Letter: Drinking was bad after war

Letter: People who think that heavy drinking today is bad, and that levels of domestic violence are bad, should have lived in the years after the war.

It wasn't the youngsters who beat up their wives after staggering home from the pub, but middle-aged men drinking nearly all their wages in the 1950s and 1960s.

You would come across such men lying in the roads or with bikes on top of them.

Many wives had a dog's life, with frequent black eyes and broken ribs, and those who refused sex were legally raped, with husbands applying to the courts for a restitution of conjugal rights order. The victims of abuse abused further, a family matter said the police.

Binge drinking was much worse then than now, with all classes scarcely being sober much of the time.

Farm workers would drink four or five pints of scrumpy (seven or eight per cent alcohol) cider during the day, from barrels provided by their employers, and wealthier professional people downed sherry, whisky, brandy and gin continually and drove cars home. No breathalisers then.

In the services heavy drinking was universal and alcohol cheap. The navy served free double strength rum to all ranks, and it's a wonder they could sail ships in a straight line.

During WWI soldiers going "over the top" were given a third of a pint of rum, or so a man who survived told me, and they wouldn't have known what was happening as the drink took effect.

So, next time they say drinking is worse than ever, remember that it was ten times as bad in the past.

W F Kerswell

Picklescott