Catalogue description BRITISH WOMEN'S TEMPERANCE ASSOCIATION, STOKE NEWINGTON BRANCH

Records consist largely of annual reports with a list of subscribers and one minute and one committee book

British Women's Temperance Association, Stoke Newington Branch

Transferred from Stoke Newington Reference Library in May 1983.

Condition of deposit: presumed deposit.

Listed: June 1983.

The Branch began as the Stoke Newington Women's Total Abstinence Association and Branch of the British Women's Temperance Association and would appear to have been founded in 1878, though the earliest annual report dates from 1881. Members met in each others drawing rooms, additionally holding evening drawing room meetings for young shop and office workers. In 1881 numbers attending the former varied from 40 to 75 and numbers attending the latter from 12 to 50. Meetings were also held in Sanford Lane School Room for 'the rough lads of the neighbourhood'. The Branch also ran its own coffee cart and a coffee shop: mention of the latter ceases after 1881, but a second coffee cart was brought into action by the Manor House at Finsbury Park. A perpetual feature of the early reports is the regular lamentation that so few have been brought to take the pledge (to abstain from alcohol). By the 1890s the Branch was contemplating active opposition to license renewal, having its own journal, and holding regular public meetings.

The period covered by the minutes represents that covered by the secretaryship of Miss J.A.Taylor. The extant records do not extend beyond 1918.

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