this post was submitted on 26 May 2025
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[–] idegenszavak 129 points 6 days ago (2 children)

The lower photo is a BTS from the Great Train Robbery movie, from 1978:

The photo of alleged drunken sailors, titled "Actors 'Sleeping' Draped Over Ropes" in the Getty Images archive, actually stems from the production of the film The Great Train Robbery (1978):

https://www.snopes.com/fact-check/hangover-drunken-sailors-ropes/

[–] [email protected] 14 points 6 days ago (1 children)
[–] idegenszavak 35 points 6 days ago

Behind the scenes.

[–] [email protected] 11 points 6 days ago

Ha funny to see that referenced in the wild. A podcast I used to produce did a big two part series on that heist.

[–] [email protected] 51 points 6 days ago (1 children)

People don't want to work anymore, they just want to lay in wooden boxes all day.

[–] [email protected] 8 points 6 days ago

I wanted to lay in a wooden box all day before it was cool

[–] [email protected] 53 points 6 days ago (3 children)

I pulled up the Wikipedia article for the 4 penny coffins and found that George Orwell is one of the references for it. Thought that was interesting. Here's the page https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Four_penny_coffin

[–] [email protected] 30 points 6 days ago

The reference is from his first book which was all about his experiences living with the downtrodden in Paris and London. In fact that's why he used the pen name George Orwell - he didn't want to risk harming the reputation of his middle class family.

[–] [email protected] 16 points 6 days ago (1 children)

... the coffin house was popular because it offered an economical and mid-range solution for homeless clients ...

[–] [email protected] 1 points 5 hours ago

What a nice humanitarian gesture these are. Something Bill Gates would do instead of paying his taxes.

[–] [email protected] 6 points 6 days ago

Another great source is Henry Mayhew's "London Labour and the London Poor". https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/London_Labour_and_the_London_Poor

[–] [email protected] 47 points 6 days ago

If you let capitalism go unrestrained and unregulated and uncontrolled.

Capitalist would be more than be happy to reintroduce slave labour, child labour and farming humans for slavery much like they do cattle or horses.

And do you own a house? A car? Property? ... even if you think you do, are you paying a mortgage or loan payments for these things? .. then you are not a capitalist. Even if you do own these things without any loan, chances are that if you are not a millionaire, you will eventually lose these things anyway.

You and I would end up being one of those people that would end up as slaves to be bought and sold.

[–] [email protected] 24 points 6 days ago* (last edited 6 days ago)

When he was a serf, they said to him, "Let me find you in this field: I will hang you if I find you in anyone else's field." But now he is a tramp they say to him, "You shall be jailed if I find you in anyone else's field: but I will not give you a field." They say, "You shall be punished if you are caught sleeping outside your shed: but there is no shed." If you say that modern magistracies could never say such mad contradictions, I answer with entire certainty that they do say them. A little while ago two tramps were summoned before a magistrate, charged with sleeping in the open air when they had nowhere else to sleep. But this is not the full fun of the incident. The real fun is that each of them eagerly produced about twopence, to prove that they could have got a bed, but deliberately didn't. To which the policeman replied that twopence would not have got them a bed: that they could not possibly have got a bed: and therefore (argued that thoughtful officer) they ought to be punished for not getting one. The intelligent magistrate was much struck with the argument: and proceeded to imprison these two men for not doing a thing they could not do. But he was careful to explain that if they had sinned needlessly and in wanton lawlessness, they would have left the court without a stain on their characters; but as they could not avoid it, they were very much to blame.

The desperate man to-day can do nothing. For you cannot agree with a maniac who sits on the bench with the straws sticking out of his hair and says, "Procure threepence from nowhere and I will give you leave to do without it."

(GK Chesterton, Eugenics and Other Evils)

[–] [email protected] 5 points 4 days ago* (last edited 4 days ago) (1 children)

The rope trick sounds like a good idea to put on a plane

[–] [email protected] 11 points 4 days ago (1 children)

Oh great, thanks for that suggestion. 6 months from now when airlines bring out the "no seat just a rope" economy option, we'll know who to blame.

