Policing a free society: Drunkenness and liberty in colonial New South Wales

Abstract

David Buchanan was a radical politician, a temperance advocate and a notorious drunkard. His personal struggles with alcohol and the law in New South Wales in the 1860s illustrate changing understandings of drunkenness, but also the wider transformation of the colony under responsible government. As a free society developed, public drunkenness became a symbol of deviance and the authorities used the crime of drunkenness to manage public order and uphold respectability. An increasingly interventionist state challenged traditional notions of individual liberty when it assumed responsibility for problems like drunkenness.