The Washingtonians and Nineteenth-Century Alcoholism Treatment — Scott J. — Tuesday Night History Workshop — July 24, 2020

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Speaker Scott J.

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Date Recorded July 24, 2020

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Topic Washingtonians History

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Scott Tuesday Night History Workshop • July 24, 2020

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Scott Listen to Meeting Recording

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Scott ABOUT THIS MEETING

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Scott Scott J. examines the Washingtonians and nineteenth-century approaches to alcoholism treatment, including the wider historical setting that preceded AA.

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Scott Full Transcript

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Moderator All right. Welcome to the Recovery Speakers History Meeting. My name is Tim, and I'm an alcoholic. And this week's meeting we're gonna have Scott J. on, um, sharing about the Washingtonians and other, um, alcoholism related, um, treatment in the 1800s. Um, this meeting's being recorded. Only the audio will be shared on recoveryspeakers.com. So if anyone misses the meeting, you can go on the website and share the link from there. And the last 15 minutes of this meeting or so, depending on how long Scott's presentation takes, there will be Q&A. Um, for any questions, I'm gonna keep everyone muted, but you can raise your hand in Zoom and I'll call in people on, on people in order and, uh, ask you to unmute and ask your question. Um, we're currently sharing, um, daily speaker talks of AA International Conventions from Recovery Speakers. And if you are not receiving it and would like to, you can email me at tim@recoveryspeakers.com and I will add you to our list and get you, uh, daily speaker talks. Um, I'm going to close the chat in a minute here.

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Moderator Um, I will open it up at the end of the meeting. And right now I'm gonna hand it over to Mike if he has anything else to add. All right. Great. Thanks, Tim. Can you hear me? Am I unmuted? Yep. All right. Cool. So, uh, couple of things. One, I want to share with you, uh, a little bit about, uh, Recovery Speakers. The initiative that we're doing is to digitize 3,100 original reel-to-reels that started back in the late '40s and g- went all the way through the '80s. We're about 20% done with that project. I am meeting... And we've been on this for 12 years, so we have a long way to go, but it's been, uh, just a, a, a love to do this. We make these available at Recovery Speakers, uh, on streaming audio for free, and we're now doing, as Tim mentioned, a daily speaker feature. Uh, this month we're doing the internationals because of the international, uh, convention that we didn't get to, uh, go to this year. And then, uh, after that we will feature popular speakers throughout the deca- throughout the decade, starting the first day of August.

0:39

Scott I wanted to just give you a, kind of a, a quick overview of our agenda for the coming weeks so you know what to look forward to. Uh, tonight we're privileged to have Scott with us talking on the Washingtonians. Next week we have Nancy K. From California, and her topic is gonna be Women of the Big Book, and you don't wanna miss that. The following week, August 7th, is Jonathan S. from Myrtle Beach, and Jonathan's going to talk to us about the Emmanuel Movement connection to AA. The following week I'm gonna do a talk on AA: A Story Handed Down. It's gonna be a lot of Bill Wilson. The following week on 8/21, we've got Mitchell K. sharing with us the Clarence Snyder experience. On 8/28, we've got Gary N. from Georgia talking about King Charles: The Charles Townes Story. Then on 9/4, I'm gonna do a presentation on Bill W. and the Vitamin B3 therapy. You're gonna wanna hear that. There's going to be some absolutely amazing clips I share that night. Then on 9/11 and 9/18, we're gonna have a two-part series.

0:56

Moderator Ken Roberts, who had purchased the original manuscript a few years ago and had it published by Hazelden, he and I are gonna do a two-week series on the original manuscript and the book that started it all. So I hope you'll be able to put that in your calendar and join us for as many of those weeks as, as you can. So tonight, without any further comments from me, and, and I want to let you know I'm gonna sign off early tonight. I'm speaking at a meeting, uh, immediately after this, so I've got to jump on that Zoom meeting. Tim is gonna, or has shared the, uh, the login for that meeting if anyone wants to join. It's just gonna be me telling my story. So I'm done for tonight. Tim, I'm gonna kick it ba- or I'll just kick it to Scott and say, uh, let's do it, Scott. Thank you so much for, for doing this, Scott. Thank you, Mike. Thank you very much. Uh, I don't know, Tim, you gotta put the things up and we'll kind of get started here. Uh, hi, everybody. My name's Scott, and I'm an alcoholic.

1:15

Moderator Um, my dry date is March 1st, 1976, and my home group is the Aurora Big Book Group, and that's Aurora, Minnesota. I'm sure everybody recognizes the accent from Prairie Home Companion. That's what we were told the other day when we were in a meeting in England. They said, "Oh, I recognize that. That's from Prairie Home Companion." And wh- while we were trying to figure out what they were talking about in their E- English lang- So, uh, yeah. So I've got a home group, and I've got a sponsor, and, uh, I sponsor guys. And I want to thank, uh, Mike and Tim for this opportunity. I want to thank them for all the work that they do putting up this, uh, this meeting. And all the other work that they do with the recovery speakers and with recovery collectibles that they... Fantastic job. And it wasn't easy to get this, this, uh, s- slideshow over to these guys. Uh, it wouldn't have been possible if it weren't for one of the guys I sponsor, uh, who, who was able to do it. And, and he claims he fixed it up.

1:33

Moderator We ha- we'll have to take a look at it. And, uh, he got it over to Tim so that we have this tonight. Uh, and I want to thank Paul. I... He said he was coming, but I don't know if he's here or not. Uh, Paul, if you're here, happy birthday. He celebrated 40 years on July 5th. So, uh, I guess I should get started. Uh, I am not a historian by any means. I have, uh, just always been a student of AA history. Uh, I guess I was placed in Alcoholics Anonymous with the right people at the right time and was given a, a, a, just a wonderful gift, a, a, a love for the fellowship, uh, and the history of the fellowship of Alcoholics Anonymous. Uh, I came into Alcoholics Anonymous and it w- in the group I joined way up here in the woods, there was a couple of guys that had a lot of sobriety. One had sobered up in August of 1947 and the other one had sobered up in Chicago in 1956. And these are the guys that helped me get sober.

