Pièce 1 - Dublin Total Abstinence Association Medal

Pewter Medal

A pledge medal of the Dublin Total Abstinence Association dating to 1840. The front (face) shows the Good Shepherd. The outer-rim inscription reads ‘I have found the sheep that was lost Luke Chap. 15 v. 6’. The obverse has a cruciform text of the pledge and reads: ‘I have voluntarily promised in the presence of the Revd. Dr. Spratt to abstain from all spiritous liquors and intoxicating drinks except used medicinally and then by order of a medical man and the discountenance of all the vices and practices of intemperance and also to attend to my religious duties’. The outer-rim inscription reads ‘The Dublin Total Abstinence Pledge The Very Revd. Dr. Spratt Patron 1840’. The maker of the medal was J. Taylor.

Fr. John Spratt O. Carm (1796-1871) was a Dublin-born priest of the Carmelite Order. In 1816, he went to Spain to be educated in a Carmelite College in Castile where he remained for four years. He returned to Ireland and later became Superior of the Irish Carmelites. He was the prime mover in the foundation of many Catholic churches and charitable institutions in Dublin including the Carmelite Church on Whitefriar Street, St. Joseph’s Night Refuge (Brickfield Lane) and the Catholic Asylum for the Blind (Merrion Road). He was an early supporter of the temperance movement and joined Fr. Theobald Mathew OSFC in leading a crusade against intemperance in the mid-nineteenth century. He died on 27 May 1871 and was buried in Glasnevin Cemetery.