Chapter LXIII: Drunkenness

During the year 1869, there were 15,918 men, and 8105 women arrested for intoxication, and 5222 men and 3466 women for intoxication and disorderly conduct, making a total of 21,140 men and 11,571 women, or 32,711 persons in all arrested for drunkenness. Now if to this we add the 21,734 men and women arrested during the same year for assault and battery, and for disorderly conduct, and regard these offences as caused, as they undoubtedly were, by liquor, we shall have a total of 54,445 persons brought to grief by the use of intoxicating liquors.

But it does not require this estimate to convince a New Yorker that drunkenness is very common in the city. One has but to walk through the streets, and especially those in the poorer sections, and notice the liquor shops of various kinds, from the Broadway rum palace to the "Gin Mill" of the Bowery, or the "Bucket Shop" of the Five Points. There are 7071 licensed places for the sale of liquor in the city, and they all enjoy a greater or less degree of prosperity. Very few liquor sellers, confining themselves to their legitimate business, fail in this city. The majority grow rich, and their children not unfrequently take their places in the fashionable society of the city. The liquors sold at these places are simply abominable. Whiskey commands the largest sale, and it is in the majority of instances a vile compound. About three years ago, the _New York World_ published a list of the principal bar-rooms of the city, with a report of chemical analyses of the liquors obtained at each, and proved conclusively that pure liquors were not sold over the bar at any establishment in the city. A few months ago a _World_ reporter published the following estimate of the business of the bar-rooms in the vicinity of Wall street, patronized principally by the brokers:

Hot Hot Whiskeys Brandies. Wines. Mixed Ales, Bottles
spiced whiskeys. straight. liquors. beers, Champagne.
rums. etc.

L. Dardy 56 59 62 15 23 30 105 6 Mike's 65 110 70 20 28 23 90 10 V.B. 43 62 112 30 35 27 110 5 Carpenter Young 35 40 52 10 12 15 65 2 P. Murphy 34 49 63 12 15 25 45 2 Schedler 51 48 112 35 52 45 315 18 Delmonico 213 205 315 90 135 180 210 35 Riley 105 123 180 25 30 62 80 6 Sammis & 23 31 30 8 10 15 35 1 Sharp Van Riper 27 22 19 10 13 18 40 1 Ed. 18 29 38 12 15 20 60 2 Schultze Delatour's 15 20 45 27 30 12 25 2 Gault's 28 32 125 23 35 28 85 5

Total 713 830 1223 317 433 500 1265 94

"This makes a total of 5281 drinks and 94 bottles of champagne consumed in thirteen of the largest saloons, supported by the brokers; and including the dozen or more of small places, the number of drinks taken in and about Wall street per day is over 7500, while over 125 bottles of champagne are disposed of. The amount of money expended for fuel to feed the flagging energies of the speculators is, therefore, over $2000 per day, and it is not at all strange that the brokers occasionally cut up queer antics in the boards, and stocks take twists and turns that unsettle the street for weeks."

The brokers, however, are not the only generous patrons of the bar-rooms. The vice of drunkenness pervades all classes. Every day men are being ruined by it, and the most promising careers totally destroyed. Day after day, you see men and women reeling along the streets, or falling helpless. The police soon secure them, and at night they are kept quite busy attending to them. But the arrests, numerous as they are, do not represent the sum total of the drunkenness of the city. The drinking in private life, which oftentimes does not result in actual intoxication, but which kills by slowly poisoning body and mind, is very great, but there is no means of estimating it.

[Picture: A FEMALE DRINKER.]

Respectable men patronize the better class bar-rooms, and respectable women the ladies' restaurants. At the latter places a very large amount of money is spent by women for drink. Wives and mothers, and even young girls, who are ashamed to drink at home, go to these fashionable restaurants for their liquor. Some will drink it openly, others will disguise it as much as possible. Absinthe has been introduced at these places of late years, and it is said to be very popular with the gentler sex. Those who know its effects will shudder at this. We have seen many drunken women in New York, and the majority have been well dressed and of respectable appearance. Not long since, a lady making purchases in a city store, fell helpless to the floor. The salesman, thinking she had fainted, hastened to her assistance, and found her dead drunk.

We have already written of the Bucket Shops. They represent the lowest grade of this vice. They sell nothing but poisons.

Is it strange then that crime flourishes? Is it a wonder that Saturday night and Sunday, the chosen periods for drinking heavily, are productive of more murders and assaults than any other portion of the week?