BBC America’s Copper is a police drama set during the Civil War in New York City—where the beat patrolled ranges from the Five Points up to luxurious Fifth Avenue and all the way into rural northern Manhattan. As any student knows, 19th century New York was one hard-drinking, hard living place to be. Since the premiere of “Copper” is fast approaching, here is everything you’d want to know about America’s sordid relationship with alcohol during that blurry-eyed era.
Popular portrayals of liquor in the 19th century conjure images of whiskey bottles labeled with X’s and inebriated shootouts, but they overlook the more pervasive drinking problems that plagued America’s cities—and the working poor and immigrants who lived there. Daniel Okrent, author ofLast Call: The Rise and Fall of Prohibition, noted that 19th century drinking patterns were roughly triple our own. That figure becomes all the more startling when you take into account the drunken renaissance our country is currently undergoing (a recent Gallup Poll found the drinking rate is the highest it has been since the mid-1980s, when drinking ages across the nation were inflated to keep intoxicated teens off the road). Without excluding children, the elderly, or any other group adverse to imbibing, the average American still consumed a gag-inducing 3.9 gallons of alcohol annually in 1830.
