The ruling classes had a real interest in promoting tea drinking among the growing urban population, who were poor, vulnerable to disease and perceived as prone to disorderly drunkenness. Beer, port and gin had become a significant part of the diet of men, women and even children, partly because alcohol as a mild antiseptic was much safer to drink than unpurified city water. But by the nineteenth century alcohol was a growing social problem.

Neil MacGregor, A History of the World in 1…, loc. 1408