The temperance movement is a social movement promoting temperance or complete abstinence from consumption of alcoholic beverages. Participants in the movement typically criticize alcohol intoxication or promote teetotalism, and its leaders emphasize alcohol's negative effects on people's health, personalities and family lives. Typically the movement promotes alcohol education and it also demands the passage of new laws against the sale of alcohol, either regulations on the availability of alcohol, or the complete prohibition of it. During the 19th and early 20th centuries, the temperance movement became prominent in many countries, particularly in English-speaking, Scandinavian, and majority Protestant ones, and it eventually led to national prohibitions in Canada, Norway, Finland, and the United States, as well as provincial prohibition in India. A number of temperance organizations exist that promote temperance and teetotalism as a virtue.
The American Temperance Society (ATS), also known as the American Society for the Promotion of Temperance, was a society established on February 13, 1826, in Boston, Massachusetts. Within five years there were 2,220 local chapters in the U.S. with 170,000 members who had taken a pledge to abstain from drinking distilled beverages, though not including wine and beer; it permitted the medicinal use of alcohol as well. Within ten years, there were over 8,000 local groups and more than 1,250,000 members who had taken the pledge.
The White Ribbon Association (WRA), previously known as the British Women's Temperance Association (BWTA), is an organization that seeks to educate the public about alcohol, tobacco, and other drugs, as well as gambling.
Lepha Eliza Bailey was an American author, lecturer, and social reformer.
Mary Shuttleworth Boden was an activist in the British temperance movement. She was affiliated with the Woman's Christian Temperance Union, British Women's Temperance Association, British Temperance League, Girls' Friendly Society, Women's Union Church of England Temperance Society, Bands of Hope, and the Woman's Auxiliary Union. She donated land to Derby on Bold Lane in memory of her husband which was equipped with sixteen swings as an area for girls, boys and small children to play.
Eva Kinney Griffith Miller was an American journalist, temperance activist, novelist, newspaper editor, and journal publisher.
Esther T. Housh was a 19th-century American social reformer, author, and newspaper editor. While serving as national press superintendent of the Woman's Christian Temperance Union (WCTU), she instituted the National Bulletin. She was the editor of The Woman's Magazine, as well as the author of many temperance leaflets, and poems. Housh died in 1898.
Mary Osburn Adkinson was an American social reformer active in the temperance movement. She took a leading part in the organization of the Woman's Foreign Missionary Society of the Methodist Episcopal Church in Madison, Wisconsin, serving four times as its elected president. In Louisiana, she held the position of superintendent of the Woman's Christian Temperance Union (WCTU) and matron in the New Orleans University.
Eva Maria Brown was an American social reformer in the temperance movement. She was the only woman in New England in her day who was registered as legislative agent and counsel, entitling her to conduct hearings before the various Massachusetts government committees and of cross-examining witnesses. Brown was the author of Laws of Massachusetts relating to intoxicating liquors (1905), which was accepted as a standard in legal cases and passed through eleven editions.
Women's Total Abstinence Union (WTAU) was a British women's organization active during the temperance movement in the United Kingdom. Its headquarters were at 4 Ludgate Hill, London. In addition to a president, there were 41 vice-presidents. The general committee met four times a years, and consisted of members of the Executive Committee and 40 others elected annually from the council meetings of delegates. The Executive Committee consisted of the officers and 23 elected members. There was a sub-committee for junior work.
Lucy Ann Brooks was an English temperance advocate. She was an officer of the British Women's Temperance Association before becoming a co-founder and president of the Women's Total Abstinence Union (WTAU).
Adda Burch was an American missionary-teacher in Latin America. She was also a Woman's Christian Temperance Union (WCTU) leader, serving in various positions in the U.S. as well as president of the World WCTU organization based in Chile.
Cornelia Maria Dow was an American philanthropist and temperance worker, interested in charitable, philanthropic, and reformatory work in her home state of Maine. She was affiliated with the Woman's Christian Temperance Union (W.C.T.U.), as well as the Portland, Maine Home for Aged Women, and the Temporary Home for Women and Children.
Marion Howard Dunham was an American teacher, temperance activist, and suffragist. She entered upon the temperance field in 1877 with the inauguration of the red ribbon movement in her state of Iowa, but believing in more permanent effort, she was the prime agitator in the organization of the local Woman's Christian Temperance Union (W.C.T.U.). In 1883, she was elected state superintendent of the Department of Scientific Temperance and held the office for four years lecturing to institutes and general audiences on that subject most of the time. She procured the "Prohibitory law of the state of Iowa", in February 1886. When the Iowa State Temperance Union began to display its opposition to the national W.C.T.U., she came to be considered a leader on the side of the minority who adhered to the national and when the majority in the state union seceded from the national union October 16, 1890, she was elected president of those remaining auxiliary to that body. She spent a large part of her time in the field lecturing on temperance.
Jennie Florella Holmes was an American temperance activist and suffragist.
Non-Partisan National Women's Christian Temperance Union was an American temperance association organized at Cleveland, Ohio, January 22, 1890, as a protest against the attitude of the Woman's Christian Temperance Union (W.C.T.U.) toward political parties.
Henriette Willemina Crommelin was a Dutch labor leader and temperance reformer. She was also a suffragist and a member of a suffrage society.
Lella A. Dillard was an American temperance leader. She served as president of the Georgia State Woman's Christian Temperance Union (W.C.T.U.), and afterwards as National Director of the W.C.T.U.'s Peace Department.
Sarah Lindsay Evans was a 19th-century English-born South Australian pioneer and an activist in the country's temperance movement.
Peter Turner Winskill was an English temperance reformer and historian.
