> most people primarily drank some form of alcohol The substitute for clean drinking water was "small beer", a brewed ale with about 2% alcohol. Much safer tha

> most people primarily drank some form of alcohol The substitute for clean drinking water was "small beer", a brewed ale with about 2% alcohol. Much safer than drinking water from the pump; or, heaven forbid, from the River Thames, which in those days was even more of a sewer than it is now. You'd have to drink a lot of it to get drunk. TFA describes a murder that happened in "the parish of St. Aldates". St. Aldates Street runs from the centre of Oxford downhill to the Thames at St. Ebbes. St. Ebbes itself was a slum; wealthy people wouldn't live next to a disease-ridden open sewer. The side-streets off St. Aldates are all narrow, dark mediaeval alleys.