Taverns in North America date back to colonial America. Colonial Americans drank a variety of distilled spirits. As the supply of distilled spirits, especially rum, increased, and their price dropped, they became the drink of choice throughout the colonies.[1] In 1770, per capita consumption was 3.7 gallons of distilled spirits per year, rising to 5.2 gallons in 1830 or approximately 1.8 one-ounce shots a day for every adult white man.[2] That total does not include the beer or hard cider, which colonists routinely drank in addition to rum, the most consumed distilled beverage available in British America. Benjamin Franklin printed a "Drinker's Dictionary" in his Pennsylvania Gazette in 1737, listing some 228 slang terms used for drunkenness in Philadelphia.
The sheer volume of hard liquor consumption fell off, but the brewing of beer increased, and men developed customs and traditions based on how to behave at the tavern. By 1900, the 26 million American men over age 18 patronized 215,000 licensed taverns and probably 50,000 unlicensed (illegal) ones, or one per 100 men.[3] Twice the density could be found in working class neighborhoods. They served mostly beer; bottles were available, but most drinkers went to the taverns. Probably half of the American men avoided saloons and so the average consumption for actual patrons was about half-a-gallon of beer per day, six days a week. In 1900, the city of Boston, with about 200,000 adult men, counted 227,000 daily saloon customers.[4]
- ^ Salinger, S. V. (n.d.). Taverns and Drinking in Early America. Baltimore: The Johns Hopkins University Press.
- ^ W. J. Rorabaugh (17 September 1981). The Alcoholic Republic: An American Tradition. Oxford University Press. pp. 6–12. ISBN 978-0-19-502990-1. Retrieved 13 March 2012.
- ^ Kingsdale (1973) pp. 472–3. Nationwide, about half of the men in 1900 belonged to pietistic Protestant churches (such as Methodists and Baptists), which severely frowned on drinking in those days.
- ^ Kingsdale (1973) pp. 472–3.