Brighouse & Rastrick Gazette. — 1881-01-15 (Brighouse, West Yorkshire, England)

TEMPERASCE LECTURE AT BRIDGE  END.  Cruik shank's celebrated pictures of "The Bottle," and "The Drunkard's Children," received an able delineation on Tuesday evening at the Congregational School-room, Bridge End, by the Rev. R. Harley, F.R.S. There was a large attendance; the Rev. A.112/albraith presided. The CHAIRMAN said he bad a very easy and pleasant task to perform, for the lecturer, being so well known in Brighouse and Rastrick, required no Introduction. He considered Mr. Harley deserved a great deal of thanks for devoting so much of his time during the past holiday season to the Temperance question. Mr. HARLEY said, in explanation of his presence, that he always felt great pleasure in visiting this, his first scene of ministerial labour—he had very pleasant and solemn memories of it—on the day when the foundation-stone of that chapel was laid he received his ordination to the ministry. He purposed revisiting this place during a brief fortnight's vacation, which intention had been confirmed by the subsequent offer and arrangements made by some of the Bridge End friends. The idea Of giving Temperance lectures and of exhibiting these pictures of "The Bottle" originated in an astronomical and scientific lecture which he gave some time ago at Millhill. He had procured a biennial apparatus and an oxy-hydrogen lamp for its illustration, and he afterwards thought it might be turned to good account in the Temperance cause. A week ago he was at Northampton, which by no means was to be considered as entirely atheistic; for, being the first Sunday in the month when he was there, he administered the communion to 600 communicants. He had also visited Kettering, Woodhouse, &c. He would not say anything of Cruikshank himself, in illustrating the pictures of "The Bottle" and "The Drunkards' Children," although he had known him personally. The first. picture represented a working man's home, where health, peace, and plenty were the distinguishing characteristics. Two little children were at play. The first draught was offered to the wife by the husband. The lecturer said all should beware of the beginnings of evil—they should consider the end, for the end thereof is death. Up to this fatal hour, when the bottle was brought out, the man had been sober, industrious, and honest, and upon everything around could be seen evidences of comfort. It mattered little for what purpose the bottle was thus first introduced— whether to toast his wedding day or by medical prescription—though the picture was one of health, and it could hardly be conceived to be for this latter purpose. Doctors had a great deal to answer for. He considered that drink was a drug, and should be administered with the same care as arsenic. The second picture had changed the scene of comfort, respectability, and plenty, into one of haggard leanness and insecurity; the man, with pipe in his mouth, and his hands thrust into his empty pockets, crouched over his well-nigh fireless grate, a complete sot, discharged from his employment, whilst the wife was sending off her girl of thirteen with a bundle to the pawnshop, to procure more money for drink. The lecturer adverted to the gradual accomplishment of the woe which was fast descending upon this miserable household, and quoted the text "Be not among winebibbers, among riotous eaters of flesh, for the drunkard and the glutton shall come to poverty, and drowsiness shall clothe a man with rags." Drink was the cause of most pauperism; drink removed all disposition to industry and respectability, and it usually made children the first sufferers, till they were left to starve, or beg, or steal. The third picture represented an execution which had been put in upon the furniture of the drunkard, who, with his wife, sat drinking together by the fireside, apparently indifferent to what was going on. The little boy was sitting upon a stool nursing his sick baby-brother. The fourth picture shows the family in the street; the children are remiving alms from a lady whose compassion has been excited by their naked condition. The fifth picture was one of cold, misery and want; the infant's coffin was at one end of the room, it had succumbed to the privations of cold and hunger. The father and mother were still drinking, as if to drown their sorrow, or to render themselves unimpressed by the melancholy aspect of their situation; and the boy, coatless, and in rags, sat in the chimney corner, as if musing upon the days when comfort and health cheered their home. "They shall eat of the fruit of their own ways, and be filled with their own devices." In the sixth picture the infuriated drunkard murdered his wife with the bottle. The seventh picture showed his arrest ; whilst the eighth presented him a miserable maniac, sitting in a strong room before a guarded fire, in abject unconsciousness of the presence of his son and daughter. The series of pictures depicting the education and demoralising influences to which the drunkards' children are exposed were exhibited. The first was the flaming gin palace, with its motley assemblage crowding the bar; the next was the low beer-house, with its squalid throng of gamesters and pickpockets ; the third illustrated the dancing-room and music-hall; in each of which the drunkard's children were shown to take a conspicuous part, and the fourth picture was the dormitory of a common lodging-house, in which two policemen stood ready to hand-cuff and take away the drunkard's son, on a charge of being concerned in a great robbery; the next picture was the arraignment of both brother and sister at the Old Bailey • the sister is acquitted, but the brother is sentence to transportation; the picture which follows shows the last parting between the brother and sister in a lonely ante-room of a prison or court-house • and this again is succeeded by a representation o the death-bed of the young man, in the hospital ward ,of a convict prison: one convict is closing the young man's eyes, whilst another is placing a screen round the bed. The last picture of this series is the suicide of the sister, who, overcome with distress and anguish, and deserted by all, throws herself from a bridge. The word "Alcohol" was next exhibited, which after being made the subject of a strong and earnest exhortation to avoid it altogether, as against anything advanced by moderate drinkers, the lecturer introduced the following acrostic, which he said had been productive of good elsewhere, and would doubtless meet with similar interest there :