Thomas Holliday Barker

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Thomas Holliday Barker
Born6 July 1818
Peterborough, England
Died26 June 1889 (1889-06-27) (aged 70)
Fallowfield, England
Occupation(s)Temperance and vegetarianism advocate
Spouse
Millicent Bates
(m. 1844)
Children4

Thomas Holliday Barker (6 July 1818 – 26 June 1889) was an English temperance and vegetarianism advocate.

Biography[edit]

Thomas Holliday Barker was born in Peterborough on 6 July 1818.[1][2][3] As a young man he was employed as a clerk for a wine merchant. He worked for Wood & Westhead warehousemen in Manchester from 1844 to 1851.[4] Then he became an accountant and commission agent at an office on Princess Street, Manchester.[3][4] He suffered from poor health and became teetotal.[3] In 1837, he signed an abstinence pledge and became secretary of the Spalding Temperance Society.[2]

In 1843, he refused to drink the fermented wine at Wesleyan chapel in Lincoln. This caused controversy and he was disciplined by the church so severed his connection with them.[2] He appealed for support from Frederic Richard Lees.[3] Barker was a founding member of the United Kingdom Alliance (UKA) and its secretary from 1853 to 1883.[3] He was paid £500 a year and became a well known temperance leader in Britain.[3] He married Millicent Bates in 1844, they had four sons.[3]

Barker communicated with American temperance advocates such as Edward C. Delavan and Neal Dow.[3] He was a founder of the Union and Emancipation Society. Barker was a vegetarian. In the 1850s, he served in the committee of the Manchester and Salford Vegetarian Association. He authored the vegetarian book, Thoughts, Facts and Hints on Human Dietetics.[3] He was influential in converting Francis William Newman to vegetarianism.[3] Barker was an early member of the Vegetarian Society.[5]

Barker died in Fallowfield on 26 June 1889.[4]

Selected publications[edit]

  • Thoughts, Facts and Hints on Human Dietetics (1870)

References[edit]

  1. ^ The Annals of Manchester: A Chronological Record from the Earliest Times to the End of 1885. Manchester: John Heywood, 1886. p. 264
  2. ^ a b c Cherrington, Ernest Hurst. (1925). Standard Encyclopedia of the Alcohol Problem, Volume 1. American Issue Publishing Company. p. 275
  3. ^ a b c d e f g h i j Blocker, Jack S. Fahey, David M; Tyrrell, Ian R. (2003). Alcohol and Temperance in Modern History: An International Enclyopedia, Volume 1. ABC-CLIO. pp. 87-88. ISBN 1-57607-833-7
  4. ^ a b c Boase, Frederic. (1965). Modern English Biography: Containing Many Thousand Concise Memoirs of Persons Who Have Died Between the Years 1851-1900, Volume IV. Frank Cass & Co. p. 267
  5. ^ Forward, Charles W. (1898). Fifty Years of Food Reform: A History of the Vegetarian Movement in England. London: The Ideal Publishing Union. pp. 44-45

External links[edit]