Document Of The Month – Booze And You Lose

Document Of The Month - Booze And You Lose

Thousands of are signing up this month to national campaigns designed to encourage us to reduce or stop our drinking and smoking habits.

The ‘Stay Sober for October’ (drinking) and ‘Stoptober’ (smoking) campaigns will no doubt raise awareness among the public about the dangers that these two habits pose to our health. As with most things in life though, it’s nothing new, and recently unearthed archives show how people as far back as 185 years ago could probably have used a ‘Sober October’ to help them cut down or quit.

Documents at Beverley’s East Riding Archives & Local Studies Service show that, in 1906, Hull’s local authority issued a public notice to warn that alcohol abuse was an ‘agent of physical deterioration’. A Parliamentary report decreed that abstinence from alcohol is ‘the source of muscular vigour and activity’, whilst abuse of drink led to increased admissions to lunatic asylums.

They weren’t joking. Records show that over 70 years earlier, one poor fellow, called John Hornby was admitted on 26 August 1829 to the Sculcoates Refuge for lunatics, when his wife reported him on account of his ‘temporary insanity, induced by the excessive use of spirituous liquour’.

As you might expect, the court archives for the East Riding also reveal evidence of drink-related offences, and even deaths caused by alcohol abuse. In the past, one of the more common offences seems to have been the opening of pubs during Church services.

One such cheeky landlord was David Matthews of Marvell Street, Southcoates, who in 1832 was fined 24 shillings when he ‘did suffer several individuals to remain tippling and smoking’ in his house during ‘the time of Divine Service’ on the afternoon of 21 January.

The fight against alcohol abuse and its terrible effects has been going on for centuries, and before we had a Sober October, many people joined Temperance Societies. Even individual professions and workers’ groups had their own anti-alcohol organisations, such as the ‘Showmen Travellers’ National Total Abstainers’ Union’ (TNTAU), organised at York in 1880. They issued membership cards on which they promised “by Divine assistance to abstain from all Intoxicating Drink as a beverage and to try and induce others to do the same.”

Of course, alcohol abuse isn’t just about damage to health and relationships; it’s the financial cost too. A local government notice from 1928 estimates Hull’s drinks bill for that year. Based on the national average of £6, 9 shillings and 10 pence per head, it was worked out that, as a city, its people would have wasted £1,931,920 on booze.

The notice goes on to say what that money could have bought the city, which included clothes for kids, £156,000 in grants to the elderly, £120,000 on family holidays, three public recreation halls and cafes, £10,000 to the Royal Infirmary, the purchase of Queen’s Dock, the erection of 400 houses, and nearly £250,000 towards the “New University College.”

Collections Officer for East Riding Archives and Local Studies Service, Sam Bartle, said: “There’s no doubt from the archives that agrees with current times; drinking is really bad for your health and your wallet.”

To visit the East Riding Archives & Local Studies call (01482) 392790, or call in at the Treasure House, Champney Road, Beverley.



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