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Originally published in the Manchester Guardian on 19 December 1874
Human beings, like animals, are greatly influenced by the conditions amidst which they exist. If we crowd animals together, limit their supply of air and sunlight, they become weak and irritable, they mope, sicken, and die. Man differs from animals in his greater impressionability and consequent greater capacity for enjoyment, as well as in his tendency to deteriorate under adverse conditions.

In nearly all our most populous districts it will be found that the people are surrounded by circumstances which are directly opposed to their comfort, health, and general well-being. What is most of all important is that women and children, those most susceptive to the action of deteriorative influences, are those who are most exposed. Take the case of the mothers of families in these localities. Restricted within the limits of small confined dwellings, which are so shut in on all sides that the invigorating rays of the sun seldom gain direct access; the air heavy with impurities; a life of care and anxiety, unrelieved by change or pleasurable incident; wearied by the monotonous aspect of all around them, worn by nursing and by toil, fretted by narrow means, pained by the cries or worried by the fractiousness of children, is it surprising that they lose their health, elasticity, good looks, cheery smiles, and interest in themselves and their families? Is it any wonder that, becoming spiritless, they lack neatness, allow their children and dwellings to become untidy and neglected? Is it then any wonder that the husbands of such women become petulant and unkind, or that their children become disrespectful? Is it any wonder that in this accumulation of misery these unfortunate women are easily persuaded to seek solace in the deceitful and seductive properties of gin or beer? A woman under such adverse circumstances languishes, whilst in beer she finds that which speedily raises her failing spirits, in wine or gin she renews her youth, and banishes melancholy. Need we be surprised that in tens of thousands of cases the women who reside amid conditions so adverse to health and to comfort slide into habits of drinking which only aggravate their misfortunes, making the craving for relief all the greater, until after a time the love of liquor becomes a consuming passion? …
(Source: Alcohol Reports, 12/20/11) The Guardian, Monday 19 December 2011
Comment: How the troubles begun.