William Hogarth, �Gin Lane’, 1751, Wellcome Library, London
Illustrated lecture with Morbid Anatomy Museum Visiting Scholar in Residence Richard Barnett, Engagement Fellow at the Wellcome Trust with drinks and music by Friese Undine; Gin kindly provided by our sponsor Hendrick’s Gin
Date: Friday, April 11
Time: 8:00 PM
Admission: $12
Presented by Morbid Anatomy
** Copies of Barnett’s book The Book of Gin will be available for sale and signing
For more than two centuries William Hogarth’s �Gin Lane’ has framed our ideas about the history of gin – a cheap, fiery spirit laced with turpentine, fuelling poverty and annihilating the fabric of society. �Drunk for a penny, dead drunk for tuppence …’ and all that. In this talk, author of The Book of Gin and Morbid Anatomy Museum Visiting Scholar in Residence Richard Barnett will lead us on a walk down Gin Lane, to dissect the cultural and political realities behind this notorious epidemic. We’ll meet pamphleteers railing against gin, politicians legislating against it, bootleggers smuggling it, and poets great and god-awful singing its praises. Join us – if you dare – for an evening of Scorch-Gut, Kill-Me-Quick, Strip-Me-Naked.
Come for the lecture, and stay for delicious artisinal cocktails and thematic tunes courtesy of Friese Undine.
Dr Richard Barnett studied medicine in London before becoming a historian. He has taught the history of science, medicine and evolutionary theory at the universities of Cambridge and London, and now holds one of the first Wellcome Trust Engagement Fellowships. His first book, Medical London: City of Diseases, City of Cures, was published in 2008, and was a Book of the Week on BBC Radio 4, and his next book – The Sick Rose, on anatomy and art in an age of revolution – will be published by Thames & Hudson in the UK and DAP in the US in May. He received the 2006 Promis Prize for poetry, and has made many appearances on BBC television and radio. His writing has also appeared in the London Review of Books, the Lancet, Strange Attractor, and the Natural Death Handbook (fifth edition). You can find him online at sickcityproject.wordpress.com, and on Twitter @doctorbarnett.