BAJAN SUN MAGAZINE
In 1668 legislation was passed ‘…preventing the
selling of Brandy and Rum in Tippling Houses near
the Broad Paths and Highways within this Island’.
It provided that ‘No persons within the Island,
shall be permitted to keep any stills for Distilling of
Rum, except such persons as have lands or canes
of their own, or such as keep refineries.
’The 1668 law was intended not only to control
the manufacture and sale of rum, but also to curb
the disorderly behaviour that the tippling houses
apparently encouraged. The preamble to the Act
had this to say:
‘…intolerable hurts and troubles to this island do
continually grow and increase through the
multiplicity of such abuses and disorders as are
daily had and used in unlicensed Tippling
Houses… On the Sabbath days many lewd, lose
and idle people do resort to such Tippling Houses,
DEC 2014
who by their drunkenness, swearing, and other
miscarriages, do, in a very high nature, blaspheme
the name of God, profane the Sabbath, and bring
scandal upon the Christian religion”.
Church and rum shop in conflict! In other words,
officialdom, as usual, simply wanted to stop
ordinary people having a good time. The planters
and merchants could cavo