With alcohol abuse being blamed for widespread poverty and social issues at the start of the 1800s, reformers began turning against booze. Temperance societies appeared in the 1830s, formed by people who committed themselves to a life of abstinence, while also helping those affected by drink and advocating for restrictions on alcohol. Over the century millions would sign the same pledge as part of attempts at self-improvement, turning the Temperance movement into one of England's largest social campaigns of the time.
At their peak, nearly a third of England's temperance halls aimed at curbing the scourge of alcohol once stood in London - a statistic that says as much about Victorian drinking habits in the capital as it does about the scale of the movement that rose up to challenge them. And many of the survivors are "hidden in plain sight" with new names and functions.
Not one mob but two awaits him as his casket rolls out of the factory gates. On one side are evangelistic followers of the Temperance movement, whose objections to the Guinness family don't really need to be explained. On the other hand, there's the Fenians, the unruliest of the factions pushing for Irish independence from Great Britain. Sure, Benjamin Guinness might have made great beer, but he was also a unionist and a Protestant.