Carroll liked a drink or two. He used to take a flask of sherry around with him, according to Isa Bowman. But in the general scheme of Victorian drinking he probably seemed pretty abstemious.

Victorians drank a great deal. I wrote a piece once about the lashings of alcohol offered at Victorian children's parties Only the best champagne was recommended for the kiddies!)

Boarding School Beer

When Carroll was at Rugby school, drunkenness among the boys was a real problem. He himself referred somewhere disparagingly to "boarding school beer"

He meant the beer that the schools gave the boys to drink. It was very weak.

Shame!

But the main reason for giving them beer, of course, was that the drinking water was so polluted. I suppose they would rather have had the lads dead drunk than dead from cholera.

null