1:50

Moderator And the guy from 1956 from Chicago is the man who helped me get involved with the Big Book initially and to, uh, take the steps f- from the book Alcoholics Anonymous. I also, uh, was lucky. The group that I joined, uh, became a member of, was hosting a roundup, uh, a couple months after I got sober. And they coerced me into going to this roundup thing. I didn't know what it was. I was on the verge of having another drink at the time that they did this to me. And I went and I listened to these speakers. And as it turned out, there was three old AA members speaking at the roundup. Uh, one was Don N. From out in Moorhead, Minnesota. Uh, one was Paul M. From Chicago, Illinois. And the other one was Wesley P. From, uh, Pompano Beach, Florida. And I had never heard anything like I heard come from these guys. Uh, it was unbelievable. They all sobered up I think between '47 and 1948. And it was life-changing for me. And then Wesley sent, uh, members of our group the Wesley Parish workbooks.

2:06

Scott I don't know if anybody's been around long enough that, that they've, they've got a copy of the Wesley Parish workbooks. But Wesley basically, uh, copyright violation all over- The AWS and reprinted a lot of stuff and put questions in it and, and it was wonderful. And the book that they sent us first was AA Comes of Age. Now, it didn't say AA Co- AA Comes of Age on it. It was Unity. So that I'm studying this book called Unity, and I'm about three months sober, and I'm talking with these older members and, and I'm learning about Alcoholics Anonymous. So that was one of the biggest gifts, I think, that I had in early recovery. Uh, also, uh, I got involved in AA Service. Uh, as, when I became DCM, I wrote GSO and I received a whole bunch of group histories, uh, which they don't do anymore. They don't send those to anybody anymore. So I have a lot of the original forms where groups file to become groups at the GSO.

2:23

Scott And then I got a s- my sponsor, sobered up 1965, and he was directly connected with the, uh, through sponsorship with a man by the name of Eddie, Eddie Friedman, who sobered up in, in Hibbing, Minnesota in June of 1941 and was, uh, the first man in, in basically in Northeastern Minnesota outside of Duluth to get sober. And then I got involved with archives at the area level, and I was involved with archives at the area level from 1984 to 1993. And I never saw such a wonderful thing as when I was involved with the archives. Yeah, I never saw so many giving people in my entire life, that people would give us first edition big books so that we could display them. I displayed the archives display all over Northern Minnesota, occasionally in No- North Dakota and down in Southern Minnesota and, and it was a great experience. Why study history? You know, Mike says it every week, I think. If we, if we don't know where we come from, we're bound to repeat them same mistakes again.

2:38

Scott Um, and hopefully tonight won't be just a bunch of names and numbers and dates and stuff like that. I don't like... I, I like the presentation to be more of a journey. So let's all go on a journey to the past, a couple hundred years ago, and think about how things were for a drunk back then, and what opportunities were there for somebody. So we're gonna start with this gentleman here, this guy named by the b- name of Benjamin Rush, Dr. Benjamin Rush. He was born in 1746. He died in 1813. He was a famous colonial American. He was a physician. He was a friend of Washington, Franklin and Jefferson and many of the others. He was a signer of the Declaration of Independence. He was a member of the Continental Congress. He was physician general of the Colonial Army. He supplied the Lewis and Clark Expedition with medical equipment. Uh, he was a writer and a teacher, and he's often referred to as the father of American psychiatry. And he was, supposedly he's the first American to describe alcoholism as a disease of the body and mind.

2:56

Scott I don't know if Benjamin Rush ever made it out to the, out to the battlefield, but that's the cover of a book anyway. Uh, in, uh, 1777, he published a statement to soldiers on alcohol. You can imagine the Revolutionary War, all the undisciplined volunteers and all that grog and all of that and, uh, you know. So they needed to do something 'cause you can't have a drunk army. Uh, boy, it's too bad these, these got out of focus on us a little bit. Uh, I wish you could read all of those. We'll get to it. In, uh, 1782, the article, uh, he wrote an article against spiritous liquors. In 1784, he wrote, uh, he published a 36-page pamphlet called An Inquiry into the Effects of Spiritous Liquors upon the Human Body and Their Influence upon the Happiness of Society. And that would be the one that's pictured up there. Um, 1805, he published an article called The Effects of Ardent Spirits upon Man. And later, he published, uh, a lecture on Sermons on, uh, to Gentlemen upon the Temperance Disease of the Mind. This gentleman definitely believed that there was something different about us alcoholics.

3:13

Moderator Uh, his solution was kind of thin. He didn't really offer too much of a solution. It was more of a warning, but they knew about alcoholism. If you could see the chart, you would, you would see it. I'll, I'll try to go through the chart when we get to that point. He, at that point in time, temperance was more defined as moderation rather than abs- abstaining. Uh, it was a little different than it was going to be in, in about 20 years after this. He, they, he believed it was okay to drink wine and malt liquor and such things. Uh, his hangover treatment, and you find this throughout AA history, all of these things are not AA history, but the things that preceded AA, that they like to do a lot of the same things. They like to induce perspiration, vomiting and, uh, and, and this day and, you know, in that day and age, bleeding was a biggie. They, for some reason, they thought they could bleed your blood out and cure you of whatever ailed you. Um, and they also usually liked to clean your bowels out too.

3:30

Scott Abstinence through religion wa- was what he believed that had to be done, uh, for alcoholics. Uh, and the moral and, and, and physical thermometer, th- this thing became kind of the standard for temperance. Uh, it shows up in, uh, well, we have a few scans of it later on, different graphs, different ways this... But they show basically the same thing. Uh, and it wa- A lot of this is also written in a lot of the other books about temperance. Uh, he, i- in the, uh, if, if we had the top part of this, it would list the benefits of temperance, which would be if you only drank water, if you only drank milk and water, and he included small beer Then you, you would have the benefits of temperance. It would be health and wealth and serenity of the mind and such. And then he goes down that, that it's moderate drinking would be wine and, uh, port and strong beer. Those are all okay. And then he gets down into the intemperance, and they... And something called punch and toddies and grog and flip, and a whole lot of things I've never heard of.

