Skip to content

Intoxicating Spaces

The Impact of New Intoxicants on Urban Spaces in Europe, 1600–1850

People
Research
Events
Exhibition
Schools
Maps
Outputs
Blog

Instagram

A charming 1827 watercolour by George Scharf depicting ‘Mr McNab’s’ pharmacy on St Martin’s Lane in Westminster. The jewel-like array of jars and vials in the plate glass windows – often filled with coloured waters rather than drugs – renders the premises easily discernible in the streetscape; as Patrick Wallis has noted, this had been a distinctive visual signifier of urban apothecaries since the mid-seventeenth century. In the private residence above the shop a bird cage and a young woman (the chemist’s daughter?) drawing or painting can be glimpsed. Image via @britishmuseum. ⚗️🧪🎨 #1800s #arthistory #drughistory #historyofmedicine #historyofscience #londonhistory #nineteenthcentury #regency

In our latest blog post, project intern Connor Plunkett explores intoxicants in the diary of C17th scientist Robert Hooke. Connor argues that a wide range of substances beyond alcohols, caffeines, opium, and tobacco were understood by Hooke to possess intoxicating qualities (in the sense of being mind- and body-altering); these include proprietary medicines, foodstuffs, water, and even vomit. Yes, you read that correctly; Hooke regularly consumed vomit – his own and other people’s – as an emetic, and described it as having profound mental, emotional, and physiological effects. Eighteenth-century etching of a bewigged man vomiting into a bowl via @wellcomecollection. Link in bio! 🤮 #1600s #drughistory #earlymodern #historyofmedicine #historyofscience #linkinbio #roberthooke #seventeenthcentury

A small teapot in the form of a cabbage, now in the care of @vamuseum. It was made by the celebrated Longton Hall Porcelain Manufactory in Staffordshire c.1755. 🫖🥬 #drughistory #eighteenthcentury #materialculture #nationalcabbageday #teahistory #teapot #teastagram

In our latest blog post, Freya Purcell explores the fascinating history of saloop, a curious hot beverage made from powdered orchid roots that was all the rage in early modern London (🌸🍵). We’ve also recently published articles on: intoxicants in the correspondence of Dutch writer Isabelle de Charrière (☕️✉️); intoxicants, policy, and public space (🚬🌳); our pop-up exhibition on the history of opium at Amsterdam Central Station (💉🚆); and the diary of a reluctant Dutch opium eater (💊📔). Link in bio! #coffeehistory #drughistory #exhibition #knowledgeexchange #intoxicatingspaces #linkinbio #opium #saloop #teahistory #weekendreading

A highlight from today’s sources is this 1807 etching, ‘The Odd Dealer’. This dashing-looking chap takes the forefront of the image, proclaiming his wares to two female customers. The verse beneath the image reads:

The incredibly talented @ellamchawk recently made some stunning orange and cardamom biscuits for our conference Intoxicating Spaces: Global and Comparative Perspectives. The biscuits were inspired by botanical images of intoxicants in the @wellcomecollection. These beauties were awarded to Natasha Bailey for the best postgrad/ECR paper, entitled ‘Putting Maguey on the Map: The Cultural Geography of the Early Colonial Pulque Trade in Mexico’. We’re sure they taste just as good as they look! 🍪🌿 #conferencegifts #drinkhistory #earlycareerresearcher #foodhistory #intoxspaces

It’s recently emerged that alcohol-related deaths in England and Wales in 2020 were the highest for 20 years (with COVID-19 and its resulting lockdowns being held partially responsible). In light of these statistics, our new piece for The Conversation explores the relationship between drinking and bubonic plague in C17th England. Link in bio! C19th painting of the 1665 London outbreak – with the signboards of public houses visible in the background – via @wellcomecollection. 🦠🍻 #alcoholhistory #covid19 #drinkhistory #earlymodern #eighteenthcentury #linkinbio #londonhistory #plague #seventeenthcentury

A sugar beet with a face we encountered during a country walk in North Yorkshire last week. Methods for extracting the sugar which makes up c.20% of their content were first developed in C18th Prussia, but they weren’t cultivated on a large scale in the UK until the 1920s; 50% of the sugar consumed here now comes from domestic beet farmers. After harvesting, the beets are transported to one of four processing plants where they are assessed, shredded, pressed and their juice carbonatated, evaporated, and finally crystallised; perhaps this grimacing specimen had an inkling of his fate. 😩💦🥄 #countrywalk #facesinthings #farminguk #folkhorror #iseefaces #northyorkshire #pareidolia #sugarbeet #sugarhistory

In our new blog post, we consider the complex relationship between ale, beer, and witchcraft in late medieval and early modern England (and attempt to exorcise a few myths). Link in bio! 1672 engraving of Oxfordshire alehouse-keeper ‘Mother Louse’ via @britishmuseum. 🍺🧙‍♀️ #beerhistory #brewers #drinkhistory #earlymodern #linkinbio #medieval #weekendreading #witchcraft #witchhistory

