During the late 1800s and early 1900s, the terrible living and working conditions experienced by East London’s poor led many to find relief in alcohol. Supporters of the temperance movement aimed to limit drinking amongst the working-classes of Hackney, Shoreditch and Stoke Newington.
Hackney and the ‘demon drink’
The oldest places of public entertainment in Hackney were inns and taverns. These public houses were the focal point of the community, providing a venue for recreational activities, spectator sports, theatre, music and socialising.
Overcrowded slums (due to an explosion in local population in the 1800s), in addition to hard and often unsafe working conditions, led many people to seek relief in alcohol.
Wages spent in pubs and ‘gin palaces’ could lead to greater hardships. The popular nursery rhyme ‘Pop Goes the Weasel’ (meaning to sell your coat to pay for drinks) refers to the local pub The Eagle Tavern on Shepherdess Walk, Hoxton:
Up and down the City Road,
In and out the Eagle.
That’s the way the money goes,
Pop! goes the weasel.
Drunkenness amongst the poor was increasingly recognised as a social problem. Hackney’s particularly rowdy and unruly reputation attracted Christian missionaries promoting total abstinence from consuming alcoholic drinks.
This included the Salvation Army, who in 1882 purchased the Eagle Tavern intending to turn it into a temperance hotel. These plans were short-lived however, as they went on to discover that the lease forced them to keep the drinking licence.
Hackney and East Middlesex Band of Hope Union
The Hackney and East Middlesex branch of the Band of Hope Union was founded in 1875. The movement worked to teach children the importance of sobriety and took a hard line against alcohol consumption of any amount. Members were required to sign a pledge against the ‘evils of drink’ upon joining.
The Union was based at The Morley Hall, Mare Street, where gatherings were held with performances and speeches on the benefits of abstinence. To help people stay sober, they arranged programmes of social events and evening entertainment on Saturdays in winter, a popular drinking night.
Providing alternatives
One approach of the temperance activists to reduce alcohol consumption was to reduce the dependence on pubs for socialising by offering alternatives. The movement to open ‘reformed’ coffee houses to appeal to working class men serving non-alcoholic beverages and food began in Scotland in the 1850s and spread throughout the country. In 1880, the London and Provincial Coffee Palace Company opened the Hoxton Coffee Palace in High Street, Hoxton, next to the headquarters of the temperance organisation the Blue Ribbon Army.
‘Coffee Taverns’ mimicked the names and architecture of the pubs. When the Coffee Tavern Company opened a venue at 119 Stoke Newington High Street in 1878, they named it Chequers and fitted the tables with marble tabletops.
Similarly, purpose built billiards halls also mimicked the look and feel of pubs. Billiards, the name given to a number of table and cue sports such as pool, became a popular pastime during the latter 1800s. However, as this was mostly played in pubs, temperance supporters opened venues such as the Hackney Temperance Billiard Hall, where this could be played away from the temptation of alcohol.
Hoxton Hall & Olive Malvery
In 1878, Blue Ribbon Temperance Society (BRTS) took over the Hoxton Hall, formerly ‘a low class music-hall which lost its licence through misconduct’. Run by BRTS secretary Sarah Rae, the venue hosted sober social events on Saturday nights. It also was the home of the ‘Girls Guild for Good Life’, a popular club aiming to encourage local working-class girls to stay away from drinking and other ‘undesirable’ activities.
Olive Christian Malvery (1871-1914) was a pioneering undercover journalist and social reformer of mixed Asian and European heritage, best known for her investigations into the working conditions of poor women and children in London. She was closely involved with the ‘Girls Guild’, visiting the club and fundraising through concerts, and even celebrating her wedding with a second reception at Hoxton Hall for 500 local children.
Malvery was a passionate advocate for temperance, perhaps influenced by her own father dying from ‘excessive drinking.’ She became a celebrity within the movement, touring as a speaker for temperance organisations around Britain, Ireland, Switzerland and the United States. Born in Lahore, she used her foreignness to western audiences to promote interest in temperance, in particular by performing in Asian cultural dress.
Some content for this blog featured in the exhibition ‘Pubs, Clubs & Carnivals: An exhibition about pleasure and leisure in Hackney’ at Hackney Museum 21 June – 3 September 2016.