3:47

Scott But then you get into g- gin and a few other drinks that we do know about today, and rum. Then he lists the intemperance. And, and the three columns, if we go back to the other slide, uh, he lists, uh, the three columns. He lists, A, vices. And under the vices, he lists idleness, fighting, lying, swearing, hatred, murder, suicide. It was a tough crowd, I guess. Uh, B, diseases. It was gout, jaundice, dropsy, palsy, melancholy, madness, and death. Then he lists C, punishments. Debt, jail, black eyes, hunger, almshouse, whipping post, workhouse, and gallows. Thank God they got rid of a couple of those things along the way, huh? And I never had to go to the gallows or to the whipping post. I've been to the workhouse, though. Don't wanna go back. Uh, it's, uh, alcohol's immediate effects, uh, unusual garrulity, unusual silence, quarrelsome, uncommon good humor and simpering. This is what happens when we drink. Swearing, disclosure of secrets, uh, usually other people's, uh, rude, immodest, clipping of words, fighting, extravagance. I don't know if I was ever extravagance, but I fit into the rest of those pretty well. Uh, alcohol's chronic effects.

4:05

Scott Loss of appetite, liver problems, jaundice, hoarseness, diabetes, redness and eruption, eruptions of the skin, fetid breath, whatever that might be, but it doesn't sound pleasant, belching, epilepsy, gout, and madness. Uh, these guys had a pretty good handle on what was wrong with us, I think. But, uh, as I said, the solution is really, really, uh, not anything much that's being offered. There's another book, uh, another person wrote a book, and, uh, I think it's one more- slide. Uh, there we go. Thomas Trotter, and he's out of England. He's a doctor and, uh, the book was published, I think, in 1804. And the book is called the Essay, Medical, Philosophical and Chemical on Drunkenness and Its Effectiveness on the Human Body. They kept their titles nice and short back those days. Uh, he believed that the body and the mind suffered equally. He used words like inebriate and drunkard. I think there's only one slide on him. Yeah.

4:20

Scott The definition he, his definition of drunkenness i- in this book, i- in medical language, he says, "I consider drunkenness, strictly speaking, a disease produced by a remote cause and giving birth to actions and movements in the living body that disorder the functions of health. Two, drunkenness is delirium occasioned by fermented liquors as a loss of sense and motion after the immoderate use of vineous liquors. Three, drunkenness causes quarrels, resentments, revenge, redress, feuds, animosity, bloodshed, and death." Kind of sounds like a four step almost, you know? Uh, th- number four, loss of, loss of power of the sphincter muscles, nausea, and vomiting. Yeah, all right. Everybody... I see smiles, so I thi- I see people identifying with this loss of sphincter muscles and, uh, nausea and vomiting. Uh, he said also that alcohol was originally spelt with a K rather than a C, and he said it was from the Arabic meaning pure spirit.

4:34

Moderator Uh, and he talked about the, the correcting of habit as far as he was concerned as a medical doctor was to sober up the man and make him witness the actions of other drunks and convince him that it is a disease of the mind, and develop a confidence in his doctor and to stress abstinence, diet, vomiting. And here we go with the bleeding again, and here we go with the emptying of the bowels again. And his book is, uh, was very much the medical book for its time, and it was a good book. I, I really enjoyed it. The next slide is a fellow by the name of Dr. Billy Clark, born in 1778 in Vermont, and he moved to, uh, Glen Falls, New York area and eventually to the Moreau, New York area. Uh, he formed, uh, the Moreau Temperance Society or the Union Temperance Society of Moreau and Northumberland. And he was influenced by Benjamin Rush's pamphlet, uh, written in 18- uh, 1808.

4:48

Scott The Moreau pledge was, "I hereby solemnly promise, God being my helper, to abstain from all distilled, fermented, and malt liquors as a beverage, including wine, beer, and cider, and to employ all proper means to discourage the use of and traffic in the same." And a member could drink at this, this society, but he was fined 25 cents if he was drinking. And if he was found drunk, the fine was 50 cents. Uh, these were paid to the society. Uh, the, and the last thing is, uh, is that I noted out of the book was that the temperance r- rules were relaxed on the Fourth of July. So everybody was allowed to go out and have a few, I guess. I wonder how many members they lost when they did that. And then, uh, the, and it was also relaxed for barn raisings. So I have, I figured there was probably a lot of barns halfway built in Moreau, Moreau County, New York. 'Cause, I mean, what other better excuse? Let's put up a barn, you know?

5:03

Scott Uh, then there we have, uh, that's, uh, I think that may be his headstone or a monument to him. Um, and then we have Anthony Benezet, and I don't think I'm pronouncing that correctly. And the, he wrote a book called The Mighty... I think the, the next slide shows the, the title of the book, The Mighty Destroyer Displayed. And it goes on to talk about, uh, distilled spirits and liquor. And I didn't, I can't remember if I read this book or not. I bought a poor copy of a reproduction of it once, and it was so hard to read that, uh, I, I don't know that I got all the way through it. But his, this book was written in 1774 and may have been an influence, uh, on, on Rush's articles about, uh, ardent spirits. Now we move to the American Temperance Society, and this is the people who changed, changed all of that, what we've talked about, you know, moderation, you know, those kinds of, that kind of thinking about temperance into what I think most of us have in our heads about what we think temperance is today.

