The Oldest Total Abstainer.

Ashburton Guardian, Volume XXI, Issue 5501, 19 October 1901, Page 2

The Oldest Total Abstainer.

INTERESTING BEMINISCENCES.

(To the Editor of the Alliance Mews.)

£m, —My attention has just been called to a letter under the above heading in your last issue, signed by 'Thomas Hudson.' You will, I am sure, see that such a letter, under such a heading, is calculated to give your less aged readers an incorrect impression as to the date at which totai abstinence workers and total abstinence societies firet became common, aud had achieved some of the best work they have ever done in England,

Mr Hudson claims to have become a pledged total abstainer two months before Mr John Cowan* I suppose that is not a question of much importance to any of as, but when he goes on to write as if his pledge card, dated Juno 6th, 1836, was a cariosity that attracted much attention in a 'room set apart' »s a museum, his letter is calculated to mislead younger readers, who may not {snow that Temperance pledge cards were as common as blackberries sojne years before that date, I claim to have been a prsptising tola! abstainer five years, and a pledged total abstainer four years before Mr Hudson. My brother Samuel, residing in Market Lavington, Wilts, now in his eighty, seventh year, and stilj as active as a kitten, signed the old moderation pledge at a public meeting in Bristol, presided over by Samuel and Rachel Gapper, in 1831, and he and I have both been total abstainers from that date, and we both signed the total abstinence pledge as soon as we heard of its existence, which was brought about by the seven Lancashire men in 1832.

Before the date of Mr Hudson's pledge card, my brother, Samuel Saunders, was joint Secretary, with Mr Henry Cotterell, of the large Bath Total Abstinence Society, and I was Secretary of the Market Lavington Society, in which capacity I read the report of that society at a public meet ing in 1836. Even at that date the Society claimed in its report that it had been the means of reclaiming no jess than 37 habitual drunkards |n thst district.

Mr Hudson refers with much jasti. liable satisfaction to the honour of having attended the world's Temper* ance Convention of 1846. But here again I can el-ira what is perhaps the still greater honour of having been elected by tbe Bath Temperance Society, in association with the Rev Thomas Spencer, as the two delegates from Bath to the first great National Temperance Convention, which was held at Bridgwater in 1840. At both of the two public evening meetings, held at Bridgwater, Mr Spencer presided, and although I was the youngest cf the many delegates elected to; that (Convention, I had the honour of being called on to .peak at both Of those public meetings,

I am certainly the only speaker at those remarkably interesting i»petings who is now alive. I believe lam the only living delegate who was eleoted to that Convention, and I am not aware, of anyone now alive who waa present at those great public meetings.

An incalculable loss to the Temperance cause was the death, at an early age, of the Rev Thomas Spencer, and of the able, devoted philanthropist, WilHam, fann,er f on}y too gooji after that very interesting Conference,' at which they were the brightest stars. Before another year had come round I hid left England for New Zealand, where I formed the first Temperance society in 1841, and opened the first Rechabite Tent in 1842. I have done what I could in New /Zealand daring th*. Jast 60 years, and have boon amply rewardedy The blessing of r^any \?hQ were ready to nsrish has come . upon me, and the first President of the NeU son Province and the first and longest Premier of the Colony, has given me his official unsolicited thanks, when acknowledging th§ wonderful effect of the first established New ZealandTTe n" p°rance Society, in' haying placed the of Nelson by far the Joweat in tbe criminal, and the highest in the educational statistics.—Yours, etc, J

Alfred Paundbrs. Firgrove House, West End, Hampshire, August 31st,

(Fo the Editor of the Alliance Nem.)

im, —l have read with much interest the statements of veteran abstainers in your paper. I have myself been a staunch teetotaler more than 65 years. I signed the pledge the day I was 21, the 31st of May, 1888, having been abstaining two months or more, I am in good health in my 87th year, and can walk four or five miles easily. —I climbed Ben Nevis at 76, and Snowdon at 77—Yours, etc., John Mahshall Albright. Harledean, Charlbury, Angast 31«!s.