illicit distillation

illicit distillation, using barley or other grain to produce a colourless spirit (poteen), expanded rapidly following the Revenue Act of 1779, which banned small stills and imposed a minimum duty on others. Poteen not only provided a cheap spirit, superior in quality to the often unpalatable ‘parliament whiskey’; income from its sale was a crucial element in the survival strategy of many small‐holders and occupiers of marginal land. Attempts at suppression were thus fiercely resisted. Further increases in duty during the revolutionary and Napoleonic wars exacerbated the conflict. Indeed one of the first deployments of the new Peace Preservation Force, in Inishowen, Co. Donegal, in 1817, was against distillers rather than agrarian protestors. Problems of enforcement continued up to the 1860s. Thereafter illicit distillation, though practised to the present day, became less common. The decline was due both to better law enforcement, particularly after 1857, when the Royal Irish Constabulary took over the functions of the not always effective Revenue Police, and to the improved quality of legally produced whiskey.

Illicit distillation, and a taste for its products, is often thought of as characteristic of Irish culture in general. In fact early 19th‐century inquiries suggested that it was very largely confined to the northern half of the country, and a similar regional concentration was revealed in the pattern of convictions and seizures up to at least the 1950s. The divide presumably reflects both the prominence of beer rather than spirits in the drinking habits of the southern population, and the easier availability of grain away from the main dairying and cattle‐fattening regions.