5:21

Scott Um, the founders were Reverend Justin Edwards, who, uh, was born in 1787, died in 1853. And Reverend Lyman Beecher of the famous Beecher family. You know, Harriet Beecher Stowe. Uh, uh, a- and, uh, that, he... Let's see if I have his date. 1775, he was born, and died in 1863. Uh, the American Temperance Society was formed in Boston in February of 1826. And we have up there a slide of, of, uh, of Lyman Beecher, and his book is called The Six Sermons on the Nature, Occasions, Signs, Evils and Ready of Intemperance. We shortened it up, up there for the screen 'cause I, there wasn't enough room on the screen. Uh, Beecher, uh, went to a, a, a clerical convention, a, a convention for the clergy, and evidently everybody was getting soused up pretty good at the convention and it disturbed him a great deal. And, uh, he started to really go after- Not drinking, you know. And he started with the clergy and he worked his way in, in, into, uh, trying to stop everybody from drinking. Uh, Beecher was appalled, uh, by the cle- the, the convention he went to and the clerical intemperance.

5:38

Scott He defined alcoholism as a sin, and intemperance he called a profound ignorance and reprobate drunkenness. Alcohol, ardent spirits, damage to body, mind, and moral ruin. So you're starting to see the language already changing. That the daily use of ardent spirits in any form or any degree is intemperance or a sin. Uh, this book contained a lot of medical information, but I don't think any of it was real. I don't think any of it was qualified. I read some things in there and I couldn't believe what this guy was talking about, what alcohol did to the body, and, uh, I doubt that any of it was true. Maybe that's what they thought in, in 1828. I don't know for sure, but it, it was some strange things. The book is basically, was religious. Very Christian and very anti-alcohol. Uh, the next one is The Temperance Manual, which was written by Justin Edwards in the 1820s, and his book is a little bit better to read.

5:53

Scott It, the, it, in it he gives a history of alcohol, which I found very interesting, and one of the things I found i- is, is that he said that originally alcohol was used for medicine, and they actually considered it a remedy and a cure for many illnesses. And, uh, uh, not to me- not to mention all of the ones that it caused, but you know. But also he says in the book that they called alcohol originally was called aqua vita, or the water of life. So you can see how important alcohol was at, i- in, in our history. It wasn't just always us alcoholics that had an appreciation for it. Uh, Edwards referred to alcoholism as a disease, but he also used words like evil, deception, instrument of Satan. Uh, you know, like, as I said, many of the earlier temperance societies weren't really anti-alcohol. Uh, they, it was a place for people to go. Uh, people that, you know, to, to moderate, you know.

6:08

Scott But these guys Is believed that it was a sin, and that anybody who makes it, anybody who sells it, anybody who has anything to do with alcohol is a sinner and are definitely gonna go to hell and need to be saved, you know? So it- that's w- a big change in what the temperance societies originally started off as. Uh, there's a, a copy of the, uh, American Temperance Society document. Uh, um, so we'll mo- uh, yeah, we'll stay at this slide for a little while. There's another little book that I read about this by a fellow by the name of Samuel Knott. And I don't know that he was a- attached to any movement, and I don't know that he was a physician or a, a, a reverend, but his book is called Religion and Temperance. And in it, he says that drinking... He, he really hits the nail on the head with a lot of this stuff. That, "The mind becomes the wretched, vile inhabitant of the crazy tabernacle." The whole book isn't that hard to read, but you know, the crazy tabernacle I identified with very well.

6:26

Scott And he talks about that we should abstain entirely from, from ardent spirits. And he said that, "Intemperance is a vice of man's spiritual nature, and requires for its prevention or its cure a spiritual application." So this guy already knows what the solution is, although there's not a solution like we know it offered, but he knows that there's gotta be a spiritual solution. And he says, "Alcoholism is not a mere physical disease, no mere bodily disorder to be cured by physical remedies or perverted by physical substitutes." And he says, "Drunkenness is not a beastly vice. It is a vice of the soul, that find God and it is thus the indwelling spirit brings the sovereign remedy." So he, he knows what's wrong and he knows the solution to a point. And he also said in his book, in the United States in 1830, that 50 million gallons of liquor were consumed. They were doing pretty good work considering United States was east of the Mississippi, pretty much east of Illinois, you know? And so, uh, we got a few things that did... Go back to the k- go back to the one I really like.

6:44

Scott Uh, there we go. This, I love the Currier and Ives print. It's got the nine steps of alcoholism, the progression. And I don't know if you can see it. I, I, I, I know my image is fuzzy, but the first step is having that social, social drink. And the last step over here on the other side, the ninth step, is the man who's got the pistol to his head and blowing his brains out, and everything that happens to us in between. And, and, uh, it, it's, uh, amazing. I, it, I just, just think it's so accurate. And then below the, the drunks is the mother and the wife and the little child out on the streets w- with tears in their eyes. So, you know, this, this is how they catch us. We'll move on to the other slides here. Let's see. This, of course, this is I think a later temperance, uh, illustration. And you can see the good and the evil kind of thing going on in this. And, uh, what do we else we got? The grappling of the monster. Yeah. Uh, that's a fairly common one.

7:01

Moderator And then we move into who, uh... Let's see what we got. We got The Bottle. George Cruikshank's little book called The Bottle. I think it has, all it has in it is 10 little illustrations such as this. And this is plate number one, and I think the next one is also one. The next one is Gin Lane, I believe. And then there's a Beer Alley, and I can't remember what the other ones are. They're very interesting. And w- let's see what else we got going in there. There, here we go again with a little bit more late 1800s illustration of, uh, the spirit of intoxication. Quite colorful and eye-catching, that's for sure. Uh, n- not necessarily attractive to any drunk that gets get wellble . Uh, what else we got, Tim? Are we about to The Washingtonians? Uh, let's see. Oh, this is one of my favorite. It, this reminds me of me . It's just kind of the way life was, you know? Uh, all right. What do we have left out there? Uh, then we got a few, The Gin Palace. We can click right through it here, and a few other ones.

