THE DRINKING HABITS OF LADIES.

Tuapeka Times, Volume III, Issue 118, 12 May 1870, Page 7

THE DRINKING HABITS OF LADI ES.

(" Daily Telegraph.") How about the English ladies who drink hard without getting drunk ? And how about the English ladies who get particularly drunk ? Surely the shame is that such things should be done, and that public writers should notice them in a public way. We do not mean to aim a shaft just now at Flash Sail, the Magsinan's Lady, nor at Mrs Sponage, who presides over a little " ken" in which fancy goods are received at all hours from young gentlemen, and no indiscreet questions asked. Of course, if we were to apply a lighted match to the nose of either of these beings, she would burn up beautifully, and in a way which would quite defy Captain Shaw's skill to put her out. Nor are we speaking of poor, wet, bedraggled Bet, who docs not commit any crime in particular but who totters about nightly from public house to public-house until she finally falls into the gutter," and is borne off triumphantly to the station house on a stretcher between two stout constables. We venture to go a little higher today, and to lift up the corners of purple curtain^! How about the fine ladies who drink ? How about the fine ladies who get drunk ? How about the fine ladies who see snakes, and go off in horrors — just like Plash Sail or Dirty Bet ? This is to run up the gamut of drunkards with a witness. We have the drunken men who are criminals, and criminals mainly because they are drunkards ;we have the men who are drunken sots, but not criminals ; wo have gentlemen — we mean by the word people in good social position — who, without getting drunk, drink themselvs to death for all that ; wo have the female drunken criminal, and the mere female sot ; and, finally, we have the fine lady drunkard, and the fine lady who drinks herself to tte&tfhT"" It is a shocking story. Think of the pretty, modest, well-brought-up girl of seventeen at one end of a biography, and tho be-rouged, bepainted, old harridan, weil-so.aled with alcoholic liquor, at the other. "At her mansion in Hau-ton3quare, died on the 31st nit. The Lady Blanche Fitz any-tbing-you-like, of deliriuvi tremens /" We have to-day a Coroner's inquest held at Skipton upon a certain wretched lady — a Miss Firth, who, to be sure, was not a Duchess, but a person in a very decent positon. As polite doctors would say, this was a well-marked case of dipsomania — plain people callel it " drunkenness." She lodged with a certain Mrs Bracewell, at Skipton. Being at the time much the worse for liquor, she would go out, in despite of the entreaties of her landlady. She tottered down to an eating-houss kept by a Birch, and sent out for a pint of rum. She drank the best part of this herself, and would not allow

the people of the house to see her home or to put her to bed. They laid her down on a mat before tho fire, and here she was found the next morning dead, with the rum bottle at her side. She had been dead for many hours, as the doctor said who was called in. The verdict was, " Died from congestion of the brain caused by excessive drinking." This is one case — and of extreme kind, no doubt ; yet it is but a few weeks, since we recorded another ttill worse. A lady, whose name it would be a pity to mention again, died amid all the horrors of delirium tremens — a result brought about by her drunken habits. We fear that such cases are of constant, if not of daily, oceurenee. There is, however, something worse behind though the actual spectacle presented may not be so horrible. AV"e would ask any one of our readers whose acquaintances may lie among people of good position, if it be not the simple truth that within his -own knowledge there are half a dozen instances— three or four, if you will — of ladies who drink a good deal more than is goodfor them ? The result is at times painfully evident ; but >n the great majority of cases those ladies do not display symptoms of actual inebriety. They have swallowed the amount of stimulant necessary to bring them up to their best society mark. The chances are that their actual performances at table have not been of an outrageous kind. Ladies know that they have a character to keep up, and are always on their guard as to what their friends the Grrundys may have to say about it. The doses have been taken throughout the day in the bedroom — and on the sly — sometimes of ether, or eau-de-Cologne ; sometimes of one or another of the new chemical stimulants; sometimes the hidden brandy bottle or sherry decanter has \ been called into service. Are these things true or not ? Put the question to any physician or medical practitioner who is in the habit of attending families in the upper and middle classes of society. Ask him, without mentioning names, to tell you fairly what the result of his experience has been, and mark his auswer ! He cannot avoid the admission that the charge is lamentably true. The causes may be more difficult of discovery and enumeration. We have sometimes asked ourselves, if this craving for drink and stimulants amona women of the present generation may not in some measure be the result of tainted blood. Their fathers drank hard, and they are paying the penalty. It is a grave question for the physiologist. Again, it may be that in "the life of Eugish ladies in our time there is such a constant strain upon the nerves, without any corresponding call upon the muscular system, that they fly to stimulants as a refuge from actual pain. What is all this talk that one hears about neuralgia 1 Two or three glasses of champagne taken in public, aud we know not what besides tossed down in private, appear to be the appropriate remedy. Look again, at the life of an English fine lady, at any rate for many months of the year, in London. She never sets her feet to the ground out of-doors, any more than if she were a leader of fashion in China. An easy, well-hung carriage, with a good pair of steppers, is waiting for her if she wants to pass but to the next street. In this she lolls, all laces and flounces, by way of exercise ; and then she wonders that her figure is going, that her digestion becomes impaired, that her nerves are preternatu rally sensitive, and that she must screw herself up with wine and stimulants before she can face her guests at the dinner-table. Heated rooms, late hours, no exercise, fast life, and anxious life — for life is anxious with us all now-a-days — ; must account for a good deal ; but it is one thing to account for an evil, another to offer any suggestions which may be of avail to cure it. It may be possible to work upon a feeling which is even stronger amongst women than men — their sense of shame. We might preach the moral that the women who drink hard are just as well known as the women who ride hard, and are- as freely discussed ; or that they kill their beauty as they do their youth, and doom themselves to premature age. But all such j exhortation in these cases is not less idle — is even more idle — than to discourse on trifles like the happiness of parents, husbands, children. The evil, terribly increasing as it is, must speak for itself ; and if it do thus speak distinctly and loudly, it may — nay, it must—more or less truly work out its ora cure, through sheer horror and affright. Hence the advantage of plain words ;3|Tience the fatal mischief of silence.