Gough, JOHN BARTHOLOMEW

Gough, JOHN BARTHOLOMEW, temperance lecturer, was born at Sandgate, Kent, August 22, 1817; his father was a pensioner of the Peninsular war, his mother a village schoolmistress. At the age of twelve he was sent to America, and worked on a farm in Oneida county, New York. In 1831 he went to New York city, where he found employment in the binding department of the Methodist book establishment; but habits of dissipation lost him this employment, and reduced him to that of giving recitations and singing comic songs at low grog-shops. He was married in 1839; but his drunken habits reduced him to poverty and delirium tremens, and probably caused the death of his wife and child. In 1842 a benevolent Quaker induced him to attend a temperance meeting and take the pledge; and soon afterwards, resolving to devote the remainder of his life to the cause of temperance, Gough attended temperance meetings and related his experience with such effect as to influence many others. A few months later he had a short relapse into drunkenness; but an eloquent confession restored him to favour, and he lectured with great pathos, humour, and earnestness in various parts of America. In 1853 he was engaged by the London Temperance League, and lectured for two years in the United Kingdom, where he attracted large crowds to his meetings. He was again in England in 1857-60 and 1878. In some of his later addresses he took up literary and social topics, and acquired a moderate fortune by his lectures. He died at Frankford, Pennsylvania, February 18, 1886. He published an Autobiography (1846); Orations (1854); Temperance Address (1870); Temperance Lectures (1879); and Sunlight and Shadow, or Gleanings from my Life-work (1880).