7:20

Moderator And the, there's the slippery slope that we all go down. A- and this is, uh, I think the last one of the charts. Uh, this w- Tim and I were talking about this one w- before, and it's, uh, we couldn't quite understand how some of the things on the top of it had anything to do with alcoholism. But somehow, some way, some temperance society thought that, uh, eating Mex- Mexican food was bad for you and that that you were gonna end up being in the drunkard's grave, so. All right. We'll go to The Washingtonians. All right. Washington Total Abstinence Society, or The Washingtonians, was founded on April 2nd, 1840, at Chase's Tavern in Baltimore, Maryland, by six drunks who had just returned from a, uh, temperance meeting. And I think I read someplace that the temperance meeting was led by a Reverend Matthew Smith. I'm not sure if that's correct or not. I had a little note in here that I found. Um, the founders of the, uh, Washingtonians were William Mitchell... Most of them are in the picture. Uh, William Mitchell, John Hoss, David Anderson, George Steers, James McCurley and Archibald Campbell.

7:38

Scott And I think they have John Hawkins in the picture instead of George Steers. And John Hawkins is very important Washingtonian, but- So this isn't of the original m- uh, members. This is, uh, this is a, a later picture evidently. Um, let's see here. The, uh, they were alcoholics helping alcoholics and they were not a religious anti-alcohol movement. Uh, the members were from the, basically from the working class and they were not, you know, f- of the typical temperance society up till then had become basically re- a religious movement and this was not the case with them. Uh, they held experience meetings. So I have to suspect that a, an experience meeting is a lot like what you and I go to, but maybe just a little bit different. Um, they had very s- they were very successful and had rapid growth 'cause it's one drunk talking to another. Uh, they received public criticism because they were kind of secret society. When they began, they were kind of anonymous like us, but they g- received a lot of criticism, of course, from the people who were running things like the American Temperance Society.

7:55

Moderator They're watching all of these people flock to this other temperance society. So they began, they, they had criticism. So their solution to the criticism was to hold basically what we would call open meetings and they allowed, uh, public officials to start speaking from their platforms. Uh, Abraham Lincoln eventually did that. Uh, and that was in November of 1840 where they started to open up their society. Uh, the membership numbers, I don't know if anybody has got a, a specific number on the Washingtonians m- total membership 'cause I don't think that it's possible to count it. Um, the estimates just are all over the map. I've heard half a million. I've heard a million. I've heard as low as 100,000 and I don't believe that one at all. And then, uh, y- you know, I just really don't know. And then if you're basing it on people who sign pledges, not everybody that signed a pledge is an alcoholic. So, uh, you know, it's hard to determine that. They have a pledge. I think we have a picture of a pledge or two up there, but, uh, «We whose name»...

8:13

Scott And they don't, uh, the pledges don't all match up exactly. Uh, the- depending on where the society was located and they had variations. «We whose names are annexed desirous of forming a society for our mutual benefit and to guard against a per- per-» -acious practice which is injurious to our healthy standing and families. We do pledge ourselves as gentlemen not to drink a spiritous liquor or malt liquors, wine or cider. And, uh, like I said, there are several variations of that. They also had an initiation fee of 25 cents. I don't know how a good drunk had 25 cents left in his pocket, but... And they had monthly dues of 12 and a half cent. They formed also the, the, out of this movement came the Martha Washington Society, which was for families, and that came about in May of 1841. And they also, eventually there was hospitals named for the Washingtonians. But I don't believe that the hospitals really had much to do with the society itself. I think the hospitals came along after the sci- society had kind of disappeared. Uh, the Washington program was pretty thin.

8:30

Scott As the one picture showed, you know, the guy is speaking up there and, you know, and go- going at it, and then somebody is down signing the pledge. And it's kind of the way it worked. They shared their experiences. They called for others to come up and sign the pledge, come up a- and make a surrender, to make a public commitment to their, t- to their sobriety and, you know, to, to, uh, become a member of the society. And that's how you became a member. Uh, they also encouraged, uh, continued participation. I mean, and you hear that continuance is one of the five C's from the Oxford Group. So it kind of carries over, and isn't it what we encourage people to do in Alcoholics Anonymous, to make commitments and continue to be here and to continue to share your experience, strength, and hope? And it was also service to others. So it's like being of service. You know, making the coffee, making sure that the new guy gets to the meeting. Um, economic assistance, making sure that the new, new guy's family has clothes that they can wear, those kinds of things.

8:47

Moderator And then they, of course, all temperance societies of that day all had these big parades with banners and bands, and they'd march through the streets and, you know, to celebrate their program. Uh, other leaders, we can bounce back to John Hawkins. Uh, John Hawkins was a very important member of the, of the group. In fact, this is the first, one of the first times I, I, I found in my reading about different people involved in, in getting sober over the years, where I found, uh, this guy had a dry date. His dry date was June 1840. And I didn't see the specific day. So, you know, us drunks been keeping track of our dry dates for a long time. 1840, the guy was a, a, a hatter by profession and he made hats. He became a professional lecturer for these folks. And it is said that he traveled over 200,000 miles and made 5,000 lectures. Now we've got, again, you gotta remember, we're traveling by wagon or horse or by foot or by boat. And we're traveling on bad roads i, i- in bad wagons probably. And everything is east of the Mississippi pretty much.

9:05

Scott So this guy was really an active member. Uh, uh, he carried their message all around the country. Very successful. People came from all over to hear him speak. There are a couple of books that were written about him. One is Hannah Hawkins: The Reformed drunkard's Daughter. And Hannah, uh, Hawkins, this book is actually written by John Marsh, who I believe was more involved with the American Temperance Society. And the book doesn't speak a lot about John, but it talks about the, how the family was devastated by the alcoholism. There's another version of the pledge. And the other book, uh, that was about him was written by his son. And, uh, it's, it's just simply The Life of John Hawkins, and it, it's a biography of him. And we'll go through a couple of these slides, and we'll get to John Gough. There's another one. So you can see this one's from Tyrone. One was from Albany. Uh, now y- there you see part of Lincoln's address is up there. Um, that, you could, we could spend a half hour just on Lincoln's talk. It's, it's, uh, I think there's some pamphlets available.

