On this day … 22 July 1882

The Preston Guardian reported that the grave of Richard ‘Dickey’ Turner in St Peter’s churchyard was becoming a site almost of pilgrimage for members of the various temperance groups around the country.

Turner, the Preston man who gave the name teetotalism to the total abstinence campaign launched by Joseph Livesey earlier in the century, had died in 1846. He died two months after attending the ‘World Temperance Convention’ in London.

The temperance society at St Peter’s Church, now the UCLan Arts Centre, had begun seeking subscriptions for a marble font in the church in memory of Richard. The idea came after a recent temperance jubilee had seen visitors to Preston making it a point to visit his grave at St. Peter’s.

According to Hewitson, in his History of Preston, Turner was buried, along with several others ‘at the southern corner on the right-hand side of the footpath leading up to the church’. The gravestone, according to Hewitson, had the following inscription:

‘Beneath this stone are deposited the remains of Richard Turner, author of the word Teetotal, as applied to abstinence from intoxicating liquors, who departed this life on the 27th day of Oct., 1846, aged 56 years.’

According to the funeral notice in the Preston Chronicle, it was in St Peter’s School in 1832 that Turner, a self-confessed drunkard, signed the total abstinence pledge. He was reportedly drunk at the time. He became a speaker at the abstinence meetings held at the Cockpit in Stoneygate, where his speeches ‘were generally characterised by an equal mixture of wit and blunders’. It was at one of these meeting in the following October that it was said that he declared, ‘I have signed the tee, tee-total pledge’.

Turner died at the home of his sister at No 5, Mount Pleasant, at what the Chronicle described as an ‘advanced age’: he was fifty-six.

Joseph Livesey, the father of total abstinence, paid tribute to Turner in his autobiography:

‘He was a worker, and that, with us, covered a multitude of other defects. He never could do too much. To the sound of his rattle through the streets we often owed the attendance at the meetings we held in the town and villages, in schools and other places. At one time Richard undertook a mission on his own account to the South, preaching teetotal all the way to London, where he attended the World’s Temperance Convention.’

Livesey adds the following to the account of Turner’s decision to give up the demon drink. At the time he was making a living by hawking fish around town:

‘… and while patrolling the streets, in the evening, on the second Thursday in October, 1832, much the worse for liquor, he walked into St. Peter’s School Room, where a temperance meeting was being held, for (as he expressed himself) the purpose of having a little fun. At the very urgent request of Mr. T. Swindlehurst and Mr. J. Dearden, he signed the pledge of abstinence from all intoxicating liquors.’

Does anyone know if there is a memorial to Turner inside the church?