If you have read our list of Marlow beer sellers and pubs, you will see that Marlow was quite well served when it came to places to buy an alcoholic drink! For some people this was a pleasant thing, but for others it was the root of a lot of Marlow's problems. This post is about Marlow's temperance campaigners and teetotalers and the somewhat up hill battle they faced.
It was never going to be easy to sell total abstinence from alcohol in a town where many people were employed by a brewery. Temperance, moderating alcohol consumption short of giving it up altogether, seems to be the cause that progressed most consistently through time in Marlow, although some of the groups campaigning under this banner were actually asking people to take a pledge of teetotalism after all. This point irritated Thomas Owen Wethered of the brewery, and he exchanged many words, printed and in person, with the likes of the Church Of England Temperance Society about this.
Although Dean Street is well remembered as a place well served by beer shops, ale houses and the like, it was West Street and Church Passage that had the highest concentration of alcohol sellers per square foot prior to about 1830. Marlow had a reputation for having a lot of licensed premises per population size even then. In 1830 the Reading Mercury noted that 10 new beer houses had recently opened in Marlow, taking advantage of a relaxation of certain conditions required for a licence. Three were refused a licence in 1839, but most carried on..
Is that a victualler at the back?
Back in the 1840's, the temperance cause in Marlow was said to be progressing "very rapidly". This may have been a little optimistic as the number of beer sellers actually increases after this time! In 1841 the existing mission room in Dean Street was set up for use as a coffee house and reading room. The idea was that working men would stride past the lure of the streets many beer sellers and instead take advantage of a subsidised cup of coffee. The reading room would be a pleasant place to browse a newspaper or religious book, and so gave the men somewhere to relax out of home that wasn't a pub.
In this year, a temperance meeting was held in the mission room on both Christmas Day and a few days later. It was chaired by George Brangwin. The organisers said that a licensed victualer attended and was so awed by their arguments that he signed up as a financial subscriber to their society. Whether he also signed a pledge to give up alcohol himself they did not say, but perhaps it was taken as a given. Research has not yet turned up anyone giving up their licence at this time, who seems a candidate for this character. You would imagine the teetotallers would trumpet the news about such a significant convert later on, but perhaps the story got muddled in the re telling by the London United Temperance Association.
Chin up, it's Chinnum!
One person who definitely was not likely to sign a pledge then was Dean Street character "Chinnum". Local George Stevens, remembering his own life in 1840's Marlow, recalled Chinnum's antics, although not his real name. I have subsequently found him to be Thomas Anderson of Dean Street. Chinnum was frequently before the bench on charges related to being drunk and disorderly as well as poaching and brawling. The exasperated authorities decided to try a different sort of punishment on him. They told the Parish Constable to dust off the town stocks and give Chinnum a six hour stint in them. George thought our drunken friend was the last miscreant to be clapped up in this way (March 1845), although other reports suggest there was one more, Thomas Ellis in 1858.*** Regardless, the stocks had not been in regular use for some time and the novelty value of seeing a man put in them drew a crowd. Chinnum was sat on a stool in the Market Square with his ankles and wrists in the holes made for them. The constable secured Chinnum and then went off, perhaps aware the crowd was largely supportive of his captive. When he returned to release the man, a crowd was still present and Mr Chinnum was blind drunk. How could this have occured? Well Chinnum had many friends present and when he said he was a little dry, a group of Dean Street ladies popped to the Coach & Horses and bought out a quart of beer and a pipe for him to enjoy. They had to help him drink it as his arms were out of use, but there was no shortage of volunteers and more drinks followed with predictable results. Chinnum might sound a jolly character, but he had a distinctly violent side when in drink and even savagely attacked his own mother. You can read more about that here. He was incidentally charged with being drunk and disorderly again less than a year later.
Rags to riches ?
A different kind of example was before those attending a public lecture in the Lecture Hall, St. Peter's Street in 1862. The smartly dressed and respectable looking John Plato of Chesham held before the audience a set of ragged clothes. These were the the very outfit he had worn when signing his abstinence pledge 22 years before. He said the turn around of his fortune began at this moment, his alcohol dependency being the reason for his earlier poverty.
