The women's movement is absolutely fascinating, and it did give a platform to so many women to get involved in a range of social improvement causes. It was through women working together, using that local option scheme that you were talking about, that they got prohibition in america. Ammaryc for absolutely now the centr of your research? Well, i'm writing ck at the moment, about women editors and women writers in the temperance movement,. And how they were empowered to do that because of the commitment gor egomen. The other thing i didn't get time to talk about was the split in the women's movement. But i think that is a place where, if we're thinking
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