The social results of Father Mathew’s temperance reform in Ireland were
as follows:
In four years from 1837 to 1841 homicides decreased from 247 to
105; assaults on the police, from 91 to 58; incendiary fires,
from 459 to 390; robberies, from 725 to 257. The sentences
of death were decreased from 66 in 1839, to only 14 in 1846,
and transportation to penal settlements from 916 to 504.
Father Mathew said: “Every teetotaler has gained morally and
intellectually by the movement, but my immediate family have
been absolutely and totally ruined by this temperance mission.”
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