A Gin Shop. Ink and watercolour over pencil. A Gin Shop where a burly and ugly landlord pours out a glass of gin for a coquettish and brazen woman who is well dressed and makes direct eye contact. At the bar there are two other women, one who is visibly malnourished with a child, and a man who leers at the first woman. Behind the bar are many barrels of gin with taps and a number of glass bottles with stoppers. Gin was one of the worst social evils of the eighteenth century despite attempts to discourage it by high taxation and legislative controls from 1751.
