ABSTRACT
Constructed as a decorated pinnacle in Victorian Gothic style, the Preston Teetotal Monument stands in the obscurity of the Preston General Cemetery; any claim that it ever had to splendour lay in the eyes of its long-dead creators. It has not been noticed in modern histories of the temperance movement or in writings concerned with Victorian rituals of death. The Preston teetotalers were correct to describe this as an unusual memorial, and over the years they made it the centrepiece of an even more unusual phenomenon. It was designed to stand in a section of the cemetery that the Teetotal Society had purchased for the burial of some of its poorer members. The Castle of Monopoly was Livesey's metaphor for the domination of Britain in his day by a ruling establishment consisting of reactionary Tories, corrupt politicians, greedy landowners, the Church of England hierarchy, the armed forces, slave owners and other time-worn agencies of darkness and oppression.
