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Temperance in the Three Towns

As a naval port, Plymouth developed an infamous reputation for drunkenness and disorderly conduct much of which centered around Union Street. By the 1880s there were 350 public houses across the Three Towns as well as numerous beerhouses and off licences, in fact 1 for every 232 persons in Plymouth. While men could socialise on licensed premises away from the pressures of family life, public houses also attracted prostitutes, habitual drunkards and other  ‘ne’er do wells’. Drunken behaviour often escalated into brawls and fights causing problems for the local community and concern about the morality and of such individuals. In the first half of the nineteenth century, temperance campaigners, typically  with Methodist and Wesleyan ideologies, sought to re-educate the public to restrict their consumption of alcohol and embrace a more religious and moral lifestyle. Teetotallers or absolutionists wanted to prohibit all forms of intoxicating liquor whereas temperancers were more willing to allow moderate beer consumption but not spirits or wine. Temperance advocates sought to encourage as many people as possibly to sign ‘the pledge’ not to consume alcoholic beverages and their campaigns quickly grew into a huge social phenomenon. This of course was somewhat problematic given the large scale presence of sailors and  marines. The first temperance society was established in Bradford in the 1820s but the Plymouth and Stonehouse Seamen’s and Soldiers’ Friend Society and Bethel Union which Plymouth whose mission was to persuade sailors and fishermen to exchange drinking for spiritual and religious belief was an early forerunner of the temperance societies that developed in the Three Towns. By the end of 1833 there were 250 temperance societies nationally with 67,000 members (Carlisle Journal, 14 Dec 1833). By 1839 the various societies in the Three Towns had attracted 1,511 members and were recruiting around 200 annually.

The First Temperance Societies in the Three Towns

  • Plymouth Temperance Society 1833
  • Plymouth Total Abstinence Society 1836
  • Western Temperance League 1837 – umbrella organisation for the southwest, second largest after the National Temperance League
  • Devonport Total Abstinence Society 1838 – a founder member was William Richard Ryan as explained in his memoires
  • Devonport Rechabite Society 1838 – Rechabites were also prohibitionists but were well connected ones
  • Stonehouse Total Abstinence Society post 1841? press references in 1851 record tragic death of its secretary William Rogers

Although the Three Towns were rivals in many ways temperance served as a common cause drawing the various associations together. In July 1841 the First United Procession was held including groups from Tavistock, Liskeard and Kingsbridge. The weather rained on their parade from Granby Square, Devonport, via Stoke, Plymouth and along Union Street to Stonehouse where a meeting was held with tea and cakes. Over 2,000 attended but as one newspaper  reporter notes, it would have been  ‘a more imposing spectacle had the weather been fine’. (West of England Conservative 21 July 1841 (c) British Library Board). Throughout the 1860s and 1870s the Three Towns were saturated with campaigns and weekly meetings, celebrating anniversaries and jubilees. Representatives from one society would visit another to deliver lectures or invite speakers from across the country to encourage more pledges. The Plymouth Temperance Society met every Monday in the Temperance Hall on Raleigh Street. The Devonport Temperance Society met in the Temperance hall, 111 Fore street built in 1852 which also accommodated the Devonport Temperance Hotel(it was still operating in 1937). The Plymouth Total Abstinence Society moved from its meeting place on Notte Street to the Borough Arms  (more of a coffee shop than a pub) in 1887.

More  detail about all the information on this webpage can be heard from this public talk delivered by Professor Kim Stevenson at the 20th Local Studies Day, 5 May 2018 as part of the Plymouth History Festival 2018.

Dame Aggie Weston: ‘the Sailors’ Friend

Of course it was Devonport that became known as the bastion of temperance when Miss Agnes Weston, The Sailors Friend, set up her first mission to sober up the royal navy. In May 1876 she opened the Devonport Seamans’ Mission and the first Royal Sailors Rest next to the Dockyard gates replicating similar Christian rest homes she had set up in Portsmouth (The Royal Sailors Rest in Portsmouth was not built until 1881). An active member of the National Temperance League she quickly and effectively spread the temperance message through her highly polemical Ashore and Afloat.

Aggie campaigned tirelessly to improve the conditions and situations of sailors and their families advocating teetotalism as the only saviour from degeneration. Sub-titled A Copiously Illustrated and Interesting Paper for the Household, District and Class this edition from 1885 would have sparked cynical interest amongst many of its intended readership with its dogmatic stance about the real life dangers and consequences of drink, and explicit and implicit reprimands that there was no alternative but Christian indoctrinated teetotalism.

This Front Page ((c) British Library Board) emphasises the significance of tattooing an anchor as a symbol of the navy anchoring this young boy to the lifeline of temperance, it was important to inspire them while young as even 10 and 12 year old sailors were entitled to their daily rum ration!

