I have come across the term ‘Grogging’ a few times and thought I would note down an article from the National Guardian in 1890, that tells us what grogging is and why Inland Revenue wanted it to stop.
In connection with the case above referred to by “A Victim” it has been stated that this is the season when “grogging” is a source of comparative affluence. You ask what “grogging” is, and probably suspect it has something to do with standing at a public-house bar, and sending streams of various liquids coursing down the ill-used “thrapple.” Nothing of the kind, sweet sir. To “grog” in the proper sense, says a correspondent, is to buy up a stock of empty spirit casks, and, by steaming or any other convenient process, squeeze from the sodden staves their last drop of alcohol laden moisture. This moisture, collected and “doctored,” becomes in the grogger’s hands a very inferior and decidedly very dangerous whisky, of the shebeen or “kill the carter” class. The Inland Revenue discourage, this enterprise, of course, and a Glasgow “trigger” (As was reported in the Guardian of Wednesday last) has just caught it smartly over the fingers,
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