9:24

Scott I, I think Mike said he might even have some of them. I'm not sure. But, uh, it's a great talk. He, he's really got some flowery language, I'll tell you that. But, you know, one of the things that was in Lincoln's talk that was so good was is that he definitely saw the difference between the Washingtonians and what they were doing and the previous temperance societies that had gone on before. And he talks about some of that in here, about the heavy-handed temperance efforts. And he talks about that how, how the, you know, how freewheeling this is. You know, the, the, there's a coin, one of the coins. I think, uh, Mitchell or somebody said they have a couple of these. I think I have one someplace. Uh, yeah, they, uh, and I seen a couple variations of these too, so it may depend on the year, maybe depend on the, uh, the, the society. This is probably the most known book about the Washingtonians, The Six Nights with the Washingtonians by T.S. Arthur. Uh, and he wrote, I don't know, Three Nights in a b- barroom. I don't know how many.

9:42

Scott He wrote a lot of temperance books. Uh, I better find my place in here before we g- I get completely lost. There we go. There's John Gough. Uh, John, his dry date was October 1842. I don't know if that was his permanent dry date, 'cause this fella seemed to have a little trouble with the drinking. Uh, he was a professional lecturer for the Washingtonians. He remained involved in temperance societies long after the Washingtonians disappeared. Um, but he was said to have been, uh, out on the lecture circuit for the Washingtonians or one of the movements anyway, I think it was Washingtonians, and he never showed up for the meeting, and they went to find him. He was the main speaker, and he was drunk in his, uh, in his room. And his... Th- this is a good one if you haven't used this one yet. He said that he had been tricked by his enemies into drinking. So, you know, so that's why he didn't show up. This guy caused a little bit of credibility issues with the Washingtonians. I mean, if you- he's the main man on the platform, he's not there, he's drinking.

10:00

Moderator This is not good news. This would be to say one of our founding members of Alcoholics Anonymous showed up to speak to, to a group of people and was drunk. Wouldn't have gone good for us. Uh, that's really all I'm gonna say about him. That's a, that's a beautiful little book there, too. Uh, uh, but the book that I don't have any pictures of, but I have... I was very fortunate to get a copy at the library. They wouldn't let me take it out. It was on loan from the Minneapolis Library, is The Foundation, Progress, and Principles of the Washington Temperance Society of Baltimore and its influence it, it, the influence it has had on the temperance movements in the United States. I'm almost out of time here, so I better get this done. In the book, he talks about the, uh, this book was published 1842, thousands of abandoned drunkards are being reclaimed from their habits and are taking their proper stations as good and useful members of the community. Take one glass, and although they knew it was wrong, found themselves powerless.

10:17

Scott That it was a new system of temperance operations, that they were run by a common honesty that would direct them, that moral suasion, not force, which would be, uh, from the old temperance, love, not hate, are the moving springs of the Washingtonian creed. Their preamble read, "To recognize no creed of religion, nor party in politics, that neither political or religious actions of any kind should ever be introduced into the society's operations. Personal abstinence from all intoxicating drinks was to be the basis of and the only requisite for membership." Then he had a sounding for me- Here. If you know anything about our traditions, you're starting to see our traditions in place here. Uh, New York City was the second chapter of the Washingtonians, March, 1841, started by Hawkins and Mitchell. Uh, the motto of The Washingtonian, great motto, "Let every man be present and every man bring a man." Man, how'd you, how, how you can go wrong with that? Uh, their structure was rather weak, but it was based on respectability and prosperity. Uh, carefully avoid politics and religion.

10:34

Scott Each society is independent in its funds, its actions, and is under the control of its own members. Again, are we seeing traditions? Uh, all societies are equal and to be, and not to be involved in politics and religion. And we are not against people who drink. Again, we're seeing a lot of what we find in Alcoholics Anonymous today. They had 2,000 people at their an- first anniversary. Half of them were alcoholics. Their failure, I think we could go on and on forever about what caused their failure. Um, just to make it quick, uh, they got involved in all kinds of things. They did not stick with their primary purpose. They opened that door and let anybody talk from their platforms. They got involved with the things that they were told not to get involved with, politics and religion. They had credibility issues with their leaders. Their program was fairly weak. Their structure was fairly weak. The economy was not good. A lot of similar things to what we see today, bad economy and a divided world. You know, their, their divided world was slavery and abolition and those kinds of things.

10:50

Scott And eventually, they basically just became another temperance society like the American Temperance Society. They had no unity, no primary purpose, and they no longer were helping alcoholics. And they eventually just become another temperance society. Uh, I'm not gonna go into too much more other than that, you know, they were gone. Some people say in two years. Some people say by 1845. Some people say by 1848. And when you read literature about them, there are literatures, things that are dated with those years on them. When you have that many societies on, around the country, that's how they probably just slowly closed the doors at each location. Um, so you know, to me, what we got from the Washingtonians isn't all of those common things about a- Alcoholics helping alcoholics, but it's about their failures and about how our traditions came about, how Bill wrote about those in A, A Comes of Age. And I know somebody wrote a book or a paper about that they didn't think that it really had that much influence. Perhaps they're right. I really don't know. That's not my business.

11:07

Moderator I do know that Alcoholics Anonymous in the 1940s was falling apart just like the Washingtonians did. When you read any history of any groups in any state, you'll find that things were falling apart 'cause we had leaders, we had rules, we had all kinds of crap. And Bill writes in, I think, in A, A Comes of Age, you know, there were so many membership rules that not even the old-timers could stay in A, A. They didn't qualify. So I think that the Washingtonians had a lot of principles, had a lot of wonderful things, and they had things. They had a preamble. They had a primary purpose. They had all kinds of stuff. But like all principles, they're only good if you use them. If I don't apply the 12 steps in my life, if I don't apply the 12 traditions in my life, if I don't see the importance of world service, general service, and the 12 concepts, and if we don't use those principles, they're not valid. These things are only valid if we put them in place.

