Temperance Journal

The Temperance Journal was the organ of the Sons of Temperance of Newfoundland. The editorials and a good deal of the contents were devoted to this organization's cause, offering sermons and advice on Temperance, warning of the dangers of even moderate drinking and exposing the economic and social costs of "liquor traffic." The Temperance Journal was particularly bitter at the defeat of the 1885 Permissive Bill which would have limited the licensing of liquor establishments claiming "St. John's has been delivered over to the rule of the publicans by the clergy of the Roman Catholic church" (Feb. 14, 1885). In this period, it strongly opposed "the chicken-hearted editor of the [Terra Nova] Advocate and its penny-a-liners who have been teaching that drunkenness is a virtue" (Feb. 20, 1885) The Temperance Journal also carried the usual features of newspapers of the time including local and foreign news, "domestic and useful" items, humor, poetry and serial fiction.

This newspaper's description was sourced from Suzanne Ellison's Historical Directory of Newfoundland and Labrador Newspapers.