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The Temperance Movement

Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss the British experience of teetotalism from the early 19th Century when abstaining from alcohol was a way for the new urban workers to get on in life.

Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss the momentum behind teetotalism in 19th Century Britain, when calls for moderation gave way to complete abstinence in pursuit of a better life. Although arguments for temperance had been made throughout the British Isles beforehand, the story of the organised movement in Britain is often said to have started in 1832 in Preston, when Joseph Livesey and seven others gave a pledge to abstain. The movement grew quickly, with Temperance Halls appearing as new social centres in towns in place of pubs, and political parties being drawn into taking sides either to support abstinence or impose it or reject it.

The image above, which appeared in The Teetotal Progressionist in 1852, is an example of the way in which images contained many points of temperance teaching, and is © Copyright Livesey Collection at the University of Central Lancashire.

With

Annemarie McAllister
Senior Research Fellow in History at the University of Central Lancashire

James Kneale
Associate Professor in Geography at University College London

And

David Beckingham
Associate Professor in Cultural and Historical Geography at the University of Nottingham

Producer: Simon Tillotson

Available now

52 minutes

Last on

Thu 3 Feb 2022 21:30
Â鶹ԼÅÄ Radio 4

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LINKS AND FURTHER READING

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READING LIST

David Beckingham, The Licensed City: Regulating Drink in Liverpool, 1830-1920 (Liverpool University Press, 2017)

Virginia Berridge, Jennifer Walke and Alex Mold ‘From Inebriety to Addiction: Terminology and Concepts in the UK, 1860–1930’ (Social History of Alcohol and Drugs, 28: 1, 2014)

Brian Harrison, Drink and the Victorians: The Temperance Question in England, 1815-1872 (Keele University Press, 1994)

James Kneale, ‘The place of drink: Temperance and the public, 1856–1914’ (Social & Cultural Geography, 2:1, 2001)

Lilian Lewis Shiman, Crusade against Drink in Victorian England (Palgrave Macmillan, 1988)

Annemarie McAllister, Demon Drink? Temperance and the Working Class (Kindle e-book, 2014)

Annemarie McAllister, ‘The Alternative World of the Proud Non-Drinker; Nineteenth-century public Displays of Temperance’ (Social History of Alcohol and Drugs, 28: 2, 2014)

Annemarie McAllister, ‘Picturing the Demon Drink: How Children were Shown Temperance Principles in the Band of Hope’ (Visual Resources, 28:4, 2012)

Annemarie McAllister, ‘Temperance battle songs: the musical war against alcohol’ (Popular Music, 35: 2, 2016)

James Nicholls, The Politics of Alcohol: A History of the Drink Question in England (Manchester University Press, 2009)

Deborah Toner, Alcohol in the Age of Industry, Empire and War (Bloomsbury, 2021)

Henry Yeomans, ‘What Did the British Temperance Movement Accomplish? Attitudes to Alcohol, the Law and Moral Regulation’ (Sociology, 45: 1, 2016)


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Broadcasts

  • Thu 3 Feb 2022 09:00
    Â鶹ԼÅÄ Radio 4
  • Thu 3 Feb 2022 21:30
    Â鶹ԼÅÄ Radio 4

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