This article critiques previous attempts to contextualise the culture of drinking in convict Australia, arguing that such practices were embedded within a moral economy of work. It explains the importance of alcohol in British society and the manner in which its relationship to labour changed with industrialisation. Analysing quantitative and qualitive evidence drawn from court and convict records, it demonstrates how alcohol was used to motivate labour in both rural and urban settings. Looking more closely at the timing of drinking charges, it identifies distinct patterns for urban and rural convict workers documenting an increasing management tendency to distinguish sober work from drunken leisure. It concludes with a discussion of popular drinking as a form of agentive resistance and its policing as a means of labour management.