[–] [email protected] 1 points 4 days ago* (last edited 4 days ago) (1 children)

Well sitting is bad for your health anyway! Human body wasnt meant for sitting [/sarcasm]

[–] [email protected] 4 points 4 days ago

The human body however was definitely meant to be slung over a rope and then flown thousands of miles through the air to land in a tropical country and get plastered.

It's how nature intended

[–] [email protected] 27 points 6 days ago (1 children)

Remember, kids! ~~Unregulated~~ capitalism is not your friend!

[–] [email protected] 25 points 6 days ago (2 children)

This lead me down a rabbit hole an introduced me to "Mother's Ruin" of the cheap gin sold at the time:

source

It gets even more wild the more you read of that article. One guy pawning his wife for a quart of gin...then the government crackdown when things started getting even worse!

[–] [email protected] 6 points 6 days ago

That was a nice read. Thanks for sharing!

[–] [email protected] 3 points 6 days ago (1 children)

14 gallons per year? Rookie numbers! I drank more than that on a single 7-day binge!

[–] [email protected] 5 points 6 days ago (2 children)

That 14 gallons number raised all kinds of questions for me:

  • What potency was this gin that could be consumed in this quantity but without killing so many more of its consumers?
  • How can they possibly produce gin this cheap? Slave labor from the Caribbean?
  • What would the logistics look like to move this much gin to a population consuming this much? This is the days before motor vehicles so everything would have had to be moved by human or horse/donkey/mule/cow pulled cart. Steam engines wouldn't arrive for another 100 years. So it was likely animal cart the number of barrels of gin must have been a river of full carts moving into the city and a river of empty ones headed out all the time.
  • Public sanitation didn't really exist. Public sewer systems wouldn't arrive for another 100 years or so so the entire city must have smelled like urine all the time.
  • With the sheer number of gin containers needed for this volume, did they have a "deposit" on bottles like we have sometimes today? Did they have an underground economy of people collecting empties to trade back in?
[–] [email protected] 8 points 6 days ago (1 children)

Well your going to wish you weren't so curious with this one. Source of this information: several museum visits around 30 years ago after a pint or three, so the info might be warped.

Gin is a double-distilled 40% or higher spirit flavored with juniper + other flavors.

The source of the alcohol was any carbohydrate or starch source. Whatever was cheapest. It was mostly wheat and barley at the time but just about anything else cheap could be used like rye, turnips, etc. For the cheapest rotgut the ingredients was stuff considered unfit for animal feed (rodent feces, insect damage, molds, water damage, etc).

Since their ingredients were highly questionable, their input cost was minimal. Heating was from coal. They also started making larger batches which further reduced down the cost.

Logistics - Canals at this time period was the most important logistic. One donkey pulling a barge could move as much as 50 wagons. Tons of goods were transported cheaply and efficiently on the barges. The gin was shipped in casks/barrels like beer/ale. Bottles were very expensive and reserved for the elite.

Public sanitation consisted of a gutter on the side of the road. The entire city smelled like the open sewer it was.

The gin was not served in bottles. It was served like beer or ale into cups/mugs/communal tankards etc .. mostly earthenware, leather or wood.

[–] [email protected] 2 points 6 days ago (1 children)

Great info on the process of manufacturing. I know that some spirits have to come from some specific carb sources, but it makes sense that if its just goal of mass production of ethanol, then I suppose they weren't picky about their carb source.

Canals makes a lot of sense for higher volume cargo, thank you.

The gin was not served in bottles. It was served like beer or ale into cups/mugs/communal tankards etc … mostly earthenware, leather or wood.

Would the gin be consumed exclusively in bars/taverns where it could be dispensed into mugs? Even then, the gin had to be in a larger container to be delivered to the tavern, a barrel I presume? Were coopers in crazy high demand always making new barrels or were the empty barrels turned around and refilled?

