Drinking tea is a sign of recklessness?

Hence, they presented the custom mainly as uncontrollable and reckless. Women drinking tea wasted money. Moreover, they did not fulfill their duties, i.e. they did not take care of the house and … their husbands. For it was widely believed that this “traditional” female duty was essential to development national economy. Pamphlets published in England at the time suggested that concerns about tea drinking were also alive outside Ireland. Some believed that tea was a general threat to the diet of British peasants, and also symbolized the damage done to social order and hierarchy. According to a study from Durham University, published in Literature and History, the reformers believed that the habit of drinking tea among peasant women he should be completely wiped out, for the sake of the Irish economy and society. Study author Dr. Helen O’Connell, who analyzed pamphlets and literature about the time, says: the peasant women were accused of drinking a cup of tea instead of preparing a healthy evening meal for their hard-working husbands.

The reformers tried to force the peasant women to change their attitudes, in a rather condescending way, for the good of the country. So they said clearly: drinking tea is reckless. British reformers, on the other hand, had doubts about sugar, which was linked to slavery and controversial plantations in the West Indies.

source: ScienceNews.pl