The Puss and Mew. No, it’s not what the alpha male gurus are telling their fans to do.
It was actually one of the world’s first vending machines. And it was designed entirely to get past the laws of the Gin Act of 1736 in the United Kingdom. Go figure.
The act was officially titled The Act for Laying a Duty upon the Retailers of Spirituous Liquors (Difford’s Guide). It essentially prohibited gin sales with increased prices on licensing and selling the spirit. The act passed in response to the Gin Craze in 18th Century UK.
But the people of the UK did not bend to the law so easily. Being told he couldn’t buy or sell gin anymore, one person got to know the law very well to find any loopholes to the new rules.
That person was Captain Dudley Bradstreet. He “bought the Act, and read it over several times, and found no Authority by it to break one’s Doors, and that Informer must know the Name of the Person who rented the house it was sold in.” The law made it so customers buying gin had to know whose building it was specifically that sold them the gin. Plus, it did not give police the ability to break into the building to figure it out.
That realization led to the Puss and Mew.
by Paul Rosenkavalier
*Image is a replica.
The Puss and Mew
In practice, the Puss and Mew was a statue of a cat mounted onto the window of a building. The statue had an opening where customers would insert the money, ask “Puss, give me two Pennyworth of Gin,” and Bradstreet would dispense the gin to the voice – oftentimes a member of the mob – through a small leaden pipe he installed under the paw of the cat.
The genius in the contraption, though, came from the deal he had set up with a lawyer friend in which he used his house for the operation. This way, customers would not know who it was that was giving them the gin. And if they could identify the man behind the Sign of the Cat, he’d be shrouded behind the actual owner of the property’s name. It helped that the lawyer friend understood the scheme and law as well as Bradstreet.
Apparently, the whole thing caught on so fast that he became annoyed by his newfound business. After chatting up a “very obliging New Acquaintance” for most of the night, Bradstreet returned to his quarters in the near morning but was “soon roused by Customers impatiently calling to poor Puss for Gin; I soon attacked them, and was tired of serving and receiving Money that whole day.”
(Seriously, you gotta read this autobiography.)
Bradstreet recalls making plenty of money in the month or so he ran the Puss.
Get Gin Delivered in Modern USA
Our bartenders are in the lab mixing up Cat Statue technology right now. But for the time being, consider Saucey as a legal way to deliver gin directly to your doorstep.
Visit our website or download our app (App Store or Google Play) and let us know what you’ll have. Cheers!
