Yeovil Total Abstinence & Rechabite Society

Yeovil Total Abstinence & Rechabite Society

Another contender for Yeovil's longest-named Society?

 

In the early nineteenth century many friendly societies were strongly associated with individual pubs or drinking dens and some friendly societies arose directly from 'harmonious clubs' promoted at the end of the eighteenth century by the proprietors of public houses or inns themselves - for example Yeovil's mid-nineteenth century Rose Inn Friendly Society - in which members paid a regular subscription in return for welfare protection. However, as ideas about temperance spread through the United Kingdom in the nineteenth century, some activists saw that there was an advantage in linking temperance with mutual aid.

The International Order of Rechabites, founded in 1835 in Salford, took their name from an eponymous biblical tribe who were 'commanded to drink no wine'. In the early 1840s the Yeovil Total Abstinence & Rechabite Society was formed with the Rev WW Robinson, Curate of Yeovil and Chaplain to the Earl of Plymouth, as its President.

In September 1846 the Yeovil Total Abstinence & Rechabite Society held its annual festival and walked in procession through the town to the Independent Chapel in Princes Street - the use of St John's church for the purpose having been refused by the Vicar. The following January some 300 members of the Society met for tea under the Presidency of Rev Robinson, but there is no further mention of the Society thereafter.