Temperance medal “Tee Total” pewter by Ottley. Dicky Turner author of the words Tee Total. He was one of the Preston Seven
medal pewter 45mm made c. 1850-60 & is quite rare
pierced for wearing
It’s accepted that the word, at least in the abstinence sense, was coined by Richard “Dicky” Turner in a speech he gave to a temperance meeting in Preston, Lancashire, in September 1833. Turner was an illiterate working man, a fish hawker, who had visited one of the early Preston temperance meetings in 1832 as a joke while half-drunk, but who came out of the meeting a convert. He was one of the founding Seven Men of Preston who signed the pledge and became a fervent advocate of that form of temperance that demanded total abstention from all forms of alcoholic drink, not just spirits as some more moderate reformers urged. There’s no formal record of what he said at the meeting — one report had it that his words were “nothing but the tee-total would do” but it is also claimed that he said in his strong local accent, “I’ll be reet down out-and-out t-t-total for ever and ever”.
