3-078-281 - The Print Collector/Heritage Images

The Father Mathew Centenary: home of Father Mathew and headquarters of the Temperance Movement, Charlotte Street, Cork. 1890. 'This year will be celebrated the birth of Theobald Mathew, an Irish priest of the Roman Catholic Church at Cork, the famous "Apostle of Temperance," whose zealous philanthropic efforts, half a century ago, produced vast effects, at least for the time, promising to sanguine and enthusiastic observers the moral regeneration of vast numbers of the Irish people. In fact, the apparent change that came over Ireland between 1838 and 1843 is one of the most wonderful on record. It was literally a case of sudden conversion, and that of a whole nation. At that period, says a parish priest of the time, the vice of intoxication spread all over the land, and brought with it crime, wretchedness, and degradation. It was calculated that dram-drinking killed yearly two thousand persons in Ireland, many in delirium tremens or lunacy. The dens called "shebeen" houses entrapped the unwary victims of a thirst for whisky into all sorts of criminal projects'. From "Illustrated London News", 1890.