How expensive was alcohol in the old days?

There's a great deal in the tabloid press about Binge Britain - the propensity of young Britons to get stinking drunk and come to grief in the streets, in front of the horrified eyes of the media, and of course, their parents and elders. This is blamed on many factors - the new 24 hour licensing laws, the moral failure of society, and the easy availability and cheapness of alcohol, among others.

The last one got me thinking - is alcohol so cheap these days? These concerns have been around for a long time. The adjacent image, from historic-uk.com, depicts London in the 18th century, when people drank pints of gin. In addition to the 18th century, concerns also flared up in Victorian times, when in the 1870s the upper and middle classes worried about the poor and middle classes. It's a question Fermi estimation can probably help answer.

So, let's start:

• Alcohol in the 1870s cost about 2 shillings for a pint and a half of gin. That's 2 shillings for about 862ml.
• Strength of the gin was probably 50-60%. Let's take 55% as the mid-point.
• Consumer price inflation was about 80x from 1870 - 2008 according to the UK Office of National Statistics. If you add rents in to get to an RPI measure it should be less, since rents in Victorian times were quite high, but that shouldn't matter too much.
• A shilling is 5p under decimalisation.

Then a Victorian would get 59.2ml of alcohol per pound sterling (of today's money). You can get 700ml of vodka for about 6 pounds sterling, which at today's strength of 40% would be equivalent to 46.7ml of alcohol per pound sterling. Of course cheaper deals may be available, but that's probably true of my Victorian data too.

So alcohol was probably cheaper in Victorian times. I suspect the same is true of the 18th century too. Which only goes to prove that at least part of the current debate is due to the usual inability of the older generation to accept the younger generation's mores and behaviour. But how much though? Fermi estimation probably couldn't answer that.