Henry Wyatt & the Good Templars

Obituary, The Good Templar

A few weeks ago, in the Scottish Indexes online conference Q&A session, a viewer asked about sourcing records for the temperance organisation, the Good Templars.

I was surprised, but happy to answer the question, because some years ago, I researched a family whose father was a member of this Victorian order. Plenty of information about the family, the Wyatts, had been forthcoming from the usual BMD and census records, and more was to be discovered in Post Office directories, electoral rolls, journals, and newspapers - all from the starting point of the newspaper announcement where I came across the Good Templars for the first time:

Glasgow Herald, 27 November 1899

Not having realised that Henry was part of something bigger, I researched the Good Templar organisation at Glasgow's Mitchell Library and found that they held a run of Good Templar journals. Here I was astonished to see the picture of Henry (at the head of this article) staring back at me from his obituary.

Born in the parish of Holborn, London around 1824, according to census returns – although the church records of the parish haven’t yet yielded up any proof of this – Henry Wyatt arrived in Glasgow in the late 1840s. He and his wife, Sarah Ann Reynolds, had seven children, all born in Glasgow between 1847 and 1858: Joseph, Benjamin, Mary Jane, Elizabeth, Emily, Sarah Ann, and Margaret. The family seemed to be attached to the Episcopal Church in the heart of the city, St Andrews by the Green,¹ where four of their first five babies were christened. The one exception, Elizabeth, was taken to Christ Church in Bridgeton, an East end Episcopal church, for her baptism, while the next child, Emily, was brought to St Andrews to be christened. Whether this back-and-forth was due to the usual church being temporarily out of commission, a relative’s choice, or a preference for a specific clergyman, is still not clear.

Former church of St. Andrew's-by-the-Green, kim traynor, CC BY-SA 2.0

In 1855, Henry’s father Benjamin travelled to Glasgow from England. Widowed when Henry was a boy, Benjamin had remarried in 1831 in Liverpool, and it was there that his second wife had died in the summer of 1854. It’s unclear whether he planned to remain in Glasgow with Henry, because a month after his arrival, he died after suffering from gastritis for eight weeks. This would have been a devastating blow to his family as he was only 54 years old; however, the date of his demise was a big genealogy plus, as this was the year in which civil registration had been introduced in Scotland. For just 1855, extra details were included in birth, marriage, and death records, meaning that a lot of information was gleaned about the Wyatt family.

Henry registered his father’s death, and the certificate recorded all of the following: Benjamin had been born around 1802 in London and had been married twice. His first wife was Henry’s mother, Mary Soliman, and together they had four children: Caroline, born about 1820, Susanna, who died in 1822 aged 1, Emma, born 1824, and Henry. Benjamin’s second wife was Frances Higham (their marriage produced no children according to the certificate) and his parents were named as Edward Wyatt, a lamplighter, and Susan, whose maiden surname was unknown. This proved a great foundation on which to build the structure of the family, chasing up and trying to confirm (or otherwise!) all these details.

It later came to light that Caroline also moved to Glasgow, was married, and lived to the splendid old age of 96.

Henry continued to earn a living by various means, as indicated in the census. His occupation was listed as, from 1851, a clothes broker and a general dealer, and by 1871 he had become a hotel keeper. This may have been precipitated by his sequestration that March, as recorded in the Edinburgh Gazette: “The Estates of Wyatt & Company, Furnishing Warehousemen in Glasgow, and Henry Wyatt, Furnishing Warehouseman in Glasgow, the sole Individual Partner thereof, as such Partner, and as an Individual, were sequestrated on the 3d day of March 1871, by the Sheriff of Lanarkshire."² How he managed to get back on his feet in such impressive style, I was never able to discover!

Among all this wheeling and dealing, in 1867 Sarah Ann died at the relatively (even for those days) early age of 41. The cause of death on her burial record is noted as “Debility”, an unsatisfyingly vague description. Four months later, Henry married Mary Mitchell, seventeen years his junior and the daughter of Irish immigrants. Records don’t show them having any further children, but Mary would have had her hands full anyway, with all five girls still living at home, ranging in ages from 9 to 16.