On 18 December 1768, Edward Haistwell wrote to his friend and fellow antiquarian Richard Gough to arrange a rendezvous at a London coffeehouse. For reasons that are obscure, he appended to his letter a doodle of a snake and a lobster sharing a bottle of wine or brandy. @bodleianlibs, MS Gough Gen. Top. 41, fol. 294. 🐍🦞🍷 #1700s #coffeehistory #doodles #drinkhistory #eighteenthcentury #letters

In our latest blog post, William Schupbach from @wellcomecollection reports on our recent, jointly organised workshop on intoxicants and humour (with links to videos of the talks). Link in bio! This 1820 aquatint (via @wellcomecollection) depicts a doctor and his patients enjoying nitrous oxide or laughing gas – the topic of one of the presentations – in the house of a Parisian dentist. 📽️ #arthistory #drinkhistory #drughistory #intoxicatingspaces #linkinbio #medicalhistory #tobaccohistory

A seventeenth-century Dutch man enjoying a drink and a pancake (engraved after Adriaen Brouwer), via @britishmuseum. 🥞🍺 #alcoholhistory #drinkhistory #howdoyoueatyours #pancakeday #shrovetuesday

New on our blog; in a fascinating and richly contextualised essay, mudlarker extraordinaire Malcolm Russell (@mudhistorian) asks what the riches of the Thames foreshore can tell us about the intoxicating spaces of early modern London. Link in bio! Photo by Hannah Smiles. #archaeology #drughistory #intoxicatingspaces #linkinbio #londonhistory #mudlarking #opium #riverthames #sugarhistory #tobaccohistory

We really enjoyed talking to @rebeccarideal about the global exchange of early modern intoxicants for @sicktodeathchester, a brilliant history of medicine podcast created by a new museum in historic Chester. Listen via link in bio! Idealised early C19th oil painting of a coffee plantation in Suriname via @rijksmuseum. ☕️🌿 #coffeehistory #earlymodern #medicalhistory #podcast #slavery #slaveryhistory #sugarhistory #teahistory #tobaccohistory

A 1747 portrait of Moll King – real name Elizabeth Adkins – the proprietor of King’s Coffeehouse in Covent Garden. She opened the business with her husband Tom c.1720, but continued to run it solo following his death from alcoholism in 1739. Described by one observer as a ‘rude shed’, King’s was a notorious establishment closely associated with drunkenness, brawls, and prostitution; significantly, in the etching Moll dispenses a measure of spirits rather than a sobering dish of coffee. She’s said to have slept in an attic above the premises, accessible only by a ladder which she pulled up behind herself. Via @britishmuseum. ☕️🍸 #1700s #coffeegram #coffeehistory #coffeeshop #coventgarden #eighteenthcentury #intoxicatingspaces #londonhistory

Happy Bonfire Night! To mark the occasion this year we made parkin, the dense and delicious gingerbread cake that’s a 5 November tradition in northern England, especially in Lancashire and Yorkshire. It developed out of the earlier ‘tharf cake’ or ‘thor cake’, a medieval griddle cake sweetened with honey; from the mid-C17th sugar grown on Caribbean plantations (and its by-product, molasses or treacle) replaced the honey, and parkin as we know it was born. Another key ingredient is oatmeal, hence why it was traditionally eaten in the first week after the oat harvest in early November. We used @felicitycloake’s brilliant Guardian recipe, which through the addition of golden syrup (a C19th innovation) and a raising agent in the form of bicarbonate of soda yields a sweeter, fluffier cake more suited to modern palates. Other recipes, such as Mary Berry’s, omit the syrup and leavener to produce a more uncompromisingly historical result. Either way, it’s perfect with a mug of tea. 🔥🍯🌾 #baking #bonfirenight #cakestagram #foodhistory #parkin #sugarhistory

Connect

Partners & Funding

Intoxicating Spaces is a collaboration between Carl von Ossietzky Universität Oldenburg (Germany), the University of Sheffield (UK), Stockholm University (Sweden), and Utrecht University (Netherlands). We are funded by HERA, as part of its Joint Research Programme Public Spaces: Culture and Integration in Europe, and the German Federal Ministry for Education and Research (BMBF)

Multilingual Overviews

Image Credits

Unless otherwise credited, all header, column, featured, and decorative images are from the Wellcome Collection, London (Public Domain Mark 1.0)

Recent Posts

‘It Brought Much Slime Out of the Gutts and Made Me Cheerfull’: Defining Intoxicants in the Diary of Robert Hooke 5th March 2022
Getting to the Root of It: Saloop in Early Modern London 8th February 2022
Narcotic Letters: New Intoxicants in the Correspondence of Isabelle de Charrière 31st January 2022
Worlds of Opiates Webinar 6th January 2022
Swings and Syringes: Intoxication and Public Space 23rd December 2021
New Project Exhibition: Worlds of Opiates 20th December 2021

Proudly powered by WordPress