Title page from "A Brief History..."
In 1840 in Preston, in the north of England in Lancashire, Joseph Dearden published A Brief History of Ancient and Modern Tee-totalism, an apologia for the temperance movement.
Dearden explains his work by alluding to recent “errors” in the history of the temperance movement — in England, specifically, the reader is forced to assume, although Dearden does cover a wide geographic area — and specifically those “errors into which the committee of the new British and Foreign Temperance Society have fallen…” (3) Dearden wishes to prove that teetotalling has the longer — and more acceptable — social pedigree. Any sort of indulgence in spirits, whether wine, whiskey, or other, is unacceptable. Only complete dedication to the consumption of non-alcoholic beverages will be tolerated — and, for Dearden, this is the only way to live a successful life on both the micro- and macro-cosmic levels. Individuals who drink are “naturally” bound to be less successful than those who do not; the Irish come in for particular note when Dearden claims that over two thousand convictions for drunkenness are made in Dublin monthly.
Dearden’s tract can be amusing reading, particularly for those researchers with broad historical knowledge of the time and place; for example, while it is possible that two thousand convictions were made in Dublin during the course of any given month, the odds that they were all solely due to drunkenness in some form must be very low!
More seriously, the temperance movement was a powerful force in both the United Kingdom and the United States at the time. Men and women from across the social spectrum took up the cause and devoted long hours to it. Dearden offers anecdotal evidence of groups large and small working to eradicate the habit of drunkenness, putting time, money, and effort into what must have seemed like a perennially losing cause. Dearden’s publication offers a valuable insight into the mentalite of those invested in the cause.
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