A tea pot from about 1834-40 is on display in the Harris Museum, Preston, a piece of the towns history, for this is where the teetotal movement was started by Joseph Livesey in 1833. At first it only promoted the abstinence from spirits but eventually the members of the movement took 'The Pledge' to abstain from all alcohol, 'except as medicine'. It became a mass working class movement linked to radical politics, non conformist religion and the quest for women's suffrage. They couldn't meet in pubs so they built Temperance Halls, hotels and bars which served things like ginger beer and sarsaparilla. By the 1930s it was all over, although a lot of the buildings survive and are now put to other uses but surprisingly there are still a scattering of temperance bars around the country.
Tea drinking boomed in the 19th Century Britain and we have never looked back since. So whats your tipple? Here is one of Martin Wiscombe's retro cards
I can't resist including William Cowper's most famous lines from his poem
The Task evoking a winter's evening.
Now stir the fire, and close the shutters fast,
Let fall the curtains, wheel the sofa round,
And, while the bubbling and loud-hissing urn
Throws up a steamy column, and the cups,
That cheer but not inebriate, wait on each,
So let us welcome peaceful evening in.
