Benjamin Lucraft - Temperance

Temperance

Lucraft's obituary in the Hackney Gazette records him as a total abstainer from alcohol after 1846. Abstinence, Teetotalism or Temperance, was a religious and political movement in the 19th century as working men and women organised into support groups and movements to promote abstinence and to support each other after they had "taken the pledge".

George Howell, the political activist and commentator, remembered that he worked closely with Lucraft in temperance work in 1856 and 1857. The members of local temperance groups formed themselves into Circuits, along the lines of Methodism, and speakers travelled from one group to another speaking and promoting the issues.

Soon after becoming a teetotaler in 1846 Lucraft also signed the declaration of the London Temperance Charter Association. This declared that the signatories would not drink any intoxicating drinks until the People's Charter, the foundation tenets of Chartism, became the law of the land.

From the late 1840s to the late 1850s the Temperance Movement seems to have been one of Lucraft's main political activities and he is reported in 1858 as being the treasurer of the London Temperance Charter Association. He is also noted at a meeting he arranged of this group on Sunday 10 January in the Star Coffee House at 33 Polden Lane, Barbican, and he is noted as also arranging the meeting for the next week.

After his election to the London School Board in 1870 Lucraft was one of the working men selected to meet Lord Kimberley to express their support for the government's proposed legislation on the sale of alcohol which was then being debated.

The next flurry of reported temperance actions comes when Lucraft is standing for election to parliament for the constituency of Tower Hamlets in 1879. He and his agents, including Mr Dyer, are drumming up support for Lucraft, and the temperance movement is one network they lobby hard to gain votes. Much of the evidence for this is recorded in the National League Journal, which is the publication of Josephine Butler's movement for the repeal of the Contagious Diseases Acts.

In April 1879 he is reported as being the President of a "flourishing" branch of the Band of Hope Union in London. In one letter to the electors he says:

..with respect to the important question of temperance, and the licensing laws, I would support the placing of a legal power of restraining the issue or renewal of licences, in the hands of the inhabitants themselves, by some efficient measure of local option.

One report of his election platform in 1879 says that he stands "as a temperance, repeal, and working men's candidate." In March 1880 the Friends Association Report (the Quakers) reports that Lucraft was well supported among non-conformist and temperance voters.

Then towards the end of his life he was still active in the movement. In 1896 he was at a well-reported and famous meeting of Octogenarian Teetotallers in St Martin's Hall, London. There were over forty 80 year olds present and around 200 had actually been traced with 152 providing questionnaire answers about their lifestyle.

A few months later in November 1896 Lucraft celebrated 50 years as a total abstainer, at a party where he was surrounded by his children, grandchildren and great grand children. This significant achievement in his life was reported in the Hackney Gazette.

At his funeral just under a year later in 1897 the minister reported that as well as from every other walk of his life, there were representatives of the temperance movement at his grave-side.