"The foolish drunkards!" : A quantitative socialgeographical study of drunkenness offenses in the town of Ljungby 1936-1947.

The aim of this study was to explore the social background of the people convicted of drunkenness offence in the town of Ljungby between 1936 and 1947. Drunkenness offense was sentenced to those found drunk in public but also societys attempt to control the s subclass. This view was in contrast to the ideal of the well-behaved worker who also spread during the end of the last century. Based on information found in index cards for drunkenness offenses provided by Ljungbys temperance board this studie explores whether alcohol use changes in different social classes. By mapping the offender's profession, age, gender and housing situation, the study shows clear overrepresentation of working class men. The study on gender showed similar trends in Ljungby as elsewhere in the country, that it was extremely few women who were convicted of drunkenness. When examining the age distribution in the drunkenness offences Ljungbys young people, namely those who were twentyfive years and younger, the numbers were slightly higher than in Sweden's cities but appeared to be consistent with official statistics on rural areas. The study's geographical part shows that there are patterns of drunkenness offenses and residential area and these patterns suggest that the drunks increasingly lived in neighborhoods that were considered to be poor. The conclusion is that there are class differences in who was convicted of drunkenness during 1936-1947 in Ljungby, both based on quantitative data and geographic survey