 

The liquor industry fought back hard against the temperance movement. In 1883, John James, President of the Plymouth, Devonport and Stonehouse wine spirit and beer trade protection society acknowledged some of their concerns about the industry but was highly critical of the political dimensions of the temperance campaigns. He proposed cutting the number of liquor licences nationally by 64,000 recommending that licences be issued to the individual and not the premises, also  that the number of licences should be proportionate to the local population. He stressed that any reforms must be underpinned by Liberty Justice and Truth. Individual licences were eventually incorporated in the Licensing Act 1872 which imposed much tighter regulation and control of the licensing of public houses. But James was unlikely to have been satisfied as while the restrictions on the sale of intoxicating liquor curbed the freedom of the lower and working classes they specifically excluded private members clubs and wine cellars, so barely affected the drinking pleasures of the elite and well off. The Act also prohibited the sale of spirits to under 16s.

In 1887, Aggie Weston, now President of the tripartite Plymouth, Stonehouse and Devonport Ladies Temperance Association, organized and led the intriguingly titled ‘Grand monster Temperance Demonstration’. The procession started in Devonport Park and along Union Street with a rhetoric of unification that called upon ‘all good citizens … to combine their electoral influences, so as to secure to the people in their separate localities the power to banish the liquor traffic from their midst.’ (Western Morning News 7 March 1887). This is an interesting tactic as it needs to be considered against the backdrop of continual resistance from the Three Towns, especially Devonport, to governmental amalgamation. Presenting the National Temperance League annual report later that month at Exeter hall, the Bishop of London publicly praised Miss Weston and her friends for the success of the Monster demonstration and taking 3,952 pledges and distributing 700 cards, medals and awards to sailors and soldiers that year (in Devonport and Portsmouth) who had kept the pledge for between 1 and 20 years. The temperance campaign therefore started a process of unification both expressly and implicitly. By 1893 the Plymouth Band of Hope Union (the Band of Hope targeted young people to sign the pledge and was founded in 1847  by the Reverend Tunnicliff a Baptist minister in Leeds following the death of a young man from alcoholism) comprised 25 bands across the Three Towns and by 1895 Aggie Weston’s Ladies Temperance Association was being referred to as the Three Towns Temperance Association.

The Publican’s Nemesis

Aggie and her organisations had softened public opinion paving the way for the police in Plymouth to take a harder line on policing drunkenness, first through Chief Constable Arthur Wreford but more successfully by Joseph Sowerby who introduced an earl form of zero tolerance policing ordering his constables to fill the magistrates’ courts and petty sessions with charges of alcohol related and licensing offences. Chief Constable Sowerby  personally visited over 300 licensed traders in Plymouth, notably entering 40 premises on the same day, because, as he later informed the Royal Commission on Liquor Licensing Laws, licensees were supplying liquor to his constables while on duty: ‘I do not entirely trust to the men I have the honour to command, to get my information’. He was very well connected and was the lynchpin of a group of elite temperancers linking all Three Towns.  A keen member of the Plymouth Temperance Society which included Henry Whitfield, editor of the Western Independent; Joseph Bellamy, mayor, chairman of the Chamber of Commerce and director of the lucrative Sutton Harbour Company who sat on the bench and the  two Liberal MPs for Devonport Hudson Kearley and E.J.C Morton. Not only could he rely on his officers’ efforts being well publicized, the bench could also send out a strong message to those arrested. Typically a 10 shilling fine or 10 days with hard labour would be imposed for those who refused to give up their bad habits. or 5 shillings  alternatively 5 days for those who had not appeared before. Sowerby had significant connections with various Methodist associations and knew Isaac Foot who was also a Guardian – he therefore had considerable influence.

Sowerby started a campaign associated with the National Social Purity Crusade 1901 and the new moral activists (middle-class Liberals and Conservatives)  who invoked the concept of the Christian crusades to fight immorality and intoxication to turn the perceived tide of ‘degeneration’ at the end of the nineteenth century. He made it his mission to target all the keepers and owners of disorderly houses  prosecuting 79 beerhouse keepers for licensing offences and convincing the magistrates to close 60 public houses in the town. In 1903 Sowerby published an extensive survey of all 347 licensed premises in Plymouth to support his claim that he had been successful in his strategy as drunkenness had considerably decreased despite the fact that nationally convictions were generally increasing. He modestly informed the Royal Commission that he attributed this to the ‘improved social condition of the people’ brought about by the police supervision of public houses and ‘enlightened attitudes of the young’. Licensees were now more co-operative in managing their houses and responsive to police advice: in 1893 Sowerby had prosecuted 28 publicans, in 1897 just 9. He continued to introduce innovative ideas and as a keen photographer, (after the Licensing Act 1903 gave the police more powers to deal with intoxication), took photographs of all habitual drunkards (those convicted more than three times a year) which he then confidentially distributed amongst the licensed victuallers to refuse entry.

Sowerby probably achieved more in controlling drunkenness than the 80 years of temperance campaigns combined though he would have been unable to do this without them preparing the ground to make the public more receptive. The gradual coming together of the various temperance societies, Sowerby’s preference for a combined police force for the Three Towns and his association with others who favoured amalgamation paved the way for Joseph Bellamy to  lead the amalgamation negotiations and Sowerby to become the first Chief Constable of the combined Plymouth City Police force in 1914. Thus the story of Temperance in the Three Towns is not only a fascinating one in itself but is part of the bigger picture of Plymouth’s unique heritage.