11:24

Moderator Not that the other guy's gonna do it, but that I need to do these things in order to make A, A a healthier place. And what I see their failure as is, is that they had some principles, but they decided to do some other things and maybe please some other people and just got distracted and lost their focus. And how many alcoholics died drunk when that society failed? It's a question I've asked myself many times. How many thousands of alcoholics died drunk when they no longer had that meeting to go to? I'm done. I took a little too much time. Sorry about that, guys. Thank you. Thank you, Scott. Um, so we'll open it up for questions here. We got about 10 minutes left and, uh, I will go right in order. So it looks like we have Donald H. first. Thank you. My name is Donald. I'm from Pennsylvania. I'm an alcoholic. Thank you very much for your talk. Thank you. Uh, I read, uh, Slaying the Dragon and everything went downhill from there. I was able to obtain a 1869 copy of the autobiography and per- personal recollections of John Gull. Yeah.

11:42

Moderator And you didn't mention how he died, which is an interesting story. But my question is, you know the, the Washingtonians public, or Pocket Companion? Yes. Yeah. On, in, uh, on the bottom of page nine in that, it says, "On February 22nd, 1842, a Washingtonian mass convention held in Utica passed a declaration of principles, preamble, and a constitution." It was published in U- Utica. Do you have any- idea where I could find that? Well, the, the things that I had found with the preamble and that sort of stuff, I, was, was out of the, uh, the book that I did mention. Uh, which I've not, not been, you know, that's not something I got at home here to look at. But it was, uh, the progress and the, uh, uh, that's ... Uh, gotta find the ... I clo- went and closed the book by mistake here. Let's see. The foundation progress and principles of the Washingtonian Temperance Society of Baltimore, and the influence it had on temperance movements in the United States. That's where I, I found this stuff. Okay. Well, thank you very much. I do believe somebody did reproduce that for a while.

12:00

Scott Uh, it was like a yellow pamphlet or something that somebody had stapled, made copies. That, yeah, there you go. Uh, Mitchell's holding it up. Yeah. I, I don't know if I have one of those, but I know I, I got to read the original book, and it was fabulous, yeah. I see what Mitchell's got. Yeah. I'd be very interested in pursuing that, so thank you very much for your talk. All right, now we got Mitchell. Hi. Um, just, you know, it, with that, Charlie Bishop was the one who published these. Um- Yeah ... the first one was the Washingtonians and Alcoholics Anonymous, which contained the, um, the, the one that was mentioned. It also had, um, uh, a book to Washington's Temperance Society that, that's, uh, J- John Zug. Washington Mo- uh, Movement by Milton Maxwell from AA. Yeah. Um- Oh, good ... Bloomberg biography. And, um, just that was, there was only 250 of these made. And, uh, this one, which was just the 1842, a Washingtonian book, there's only 100 of those made. So they're kind of hard to come by and, uh, but, um, I mean, Charlie said it, it's copyrighted unfortunately.

12:18

Scott You know, the only thing that's copyrighted is Charlie's stuff. The book, as far as I know, according to copyright law, since it's 1842, is in public domain. Yeah. As long as you just publish, somebody just publishes that portion of it, you know, the 1842 version of it, I'm sure that that's in public domain. Yeah. Uh, and I would love to see it become readily available. Yeah. And the little pocket companion is great too. It really is a very good book. I've got- I've had a couple of copies of that over the year. But the other book is very hard to find. Very hard to find. Thank you for the presentation. Thank you very much, Mitchell. Thanks, Mitchell. And now we got John. Uh, hello. Uh, is that me? Uh, John, alcoholic. Yeah. Uh, I was interested in, uh, where you might be able to get, um, a flyer on Lincoln's speech. Maybe online. Mike- Is it- ... do you have them available? Is it called Lincoln's Speech to the Washingtonians? What's, is it- Washingtonian. Yeah. Lincoln's- There is one on recovery sp- uh, on recoverycollectibles.com right now. Yeah.

12:36

Moderator Um, for the Wa- for the, um, Lincoln, uh, address. Um, we do have more that will be up there. Yeah. Okay, great. Thank you. Yeah. It's a really wonderful speech. It's really flowery. Lang- the contemporary language, you know. Yeah. Yeah, I'm interested in that. Thanks. Okay. Great. Dave, I think you're unmuted now. There we go. Thank you. Dave McDermott, alcoholic from Florida. Uh, thank you so much for, uh, for sharing that. What some really, really great information on there. You know what? I was always told the, uh, the Washingtonians broke up basically because they got involved in political issues at a time. Got involved in the wet and dry con- uh, controversy. They got involved in the, uh, uh, you know, the slavery at, at that time was a, a hot topic a number, uh... Can you, uh, maybe expound just a, a, a couple of sentences on what you think, uh, broke them up? Thanks. And the o- the other thing too is that there's a great book called, that's everybody showing books- Yeah ... uh, Slaying the Dragon, uh, by William Wright, which is really, really great. Yeah.

12:53

Moderator When I knew you were, uh, coming today, today I just had to take the dust off it and start reading it. Yeah. Thank you. Yeah, yeah. Very much. And, and I may have even took a little of that from that book 15 years ago. I don't remember. I've, I've kind of had this together off and on for a long, long time. Um, but the, I, I think the failures are, like, I, I said. Uh, they did get involved with religion. They did get involved with temperance. They did get involved with politics. I think that, you know, a lot of people want to pinpoint it on just one thing, but I think it was all of those things combined and the fact that they didn't stick with the little bit of principles that they did have laid out, the, the, the charter and, and the, and the preambles and, and the, those kinds of things that they did have in place, but they ignored them. And, uh, like I said, I think there's a big lesson in that for us in Alcoholics Anonymous today to not ignore our principles. Right.