A few years later, a speaker from London came to Marlow to address a meeting advertised as addressing the issue of Suppression of Liquor Traffic. The meeting was chaired by the Congregational church minister James Mountain. The "exhaustive" speech was accompanied by a dizzying number of facts and figures supporting the benefits sobriety could bring. This lead to the group passing a resolution calling on the government to do more to restrict alcohol sales.
Supply and demand
The reports of the teetotalism campaigners success, or lack of it in Marlow ebbs and flows as the 19thc goes on. The Marlow Correspondent for the Maidenhead advertiser, commenting in 1884, thought temperance was a subject that dared not be mentioned in the City - a slang term for Dean Street inspired by the pub names The Bank Of England, The Mint and the Royal Exchange. He argued that Marlow was a thirsty community and the number of pubs could probably be successfully doubled in some parts of town! He does make a good point that all seemed to be doing a good enough trade to keep going despite plenty of competition but of course the aim of the "other side" was to reduce this demand to nil.
To this end, more open air temperance meetings were held in places such as Spittal Square (Common Slough) and Quoiting Place (Quoiting Square).
Questionable advice for domestic bliss
In the 1890's the Temperance cause seems to gather pace again in Marlow. In 1891 it was noted that the town contained around 50 places to buy alcohol which was more than twice as many as the total number of butchers, grocers and grocers premises combined. This was one alcohol seller per 30 adults. But there was also said to more abstainers than ever before.
A meeting was organised by the non conformist places of worship as teetotalism was a cause long dear to their hearts. It was decided that none of their chapels would be big enough for the hoped for audience so the Lecture Room was hired. Many speakers came and some offered helpful hints as to how to convert others to the cause. Rev Messer, a visiting temperance advocate, suggested that woman should determine to die an old maid rather than marry a drinker. Others told the woman how important it was to "bridle their tongues", act meekly and make the home comfortable so as not to drive their husbands to drink. Advice for woman who had to try and waylay their husband on his way home on payday before he spent some of his earnings in a beershop was not forthcoming. At the end of the meeting it was decided to have a series of lectures in the town to promote signing the pledge with the overall aim of closing down every beer seller in town*
A society is formed...again
Marlow had had a temperance society in 1862, if not before but presumably it faded away as a Marlow Temperance Society was formed again in 1892 with long standing campaigner Rev Tavender** of the Congregational church elected president. This was active mainly with the "non-conformist" places of worship, but there was also Marlow branches of the Church Of England's Abstinence Society and a Total Abstinence Society which usually met in the Wesleyan Sunday School room. In late Victorian times Marlow also had a Lodge of The Independent Order of Good Templars. This was a friendly society with temperance as a requisite for membership and failure in this regard forfeited all benefits. Weekly meetings were held in the Congregational school room with entertainments on offer not just speeches. We should also mention the popular Band Of Hope, where young people signed a pledge to be life long abstainers, and also engaged in many other activities.
In 1893 Tavender invited a temperance "van" that had been travelled around the company to make a stop in Marlow. It arrived in Quoiting Square and those travelling with it made speeches and gave out leaflets. Unfortunately it's arrival had been well advertised and a group of men were ready to make a disturbance that made it difficult to hear the speakers.
Still, the advocates must have been happy when a Temperance Hotel opened up in the very centre of Marlow in 1895. It was on the corner of Institute Road and the High Street, in the premises just vacated by W B Langston's boot and shoe stores who would now just use their newer premises directly opposite. The hotel was fitted up with every modern apparatus for the preparation of tea, coffee and cocoa, and also had a grill room for those wanting something substantial whether guest or sober visitor. It closed a little over 2 years later, it's promoters and supporters "finding the venture a very unprofitable one". The same fate had befell the previous High Street Temperance hotel which closed in 1885. It was then under its second business owner in former West Wycombe chair maker Alex Hughes - he went bankrupt after 14 months of slow trade. However the corner premises seems to have had a later resurrection in the Temperance line, also offering accomodation. I've not researched this further as it is out of our time focus. But I can say it's use in this incarnation does not seem to be continuous as it is absent from fairly exhaustive hotel and temperance related listings for a number of years around the First World War.
