Father Mathew Temperance Teacup- Five Points, NY
Museum of the City of New York, Courtesy John Milner Associates and the U.S. General Services Administration.
This teacup was found in a backyard privy of former Five Points, a Manhattan neighborhood during the mid to late 19th century. Five Points was also a large haven for immigrants, particularly Irish families escaping the The Great Famine (1845-1852). As a result, their presence was as tied to number of “social ills” such as illness, poverty, immorality and drunkenness.
Both the Protestant and Catholic church singled out alcohol consumption as a major cause of Irish people’s inability to “better themselves”, which sparked the Temperance Movement. This teacup is promoting the movement by featuring the leader, Father Theobald Mathew, on the exterior and mottos “Temperance and Industry” and “Industry Pays Debts” in the interior of the cup (not photographed). Father Mathew is encouraging the audience to recite “the pledge”, a declaration to abstain from alcohol. The pledge was the basis of all Father Mathew’s speaking engagements, one of them hosted in New York between 1849 and 1851.
One of the biggest questions is how the cup ended up in New York. The makers mark pinpoints it’s origins to William Adams- an English Staffordshire potter who operated between 1815 and 1835. Meanwhile, most of the families that occupied the Five Point’s tenement did not arrive until the mid 1850s. Archaeologists suggests that the cup may have been a 20 year old keepsake that traveled during the migration and later discarded in New York.
