It's accepted that the word, at least in the abstinence sense, was coined by Richard "Dicky" Turner in a speech he gave to a temperance meeting in Preston, Lancashire, in September 1833.
Turner was an illiterate working man, a fish hawker, who had visited one of the early Preston temperance meetings in 1832 as a joke while half-drunk, but who came out of the meeting a convert. He was one of the founding Seven Men of Preston who signed the pledge and became a fervent advocate of that form of temperance that demanded total abstention from all forms of
alcoholic drink, not just spirits as some more moderate reformers
urged.
There's no formal record of what he said at the meeting - one
report had it that his words were "nothing but the tee-total would
do" but it is also claimed that he said in his strong local accent, "I'll be reet down out-and-out t-t-total for ever and ever".
Here's where it all gets a bit murky. Did Dicky Turner stutter, did
he invent a new word by adding "t" as an intensifier to the front of "total", or was he using one already known? We will probably never be entirely sure. What is certain, though, is that his word caught on in the local temperance movement, was often quoted in its journal, the Preston Temperance Advocate, giving the credit to him as inventor, and soon became a standard word in the language.
Richard Turner died in 1846 and is buried in St Peter's churchyard in Preston; he may be the only person in the world whose claim to have invented a new word is cited on his tombstone.
Filing that one for future reference. I have two ex-husbands I may have the pleasure of burying. :laughing:
