Welcome the tea abstainers

Wednesday, 18 November 2009 05:00

November 18, 1891. A fad for abstinence that started with alcohol in reaction to widespread drunkenness in the 19th and early 20th centuries had gone as far as a campaign for the abstinence of tea, a letter writer notes in the Toronto Mail.

It is interesting to watch the total abstinence fad, because one never knows in what direction it will break out next. We have abstainers from alcohol, abstainers from meat, abstainers from vegetables, and now, I am credibly informed, we are to have abstainers from tea. A society is being formed in England to encourage total abstinence from tea drinking; and this society has for its special object the reclaiming of dissipated tea drinkers at universities. It is said that the young men there commence to drink tea very early in the morning and keep it up all day, to the detriment of their nervous systems and to the danger of posterity. O tempora! O mores! and oh for a pot of old college ale!