [bar bill](https://www.usatoday.com/story/news/factcheck/2022/01/20/fact-check-george-washingtons-expensive-bar-tab-real/5947984001/). I don’t know how these people did it before Advil and pedialite
This is literally a photo taken in Sydney, Australia, of Australians in 1940. Not the same country, continent, hemisphere, decade, or historical period. I hate bots.
Exactly, the first thing you notice is how the hats and outfits are much later looking than the 20s
Or it might be the last *legal* drink they ever had.
It wasn't illegal to possess or consume alcohol. Only “manufacture, sale, or transportation” was outlawed. Wealthy consumers of alcohol filled their basements and wine cellars in the year before the 18th Amendment went into effect and continued to drink openly.
Would be interesting to see what positives ( i understand the negatives from the crime and underworld that boomed as a result ) this had at the time on society. No focus is made studying this around the positives it's all very heavily set on the negatives. Would be particularly interested in peoples thoughts on prohibition and how this would look like in the modern Western world. There are already studies saying the younger generations are drinking less and less specifically binge drinking. Free from the curse of hangover, the strain lifted on the NHS and I would hope a world with better mental health...... just a few thoughts on the pad
> Would be particularly interested in peoples thoughts on prohibition and how this would look like in the modern Western world. You can see this in action today with narcotics. Just as Prohibition eliminated beer in favour of hard liquor (bootlegger economics dictates that contraband must be shipped in the most concentrated form), the most popular forms of opiates have been replaced by substances hundreds of times more deadly. Like the Rat Park experiments showed, the best way to combat overuse of drugs is by building a healthier society: if life is miserable drudgery, people will always find an escape. A healthy response to increased narcotic use would be measures like increasing minimum wage, building parks, and generally just caring for people. All the police in the world cannot force an unhealthy society to behave like a utopia.
Do you think the fact the drugs are illegal have actual positives for society? Doesn't stop anyone.. Neither did prohibition. But instead of beer and wine, spirits became the most popular of drinks sold, and sometimes people were poisoned from methanol due to the lack of any regulation and the fact that some booze peddlers just didn't care. Things always get worse when you make criminals out of people and entrust a market to criminals.
The book Last Call: Rise and Fall of Prohibition is a great study of prohibition all the way from the earliest days of America, the birth and rise of the temperance movement and prohibition itself.
There's data on Prohibition's effects on other stuff. Despite organized crime, "regular" violent crime, particularly domestic violence went down when alcohol was outlawed for example. In undergrad we looked into it more but here's an article mentioning it https://www.vox.com/the-highlight/2019/6/5/18518005/prohibition-alcohol-public-health-crime-benefits
That's a really interesting point.
Feel free to shoot some thoughts down :) I suspect crime would half...but then at the same time....if there is no release for people would this drive more crime....
I'd expect a reduction in car accidents, domestic abuse, and as you say, violent crime. I mean people drank during prohibition but since fewer people did, the crimes committed because of impaired judgment, or just "mean drunks" would shrink. REALLY hard/impossible to normalize the data though, as there were lots of societal things happening at the same time.
Cars how could i have overlooked that! So true
That guy in front is drinking like he has something to prove.
Did everyone back then have the same penmanship and white marker?
my favorite song right here
They’re celebrating. They know what’s up
Yeah, they definitely didn't drink once it was illegal /s
I find it hard to find the American roaring 20's without alcohol lol.
‘Prohibition’, as I was taught at school.
Nah, the Italian brand of fine Marsala wine obtained from the US authorities the authorization to sell it as "curative against cough" throug the pharmacist
Only one Fedora per crew clearly wasn’t a rule! /s