RVA Legends — Temperance Hotel

AKA, Sizer’s Tavern
Fifth and Hull Streets

A beacon of sobriety in old Manchester.

No Alcohol Sales On Sunday signs popped up everywhere after July 8, 1861 when an ordinance prohibiting the sale of liquor on Sunday passed. The Richmond Daily Examiner reported that the city council of Richmond now required that Hotel-keepers, restaurant owners, beer saloons, or any place that sells spirits, beer, or cider must close every day at ten o’clock at night and may not open at all on Sundays. Violators of this ordinance were subject to fines of twenty dollars a day.

(America In Class)

In the absence of copious amounts of potable water, Americans consumed alcohol in large quantities during the nineteenth century, becoming a strong target for social reform. Alcoholism continued to become more and more common – husbands abusing or raping their wives, drinking away all of their pay, leaving their children with nothing to eat… and eventually women had had enough.

(Alabama Pioneers)

Women held an important role in the beginning of the temperance movement. They increasingly became discontented with their place in society. They formed prayer groups and rallied against saloons, preaching that temperance meant purity, marital stability, economic improvement and prosperity, and religious salvation. Women wanted to resettle their lives and rid society of the substance that caused such economic disparity.

(Rusty Cans) — Pleading with a Saloon Keeper — Women’s Crusade Against Intemperance

Temperance became a fight for peace on the home front. Many women felt that their lives had been disrupted by the repercussions of alcoholism. Some Christians believed drinking was sinful against God. Families were falling apart. Something had to change.

Richmond passed the no sale of alcohol on Sunday’s law to appease those who favored prohibition. Limiting the sale of spirits was at least a step in the right direction for reducing the stresses alcohol caused. Many were angered by the passage of the bill. It decreased profits for restaurants and bar owners. Most viewed this act as the precursor to nation-wide prohibition.

(Alcohol Problems & Solutions) — Devil’s Toboggan Slide

Temperance began by encouraging moderate use of hard liquor, but the movement turned quickly into complete elimination. Prohibition by law became a hot topic in every political campaign at every level of government. The Prohibition Party was created to support a candidate for the prohibition efforts. Religions divided between wets and dries. Strong Methodists, Baptists, and Quakers were strongly in support of temperance, while the wets including Episcopalians and Catholics, did not believe that the government should have the power to define morality.

September 2017 — former location of Temperance Hotel at Fifth & Hull Streets

Temperance was a nationwide issue after the war. Virginia was not alone in restricting the purchases of alcohol. The numbers of women who joined temperance was overwhelming, proving their rising concerns. Women slowly started to gain a voice in government and not long after in 1919, nationwide prohibition came into effect with the passage of the eighteenth amendment. (The History Engine)

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