The Manchester and Glasgow Road, Volume 2 (of 2): This Way to Gretna GreenHarper, Charles G. (Charles George)
History
The Manchester and Glasgow Road, Volume 2 (of 2): This Way to Gretna Green
Harper, Charles G. (Charles George)
England -- Description and travel; Scotland -- Description and travel
It bore no reference to tea, as often supposed, nor was it the result
of a stuttering attempt at the word “total”; for Turner was not a
stutterer, but was well known as a coiner of words, at any emergency;
to say nothing of being a perpetrator of what in an Irishman would be
called “bulls”: of which the following is a supreme example. Speaking
in furtherance of the temperance movement, he said, “We will go with
our axes on our shoulders and plough up the great deep, and then the
ship of temperance shall sail gallantly over the land.”
A stone in St. Peter’s churchyard, to his memory and to that of
fellow-workers in their cause, is inscribed
Beneath
this stone are
deposited the Remains of
RICHARD TURNER,
_author of the word_ TEETOTAL,
as applied to abstinence from
all intoxicating LIQUORS,
who departed this life on the
27th day of October, 1846,
Aged 56 years.
Here—where _did_ you get that hat?—you see the fearsome spectacle
(according to modern ideas) that Dicky Turner presented.
It will be observed that in this claim to the origin of “teetotal”
there is a qualification not generally admitted. This reservation is
generally overlooked, but is important. He was indeed only author of
the word in its application to total abstinence, for it was at that
time well known in Ireland, and is to be found in the writings of De
Quincey and Maginn. But every tale is good until the next is told,
and in another version “teetotal” is said to have originated in a
general signing of a pledge of moderate drinking: those who signed and
were prepared for total abstention adding a T, for “total,” to their
signatures.
To conclude with Preston, it was here that the inspiration was given to
Focardi, then an unknown and needy sculptor, for his group, long since
famous, “You Dirty Boy!”
Lodging in a humble purlieu of the town, he witnessed the scene of the
old woman scrubbing the writhing urchin and rubbing the soap into him,
and realising the humorous possibilities of such a group, secured the
two as models and at once set to work. He could not have foreseen the
price of £500 at which the statuary was purchased, nor the world-wide
advertising celebrity it was given, in pictures and in replica
terra-cotta statuettes, by the proprietors of Pears’ soap.
XIV
[Sidenote: _GARSTANG_]
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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