Drinking alcohol was very much part of Belgian life, especially at key moments when there was a cause for celebration. Drunkenness was often the unavoidable result. Foreigners visiting the country recorded the particularities they observed in Belgium and a widespread habit of excessive drinking was part of it. This section looks at the organization of Belgian society in the second half of the nineteenth and the beginning of the twentieth century through the lens of drunkenness. At times condoned behaviour, in other situations no longer so, drunkenness and attitudes towards it were always socially specific. Tracing where the limits of acceptability were drawn can indicate ways in which social relations took shape. Affecting traditional habits of the countryside and adding to the confusion within rapidly transforming city encounters, drinking could become transgressive behaviour that both constructed and worked within social boundaries as a classed, gendered and national experience.

While the drunkard fascinated foreign visitors he, or indeed she, also inspired artists and writers. In fact, Belgian art and literature saw an important renaissance in the 1880s and 1890s. For eminent Belgian historian Henri Pirenne it was no coincidence that this artistic revival coincided with the social upheavals of the 1880s. The drunkard was equally prevalent in ‘popular’ fiction like folk stories and songs. In addition, the stories recorded in the patient registers of the Ghent asylum offer us an exceptional insight into the experience of the drunkard himself and his family.