Gin and fog sounds like it might refer to special effects used in the theatre as a term akin to smoke and mirrors. However, that isn't the case. The term gin and fog, or sometimes written gin-and-fog, refers to hoarseness caused due to heavy drinking the previous night. A dictionary of words and phrases from the past says that a voice would have a peculiar quality of "fruitiness" and says that the term comes from around 1880 via the theatre.
However, the earliest reference that seems to appear actually comes from 1841 in the second volume of a book called Merrie England In The Olden Time by George Daniel. He wrote, "'Now my little lads and lasses! Shut one eye, and don't breathe on the glasses! Here's Nero a-fiddling while Rome was a-burning—and Cin-cinnatus a-digging potatoes. Here's Sampson and the Phillis-tines—Cain and Abel, and the Tower of Babel.' This was sounded by a gaunt fellow (a stronger man than Sampson, for he lugged him in by the head and shoulders!) with a gin-and-fog voice and a bristly beard. His neighbour, a portly ogress with a Cyclopical physiognomy (her drum 'most tragically run through!'), advertised a grunting giant, (a Pygmalion to his relations!) and backed his stupendous flitches against Smith-field and the world."
It appeared again in 1852 in Household Words where it was written,
"One word about the customers, and we will rejoin our chariot, which must surely be extricated by this time. Thieves, beggars, costermongers, hoary-headed old men, stunted, ragged, shock-haired children, blowzy, slatternly women, hulking bricklayers, gaunt, sickly hobbededoys, with long greasy hair. A thrice-told tale. Is it not the same everywhere! The same pipes, dirt howling, maundering, fighting, staggering gin fever. Like plates multiplied by the electro-process;like the printer's 'stereo'; like the reporter's 'manifold' ;you will find duplicates, triplicates of these forlorn beings everywhere. The same woman giving her baby gin; the same haggard, dishevelled woman, trying to coax her drunken husband home; the same mild girl, too timid even to importune her ruffian partner to leave off drinking the week's earnings, who sits meekly in a corner, with two discoloured eyes, one freshly blacked; one of a week's standing. The same weary little man, who comes in early, crouches in a corner, and takes standing naps during the day, waking up periodically for 'fresh drops.' The same red-nosed, ragged object who disgusts you at one moment by the force and fluency of his Billingsgate, and surprises you the next by bursting out in Greek and Latin quotations. The same thin, spectral man who has no money, and, with his hands piteously laid one over the other, stands for hours gazing with fishy eyes at the beloved liquor; smelling, thinking of, hopelessly desiring it. And, lastly, the same miserable girl, sixteen in years, and a hundred in misery; with foul, matted hair, and death in her face ; with a tattered plaid shawl, and ragged boots, a gin-and-fog voice, and a hopeless eye."
It also appeared in 1856 in the text, "The street ballad-singers of the present day are no improvement upon their predecessors. The elaborate blackguardism ard gin-and-fog voices of these excruciating screech-owls speak little for the boasted march of intellect." This was printed in An Elizabethan Garland; Being a Descriptive of Seventy Black-Letter Ballads Printed Between the Years 1550 and 1597.
It appeared in print after 1880 in the third chapter of the 1889 work How the Poor Live, and Horrible London bu George R. Sims. He wrote, "The drink dulls every sense of shame, takes the sharp edge from sorrow, and leaves the drinker for awhile in a fools' paradise. Here is the home of the most notorious 'drunkardess'—if I may coin a work—in the neighbourhood. Mrs. O'Flannigan's room is easily entered, for it is on the street-level, and one step brings us into the presence of the lady herself. She is in bed, a dirty red flannel rag is wrapped about her shoulders, and her one arm is in a sling. She sits up in bed at the sight of visitors, and greets us in a gin and fog voice, slightly mellowed with the Irish brogue. Biddy has been charged at the police-courts seventy-five times with being drunk, and she is therefore a celebrated character. She is hardly sober now, though she has evidently had a shaking which would have sobered most people for a month. Her face is a mass of bruises and cuts, and every now and then a groan and a cry to certain Saints in her calendar tell of aches and pains in the limbs concealed under the dirty blanket that covers the bed."
The term continued appearing in print in the early 20th century. It appeared in the 37th chapter of the 1905 work, The Crimson Blind by Fred M White. He wrote, "Merritt rocked heavily on the other's breastbone, almost stifling him. 'Wot?' he said, scoffingly. The pleasing mixture of gin and fog in his throat rendered him more hideously hoarse than usual. 'Not make up a prayer! And you a regular dab at all that game! Why, I've seen the women snivellin' like babies when you've been ladlin' it out. Heavens, what a chap you would be on the patter! How you would kid the chaplain!'" White used the term again in his 1906 work, The Yellow Face when he wrote, "A figure slouched up to him and a hoarse voice whispered in his ear: 'Party of the name of Maggs,' he said in his gin-and-fog voice. 'Pal of 'Simple Charlie.' Old Charlie couldn't get away to-night, so he sent me instead. Don't you be disappointed, guv'nor; you will find me just as clever with them bits of steel as Charles himself. Bit of burglary, ain't it?'" It was then used by Ian Hay when he wrote, "'Tha's right, ole son! You give 'im socks,' remarked a hoarse and rather indistinct voice of the gin -and -fog variety, from among the spectators." in his 1910 work, The Right Stuff.
Gin is an alcohol that is made by distilling grain mash with juniper berrieds and sometimes other fruits, so it would make sense to describe a voice as having fruitiness to it. The word gin is a shorting of geneva, usually capitalized as Geneva, referring to the Hollands. The word geneva comes from the Dutch word genever which comes from the Old French word genevre which comes from the Latin jūniperus meaning juniper.
The word fog is thought to be a back formation of the word foggy. Both words are thought to come from the Middle English word fooge or fog which comes from the Scandinavian or Norwegian fogg meaning long grass on damp ground.
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