ABSTRACT
The temperance movement increasingly attracted the support of women during the nineteenth century. Mary Ann Thomas was active as a Primitive Methodist revivalist preacher and temperance lecturer in England and Wales in the 1840s, before moving to Victoria after the death of her first husband. Thomas represents a new style of temperance advocate, whose approach anticipated some of the features of the later temperance movement of the 1880s. She was a prominent and controversial figure in her day, whose speeches were widely reported and commented on both in Britain and Australia. This chapter examines the intersection between revivalism and teetotalism and the growing role of ‘gospel temperance’ in the late nineteenth century. It contains a discussion of the speaking ministries of women within Methodist churches and considers the increasing role of women in temperance activism during the second half of the nineteenth century.