In the 1871 census Henry’s home address was given as 63 Candleriggs, and this was also the location of one of his hotels. As can be seen in the advert below, he was by now involved with the Good Templars and operated his establishment as a temperance hotel.³ This was an idea begun by the abstention campaigner Joseph Livesey in the 1830s. It was intended to provide a "dry" alternative to the ubiquitous availability of alcohol in lodging-houses and inns, in an effort to check the spread of drink-related social issues in Britain.⁴

Post Office Directory advert, 1875

The temperance movement used a variety of methods to appeal to people and convince them of the evils of “the demon drink”, and Henry seemed to be deeply committed to this cause. He had become a member of its “Scotland’s First” lodge soon after it was set up in Glasgow, in August of 1869, at a meeting of the United Working Men’s Total Abstinence Society.⁵ Its fraternal nature was similar to that of the Freemasons and other groups who claimed good works as their main focus, although the Templars also admitted female members.

Henry’s daughter Sarah Ann was recorded as working as an assistant manager in the Candleriggs location. The Wyatt temperance hotels expanded to include two more in Glasgow, in nearby Brunswick Street and in Dundas Street, and eventually one in the Ayrshire coast town of Prestwick.

His obituary outlined the work Henry carried out in support of the temperance movement: “For many years he was a fearless champion of the cause. He conducted Temperance meetings on [Glasgow] Green with much acceptance. His genial, happy manner carried conviction, and led many to sign the pledge.”⁶  This referred to the abstinence pledge that temperance workers encouraged everyone to take, swearing off alcohol for life.

19th century Canadian Good Templar Pledge

Things appeared to be going well for Henry in the 1880s, but this wasn't to last. Further bankruptcy proceedings were initiated in 1887, with Henry being described as a "hotel proprietor dealer in furniture". He clearly enjoyed having more than one string to his bow, but perhaps this caused him to overextend financially. A few years later he was still operating the hotels in Brunswick Street and Dundas Street, as well as a restaurant next door to the latter.⁷

By the end of the decade he had relocated himself, wife, and business to Prestwick. He transferred his Good Templar membership to the local “St Nicholas” lodge and continued his association with the temperance cause. Unfortunately financial ruin continued to dog his footsteps, and an article in the Glasgow Herald in November of 1897 reported Henry’s detailed account of his hotel businesses and family assets. He was 73 by this time and not in good health, being unable to read handwriting (as opposed to printed matter) and therefore his bookkeeper’s ledgers.⁸

The strain of this had possibly led to this blot on his copybook, just a few months previously⁹:

I would hope that he was able to take the fine option...

On the 24 November 1899, Henry died at his home, South Lodge in Prestwick, of dropsy – a term used to describe the symptoms of what was often heart failure.¹⁰ His obituary referred to his “lengthened illness”.

Henry was buried in Glasgow, in the Southern Necropolis, and his funeral was conducted by his fellow Templars.¹¹  It was this obituary, published in the Good Templar journal, that allowed me to learn about his service in the temperance movement, so I suggested these journals to the researcher who was looking for records. I neglected to tell her that the Templars' Scottish records are held at Glasgow University Archives - perhaps I should take my own advice and visit them to learn even more about Henry!

1 St Andrews by the Green Episcopal Church, Glasgow, Ref. TD243, Glasgow City Archive.

2 Edinburgh Gazette, 7 March 1871, https://www.thegazette.co.uk/Edinburgh/issue/8143/page/176.

3 Post-office annual Glasgow Directory, 1875-1876, https://digital.nls.uk/directories/browse/archive/84188037.

4 Helensburgh Heritage Trust, Temperance hotels were popular, https://helensburgh-heritage.co.uk/index.php.

5 Records of the International Order of Good Templars: Grand Lodge of Scotland, held at University of Glasgow Archive Services, https://archiveshub.jisc.ac.uk/search/archives/012fd6d2-c9e9-3cca-9807-aa919bf43c22

6 The Good Templar journal, c. 1900, Mitchell Library, Glasgow.

7 Post-office annual Glasgow Directory, 1897-1898, https://digital.nls.uk/directories/browse/archive/85331301.

8 Glasgow Herald, 27 November 1897.

9 Glasgow Herald, 12 August 1897.

10 “Dropsy,” University of Leeds Library Special Collections, https://library.leeds.ac.uk/special-collections/collection/2156.

11 The Good Templar journal, op. cit.