13:10

Moderator It's the, the gift of singleness of purpose in our traditions. Yeah. Yeah. Powerful. Thank you. Hey, I'm gonna jump in real quick. Can you hear me? Yep. All right. Uh, sorry that I need to bail. I just wanted to take a minute and thank Scott. You gave a great presentation. I apologize that the slides weren't a little better quality tonight. They were fine the other day. Um, and, uh, you know, I just want to welcome everybody and hope you'll come back next week when Jonathan gives his presentation on the Emmanuel Movement and the connection to Alcoholics Anonymous. That's gonna be fascinating as well because you're gonna learn about some books that Bill Wilson used when he was writing the Big Book, and Jonathan's gonna actually show us some of the content of those books. So it's not just gonna be, "Oh, well, you know, this book had that." He's actually gonna show us some of that. So I'm excited to have that. Again, I want to thank you, Scott. I've got to jump off. I'm speaking at another meeting. Um, if anybody needs to contact me, it's mike@recoveryspeakers.com. Tim, tim@recoveryspeakers.com for Tim.

13:29

Scott I'm gonna say good night and thank you all. We'll see you there, Mike. Yeah. All right. Um, we got Patrick. Looks like the last question, then we'll wrap it up. Okay. Hi, I'm Pat. I'm an alcoholic. My group meets at the Park Street Church, which was the home of the American Temperance Society. Church was built in 1806 and, uh, the Temperance Society started there. The Washingtonians were very big in Boston, and there was actually a Washingtonian hospital which, which ended up being a detox right up until the 1970s. It's now all condos. And the picture that you showed of the building there w- was the, uh, home for fallen women, which was sponsored by the Washingtonians. And they, in Boston, they endowed their members, privately endowed a lot of, uh, sober homes. They were really grooming houses for people who didn't drink. And they had quite a history of filling the, uh, Faneuil Hall with their experience meetings.

13:44

Scott And, uh, I had a classmate wrote a book on the water systems for- Chicago, Boston, and New York City, which all took place in the 1840s, and one of the biggest movements for having fresh water coming into these cities were temperance groups and, and groups like the Washingtonians. Um- Cool water ... clean, cool water. I'd rather drink cool water than alcohol any day. Yeah. And they still have ribbons around some place. But I, the one, I'll close with this. Gupp lived in Boylston, Massachusetts, at least that's where he's buried, and he continued speaking until the 1880s. 1880s. And, uh, he was also known as the poet of the DTs- ... because he was a very, very interesting speaker, but he couldn't stay sober himself. Yeah. And, uh, he traveled throughout, he, he traveled to Europe and speak. And he was, he was a, you know, he was, he was quite an entertainer. And I think that towards the end, the Washingtonians became an entertainment group, and they, they started to support the anti-slavery movement, and that was one of the big problems they had.

14:01

Moderator Um, but they're, it's an interesting group, and they didn't have any continuity. They didn't have any steps. Um, they trashed their traditions as soon as they went ahead and, uh, got in the way of money. And, um, such is life. We're lucky to be here. Thank you. You are lucky. Yeah. Uh, let me, let me read this little thing I found in one of my notes, and it's out of a temperance book, and I don't know which one. It says, "Come in and have a couple of drinks. Couple of drinks will change the world. A couple of pints, I can't change my shirt." And I don't know what little book I found that in, but, you know, man, it's true. All right. Well, thank you so much, Scott. We're gonna wrap it up. If anyone wants to stick around and ask questions or, uh, just fellowship for a little bit, the meeting will be open for a little bit longer. Um, and just a reminder, um, if anyone wants to get a list of our upcoming speakers, send me an email at tim@recoveryspeakers.com and I can send you the list.

14:20

Moderator I've had a few people asking me about the upcoming speakers in the chat. Difficult to respond to everyone during the meeting. Um, so yeah, if any questions, just send me an email. And, uh, thanks again, Scott. I'm gonna open up and, uh, unmute everyone. And... Thank you very much, Tim. Yeah. Thank you. Did, it was great. Thank you, Scott But I, the one, I'll close with this. Gupp lived in Boylston, Massachusetts, at least that's where he's buried, and he continued speaking until the 1880s. 1880s. And, uh, he was also known as the poet of the DTs- ... because he was a very, very interesting speaker, but he couldn't stay sober himself. Yeah. And, uh, he traveled throughout, he, he traveled to Europe and speak. And he was, he was a, you know, he was, he was quite an entertainer. And I think that towards the end, the Washingtonians became an entertainment group, and they, they started to support the anti-slavery movement, and that was one of the big problems they had. Um, but they're, it's an interesting group, and they didn't have any continuity. They didn't have any steps.

14:37

Moderator Um, they trashed their traditions as soon as they went ahead and, uh, got in the way of money. And, um, such is life. We're lucky to be here. Thank you. You are lucky. Yeah. Uh, let me, let me read this little thing I found in one of my notes, and it's out of a temperance book, and I don't know which one. It says, "Come in and have a couple of drinks. Couple of drinks will change the world. A couple of pints, I can't change my shirt." And I don't know what little book I found that in, but, you know, man, it's true. All right. Well, thank you so much, Scott. We're gonna wrap it up. If anyone wants to stick around and ask questions or, uh, just fellowship for a little bit, the meeting will be open for a little bit longer. Um, and just a reminder, um, if anyone wants to get a list of our upcoming speakers, send me an email at tim@recoveryspeakers.com and I can send you the list. I've had a few people asking me about the upcoming speakers in the chat. Difficult to respond to everyone during the meeting.

14:56

Moderator Um, so yeah, if any questions, just send me an email. And, uh, thanks again, Scott. I'm gonna open up and, uh, unmute everyone. And... Thank you very much, Tim. Yeah. Thank you. Did, it was great. Thank you, Scott

The following is an AI-generated transcript. Minor errors may occur. The audio is the authoritative source.

The Washingtonians and Nineteenth-Century Alcoholism Treatment — Scott J. — Tuesday Night History Workshop — July 24, 2020

The Washingtonians and Nineteenth-Century Alcoholism Treatment — Scott J. — Tuesday Night History Workshop — July 24, 2020

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