The leader of the great temperance movement in England--Joseph
Livesey, of Preston--had a very bad start in life.
He was quite poor; he lost both father and mother from consumption
when he reached his eighth year; he was frail and delicate; his
brothers and sisters all died young; so that he seemed ill fitted to
make any headway in the race of life.
His grandfather, who adopted him, failed in business; and Joseph
Livesey commenced his career by doing the work of a domestic servant,
as well as toiling at the loom.
"As we were too poor to keep a servant," he says, "and having no
female help except to wash the clothes and occasionally clean up, I
may be said to have been the housekeeper."
But, whilst he was weaving in the cellar where his grandfather and
uncle also worked, he was at the same time gaining knowledge day by
day.
When his pocket money of a penny a week was increased to threepence,
he felt himself on the high road to wealth, and ere long he was the
possessor of a Bible and a grammar, which he set himself to study
whenever he could get a spare moment.
One can scarcely realise the difficulties that lay in the way of a
studious boy in those days. A newspaper cost sevenpence; there were no
national schools or Sunday schools, no penny publications, no penny
postage, no railways, no gas, and no free libraries, and no free
education! Yet so resolute was he in his desire for education that,
though he was not even allowed a candle after the elders went to bed,
he would sit up till late at night reading by the glow of the embers.
It is sad enough to see the number of families that are ruined by
drink at the present time; but in Livesey's early days people suffered
even more from drunkenness than they do now.
The weavers used to keep Monday as a day of leisure; and the
public-houses were crowded from morning till night with men and women,
who drank away their earnings to the last penny.
In the church to which Joseph Livesey belonged the ringers and singers
were hard drinkers, the gravedigger was a drunkard, and the parish
clerk was often intoxicated!
Living amidst so much sin and misery, this frail lad determined to
strive his hardest to assist others. He found Sunday a day of rest and
rejoicing to him "a feast of good things," and became a Sunday-school
teacher and preacher.
So far as worldly matters went he was not at all successful in early
life. Weaving was so badly paid that he tried several other trades,
but only to meet with failure.
At the age of twenty he received a legacy of a few pounds; and soon
after, having saved a little money, married a good and true woman, who
helped him much throughout life.
"Our cottage," says Mr. Livesey in his autobiography, "though small,
was like a palace; for none could excel my Jenny for cleanliness and
order. I renovated the garden, and made it a pleasant place to walk
in. On the loom I was most industrious, working from early in the
morning often till ten, and sometimes later, at night; and she
not only did all the house work, but wound the bobbins for three
weavers--myself, uncle, and grandfather; and yet, with all this
apparently hard lot, these were happy days."
But it was not all sunshine at first. He fell ill, and the doctor
ordered him better living than he had been getting; and where the
money was to come from to get more nourishing food Livesey knew not.
He had been ordered to take some cheese in the forenoon, so he bought
a piece at about eightpence a pound; and as he munched it came this
thought: cheese wholesale cost but fivepence per pound; would it not
be possible to buy a piece wholesale and sell it to his friends, so
that he too might have the benefit of getting it at this low price?
No sooner thought of than done. But, when he had finished weighing out
the cheese to his friends, he found he had made, quite unexpectedly,
a profit of eighteenpence, and that it was more than he could have
gained by a great deal of weaving.
So he changed his trade: weaving gave place to cheese mongering; and,
after some very hard work and persevering efforts, he placed himself
beyond the reach of poverty.
Now came the important moment of his life. One day in settling a
bargain he drank a glass of whisky. It was, he said, the best he ever
drank, because it was the last. For the sensation it produced made him
resolve he would never again taste a drop of intoxicating liquor.
Finding himself the better for this course, he soon tried to get
others to join him. His first convert to _total abstinence_ was a man
named John King; Livesey and he signed together; and on 1st September,
1832, at a meeting held at Preston, seven men--"the Seven Men of
Preston," as they are called--signed the pledge, of which the
following is a facsimile:--
[Handwritten: We agree to _abstain_ from all Liquors of an
_Intoxicating Quality_, whether ale porter Wine, or Ardent
Spirits, except as Medicine.
John Gratix
Edw'd Dickinson
Jno: Broadbelt
Jno: Smith
Joseph Livesey
David Anderson
Jno: Ring.]
It was a terrible struggle for these men at first. They were laughed
at, they were abused, they were persecuted; but the more people
tried to put them down the harder they fought; and soon hundreds and
thousands had joined their ranks, and the movement spread throughout
the kingdom.
"There is more food in a pennyworth of bread," said Livesey, "than in
a gallon of ale"; and he proved it. He lectured far and wide; and,
though he met with much opposition, facts in the end prevailed.
He was not only a temperance advocate, but an earnest worker for the
good of others in various directions. He visited the sick, and helped
them. When the railways came he started cheap trips to the seaside for
working people, and was never happier than when he was helping the
poor and unfortunate.
Joseph Livesey is a striking example of the benefits to health derived
from teetotalism, as he lived to the good old age of ninety.