[–] [email protected] 2 points 6 days ago

Barrels were reused until they could no longer be repaired or salvaged. Cooper's had steady guaranteed work for their skills.

Consumption was mostly at the public houses/taverns for the lower/middle classes.

[–] [email protected] 1 points 6 days ago (1 children)

Slave labor from the Caribbean?

You're thinking of rum on that one.

[–] [email protected] 1 points 6 days ago (1 children)

I am, you're right. Where did England's gin come from?

[–] [email protected] 1 points 4 days ago (1 children)

Never looked into making gin, but juniper berries are plenty plentiful!

[–] [email protected] 1 points 4 days ago

Not that I'm going to follow through with this, but this has got me thinking about all the waste streams from food production with excess carbs that could be used to make alcohol.

  • stale bread
  • skins/peels of various fruits and vegetables from processing to other products like apple juice, baby carrots, potato chips/crisps.
  • excess dairy milk production/near expiry dairy milk
  • stale popcorn that gets thrown away from movie theaters/sporting events
  • everyone uses nearly black bananas for banana bread. Why not use those carbs for fermenting into alcohol?
[–] [email protected] 13 points 6 days ago

Damn, that rope's pretty posh by 2025 standards...

[–] [email protected] 10 points 6 days ago

George Orwell wrote about his experiences with those in Down and Out in Paris and London. It's a decent book and an interesting look at poverty of the day.

[–] [email protected] 8 points 6 days ago (4 children)

Is that true? Did they really sleep on the ropes like that?

[–] [email protected] 17 points 6 days ago (1 children)

I find that hard to believe. The ground would be more comfortable.

[–] [email protected] 5 points 6 days ago

except, the ground is outside in the freezing london winter, during an age with draconian 'move along' laws that mean you'd be hassled by cops all night. ground would be more comfortable, that's why the coffin costs 4 pennies.

[–] [email protected] 16 points 6 days ago

There would be blood loss to the limbs and nerve damage from any appreciable time strung out like that.

[–] [email protected] 9 points 6 days ago

No, it's a scene from a movie.

[–] [email protected] 7 points 6 days ago* (last edited 6 days ago) (1 children)

Not like the picture. The rope was more to stop you falling off the bench where you were sitting up asleep.

For an extra penny [than a one penny sit up] you could pay to sleep literally hanging over a rope. This was possibly marginally more comfortable, as if you fell asleep the rope would prevent you from slipping onto the floor or head-butting the bench in front of you.

https://www.historic-uk.com/CultureUK/Two-Penny-Hangover/

Edit - none of the sites mentioning it have any sources. The closest to a source I've found quickly is this passage from Dickens Pitwick Papers, which to me doesn't sound like the arrangement as described in the photo but perhaps something more akin to hammocks. Especially given the part that says "down falls the lodgers"

And pray Sam, what is the twopenny rope?’ inquired Mr. Pickwick. ‘The Twopenny rope, sir,’ replied Mr. Weller, ‘is just a cheap lodgin’ house where the beds is twopence a night!’ ‘What do they call a bed a rope for?’ said Mr. Pickwick. ‘Well the advantage o’ the plan’s obvious. At six o’clock every mornin’, they lets go the ropes at one end, and down falls all the lodgers. Consequence is that, being thoroughly waked, they get up very quickly, and walk away.’”

This site https://www.geriwalton.com/victorian-four-penny-coffins-penny-beds-homelessness/ says that the coffins were actually 2 pennies, or 4 with a meal. So why would someone sit over a rope for the same price? Again a hammock type arrangement here seems more logical to me.

[–] [email protected] 1 points 6 days ago

This was basically like Victorian pre-mobility (trains/metro) for this class, so people could commute only as far they could reasonably walk in a day. And offerings & prices prob varied.

[–] [email protected] 2 points 6 days ago

Libs: Is this Abundance™?

[–] [email protected] 1 points 6 days ago

nice try comrade!