The temperance movement started, and continued to blossom, in the textile districts of Yorkshire and Lancashire in the distant days of the 19th century, and later swept across the whole of Britain, with the aim of combating alcoholism.
It was in fact alcohol that was one of the greatest problems facing Victorian Britain, due to untaxed, cheap ale and gins that was driving the population (usually the working classes) into drunkenness!
It was a Methodist cheese-maker in Preston, Lancashire, who set about establishing a society under which a pledge was taken, never to drink alcohol. The society quickly grew and expanded beyond churches and became part of the everyday life for the sober British. The temperance bar became the social outlet of the society where they would sing songs about the ‘demon drink’ and enjoy sarsaparilla and ginger beer, in joyful fashion. By the 1880’s, temperance bars graced every high street in the north of England, the most prominent of course being Mr Fitzpatrick’s.
Sadly, fifty years after the movement began, enthusiasm faded for the temperance movement on this side of the Atlantic, following the end of prohibition in the United States. The falling interest, along with a wave of imported, sugary drinks hitting our shores, resulted in the steep decline of the number of temperance bars. Only one Mr Fitzpatrick’s bar survived; the former ‘one too many’ public house (as it was known then) in the Lancashire town of Rawtenstall.
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