The Cost of Repeated Drunkenness

International Tract and Missionary Society · Oakland, California · Aug 19, 1886

FromSigns of the Times, Vol. 12, No. 32.

The Cost of Repeated Drunkenness

The House of Industry on Deer Island, near Boston, kept an accurate record last year of 9,684 men and women sentenced for drunkenness. This number actually appeared upon the records of the courts as 59,960 different persons. Each drunkard averaged over six commitments, and many of them were on record a score of times. The Tombs and other of our city prisons, from which drunken prisoners are continually sent to Blackwell's Island, could tell a similar story of drunken "repeaters." Short-time sentences for drunkards and thousands of licenses to liquor-sellers suffice to produce these disgraceful and, to tax-payers, costly results.—Sel.