New Ross – a sober reappraisal

Sir, – Frank McNally (An Irishman’s Diary, September 6th) mentioned that James Cullen, the founder of the Pioneer Total Abstinence Association, was born in New Ross, Co Wexford. He is well remembered but an earlier advocate of temperance, George Whitmore Carr, who was also a native of the town, is largely forgotten. Carr was present at the battle of New Ross on June 5th, 1798, and was undoubtedly familiar with the role that whiskey played in the defeat of the rebel forces that day. After attending Trinity College Dublin, he was licensed as a curate in 1800 but left the church in 1811 because of a disagreement about the wording of baptismal and burial rites and founded his own meeting house in the town.

In 1829, he became aware of a letter from Dr John Edgar, the professor of theology at the Belfast Academical institution, to the Belfast Newsletter advocating temperance and after meeting him, he founded the first temperance society in Europe in the town on August 20th, 1829. Other societies followed in Clonmel, Carlow, Dublin and Waterford and he enjoyed the support of James Warren Doyle, the Catholic bishop of Kildare and Leighlin, and of Daniel O’Connell who considered him the finest speaker he had heard outside parliament. Later, he became friendly with Fr Theobald Mathew, who launched his own movement in Cork in 1838.

If Edgar’s biographer, his fellow Presbyterian minister, William Killen, is correct, New Ross had been notorious for its drunkenness, profligacy and midnight brawls but the success of Carr’s venture made it comparatively quiet and orderly. – Yours, etc,

DENIS FAHEY,