The site of the Temperance Hotel, formerly original site of Langston's Boot and Shoe Warehouse. Later uses included a tea room and jewellers. Currently no 55, building bears date of 1878 on side. Image ©Colin Groves and used with permission.
Last hurrah for the beer drinkers?
In 1907 John Debenham landlord of the Carrier's Arms in Wycombe Road, asked for his licence to be removed in favour of the magistrates granting him a new one for a yet to be built premises in New Town Road to serve the newly developed New Town area. He said he sold only 2 barrels of beer a week at the tiny Carrier's Arms. The proposed new pub was to have a frontage of 33ft onto the road and a depth of over 90ft. There were 53 inhabited buildings in New Town plus 2 laundries and 2 brick kilns. George's request was ultimately refused after petitions for and against were read. George Swadling, working at Mr Wellicome's brick kiln, said he was strongly in favour of a public house there as "brick making is thirsty work." Full marks for trying Mr Swadling!
Changes in licencing laws did eventually reduce the number of pubs in Marlow. Some landlords found that even when they were happy with their income, the authorities could decide they were surplus to requirements and close them for good. Compensation was offered to both the brewery owner and the licencee in that case, but some of the amounts paid seem paltry when making up for a families loss of both home and livelihood.
A plan in 1908 to place more restrictions on pubs (no women would be allowed to work in them, Sunday opening times reduced) and to reduce this closure compensation further drew a furious response in town. Petitions had been placed in the pubs and hotels against almost all previous licencing changes and the formation of a Marlow Licenced Victuallers Defence Association was muted in 1881. This time a well attended protest meeting was held. The upshot was a group of 300 Marlow people travelled on a special train to Paddington. There they unfurled a banner bearing the word Marlow and marched to Hyde Park to take place in a large scale procession and protest. In the end the proposed legislation failed but Marlow still lost many of her pubs to forced closures over the next few decades.
*Between September 1873 and September 1874 36 people in the Great Marlow licencing district were convicted of drunkenness or crimes relating to that. 2 were women. All but two of the men were first time offenders. In addition 1 person was convicted of selling alcohol without a licence and 2 licensees were convicted of breaching their licence conditions in some way. This compares to 78 convictions related to drunkenness in Slough over the same period, 45 in High Wycombe, 35 in Chesham and 23 in Buckingham. Most people escaped an arrest if they did not insult the constable and followed his advice to go directly and quietly home.
**Mrs Tavender was also a temperance campaigner. She belonged to, and often chaired meetings of, the Women's Temperance Society which usually met in non conformist places of worship.
*** Thomas Ellis spent 6 hours in the stocks. Originally convicted of drunkenness and fined, he could not pay. A order was made to seize goods to the value of the fine plus costs, but he had nothing worth taking, hence the stocks. This was controversial in the town.
The blog list of Marlow pubs of the past can be found here (over 100 of them!)
Biographical posts on Revd Tavender and Revd Mountain can be found here and here.
More about the Langston's boot stores here
See the "Pub" tab on the drop down menu above for more information on specific premises or landlords.
For other posts about everyday life in old Marlow see the index here
Researched and written by Kathryn Day.
SOURCES
The Teetotaller, 1841. London United Temperance Association. (George Henderson, London)
Couling, Samuel, 1860. History of the Temperance Movement in Great Britain. (William Tweedie Publications)
Turner, Peter W. 1893. The Temperance Movement and it's Work - Vol 1-2. (Blackie and Sons Ltd, London)
Band of Hope Society, 3rd Edition 1895. What are Band of Hope Societies and how to form them (Band of Hope Library)
Band of Hope Records Vol 2-4, 1858, digitised by Google.
Accounts and Papers of the House of Commons Vol 49, 1876.
South Bucks Standard, 3 June 1885, 19 September & 19 December 1890, 29 March & 2 Nov 1895, copies from the British Library Archive accessed through the BNA.
Reading Mercury - 22 Nov 1830 & Sept 21 1839, 11 September 1858 as above
Bucks Herald 11 September 1858, as above.
South Bucks Free Press, 22 March & 3 August 1862 as above.
Wethered, T O, 1885, Teetotalism and the Beer Trade.
Bucks Herald 11 April 1885, as above.
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