Reading this week about the rise of teetotalism among today’s young people – even university ‘freshers’ – I thought I’d write a short piece about the phenomenon of ‘temperance’, as it was known in the 19^th century…

The Temperance Movement in London

'The Modern Plague' 1882, detail of a temperance propaganda
 map showing all the pubs in London

In the working-class areas of Victorian London there was a pub on every street corner. In the 1890s, one mile of Whitechapel Road - from Commercial Street to Stepney Green - had no fewer than 48 drinking outlets. Pubs could stay open all day from 6am to 12.30am, allowing working men who were so inclined to take ‘refreshment’ both before and after work. Alcohol was everywhere and the proliferation of places to imbibe it (mostly in the form of gin), and the social consequences of this provoked increasing concern amongst the middle and upper classes. They were firmly convinced that alcohol was responsible for the poverty and misery that afflicted the poor.

It was as a result of these concerns that the Temperance Movement arose in the early 19^th century, originally in the North and the Midlands. Its original aim was to oppose the drinking of spirits and promote, instead, the ‘health-giving’ qualities of beer. By the last decades of the 19^th

century, the movement - by now firmly against all alcohol - was exerting considerable influence. In April 1836 the first establishment to open in London, the British Teetotal Temperance Coffee-Rooms and Hotel, began trading at 159 Aldersgate Street, an address convenient for those with business in the City. Gradually, the movement inspired a number of enterprises intended to provide an alcohol-free alternative to the public house. In the 1870s and 80s, attempts were made to set up “coffee taverns” or “temperance inns”, over 100 of them across London by 1897. Some of these taverns were former public houses which had been converted to the temperance cause. For example, in October 1872 Dr Barnardo bought the Edinburgh Castle in Limehouse and re-opened it a year later as the Edinburgh Castle Coffee Palace; the Dublin Castle in Mile End Road followed in 1875. However, many more were purpose-built, and designed to look like pubs - some went so far as to replicate the cut glass, mirrors and lamps of the late Victorian 'gin-palace'.

Another scheme for the introduction of what was termed ‘rational recreation’ for the masses

was the Working Men’s Club Movement of the 1840s, which led to the foundation in 1862 of the Working Men’s Club and Institute Union (CIU). To begin with alcohol was banned and the clubs had an evangelical air. The Notting Hill Workman’s Hall even had a working model of the Eddystone lighthouse outside to attract those “seeing the light” and making the transition from pub to (teetotal) club. But by the 1880s, the CIU’s grip on London’s clubs was loosening and they started to open up bars (with alcohol) so that they could become self-sufficient and no longer reliant on their prudish patrons.

Other schemes included that of housing reformer Octavia Hill. She founded the Barrett Court Club in a slum district of Marylebone with the aim, not just of providing decent housing, but also of instilling a sense of community. To this end she started a tenants’ ‘club’. A letter written by her in 1873 gives an idea of the kind of ‘uplifting’ entertainment she thought should be on offer: “There is a kind of piano at the Club; we shall want plenty of song. Probably you know the kind: simple ones, that will do them real good, and especially ‘Angels ever bright and fair’.”  Perhaps understandably, the venture failed!

But by far the major focus of the temperance campaigners was music halls. Social reformers and moralists had always particularly despised these establishments because they thought they actively encouraged drinking. In fact, there was evidence to the contrary – men actually consumed fewer drinks while watching music hall acts with a wife or girlfriend than if they were to spend the evening with other males in a gin palace! So it wasn’t long before the “Coffee Music Hall Company” was established in London (in 1880) to provide entertainment venues as a drink-free alternative to the other ‘dens of iniquity’. They also provided convenient venues for mass signings of “the pledge”. A prominent figure here was the American suffragist and social reformer Emma Cons. She was responsible for reopening the Royal Victorian Theatre (the Old Vic today) as a “Coffee and

Music Hall”, billed as offering “variety entertainments, after the style of the ordinary music halls, but free from any objectionable features”. However, within months the venue was in debt. It had failed to attract top acts – due to strict censorship - and even the most devout teetotaller was not amused by the diagram of the Liver of a Drunkard which was displayed between acts! The People’s Palace in the Mile End Road, built by social reformers inspired by Walter Besant, had a similar lack of success. Despite being opened with much ceremony by Queen Victoria in 1887, it didn’t prosper – mainly down to confusing its aims of education and recreation.

In the long term, all these enterprises were doomed to fail, not due to lack of income from the sale of drink, but because of their pious, unappealing atmosphere. Despite making a major impact on the political and social life of the country for much of the 19^th century, the temperance ideal has now almost completely vanished… or has it?!  

 References:

Bright lights, big city: London entertained 1830-1950 by Gavin Weightman (1992)

London: The Illustrated History by Cathy Moss & John Clark (2008)

Website: http://breweryhistory.com/journal/archive/123/Temperance.pdf