Heaton and the Temperance effect – one family’s story

1901–1922 – William and Elizabeth Purves

The last resident in our Stannington Avenue house, John Robinson Glendenning, had an unusual (gold prospecting in Australia!) and eventful life. So who would take up residence after he left in 1901?

William Purves (pronounced Purvis) and his wife Elizabeth Rycroft Purves set up home there in the same year. William was a 42 year old Scotsman born in Berwickshire. His wife, 39-year old Elizabeth, was originally from Bradford, Yorkshire, and they had married at Blackett Street Presbyterian church in July 1883.

They brought their five children with them – 17 year old Elizabeth (Lily) Spence, 16 year old Augustine Ethel, Florence Augusta aged 13, Eveline Annie (9) and William Alexander Thomas (4). The Purves family stayed longer than the previous occupants, remaining in Stannington Avenue from 1901 until 1922.

William was the manager of a Cocoa Room at 19 Clayton Street near Grainger Market, one of the rising number of non-alcoholic cafes that were a product of the Victorian Temperance movement.

Victorian society was much concerned about the lives of working people. The God-fearing and upright believed that among the working classes too much money was being spent on drink, with families left in penury from husbands incapable of restraining their more sociable impulses. The cocoa rooms were their answer to what they saw as growing abuse of alcohol by working men.

Some might have argued that high levels of alcohol abuse were an inevitable consequence of what was often hard and unpleasant labour. But entertaining such ‘socialist’ ideas at a time of fast industrialisation, when multiple new businesses were creating jobs and wealth, would have been difficult.

A new mass movement – Temperance

The Cocoa Rooms were established specifically to try and counter this rising alcoholism. The prime mover was the Temperance movement, which had the support of mine owners and industrial barons concerned about loss of productivity. The Methodist church in particular was closely involved – the founder of the Methodists John Wesley had claimed back in 1743 that ‘buying, selling, and drinking of liquor, unless absolutely necessary, were evils to be avoided’ – and the church remains known for its anti-alcohol stance.

The Temperance movement promoted alcohol education, printing pamphlets and publishing articles in the press on the dangers of alcoholic excess and drunkenness. Campaigners urged Parliament to pass new laws restricting the sale of alcohol. People were encouraged to ‘take the pledge’ (i.e. give up alcohol), and in 19th century Britain, Temperance quickly became a mass movement.

In Newcastle, people like James Birkett played an important role. In 1891 Birkett, of 37 Heaton Park Road, had been a respected Liberal councillor for eight years. He was also, as President of the Byker and Heaton Temperance Council, an influential campaigner on temperance, with the result that Heaton developed as an area with very few public houses.

The Temperance movement became so strong in the locality that Heaton gained a reputation for automatically opposing any application for licensed premises. In 1897 for example, the Heaton Anti-Licencing Council declared that any new public house would ‘destroy the character Heaton had had in the past for moral perfection and purity’ (with thanks for the reference to Karl Cain of Heaton History Group).

Hot chocolate for the workers

There was an important difference in the late 1800s between coffee houses and cocoa rooms. Coffee houses had been around in British cities since the 17th century, but their clientèle consisted primarily of the literary and commercial classes. Much of the original business of the City of London had been conducted in coffee houses; Lloyd’s of London being a prime example.

The cocoa rooms, by contrast, were aimed squarely at working men. The earliest establishments were set up in Liverpool in the 1870s. The Liverpool Mercury in 1880 noted that: ‘The forty first cocoa room in connection with the British Workman Public House Company was opened on Monday evening in premises opposite the Central Rail Station in Ranelagh Street’.

With the help of the Temperance movement, cocoa rooms quickly became established in the industrialised towns and cities of northern England, where an expanding workforce was needed for the mills, the mines and the factories. Lockhart’s Cocoa Rooms, founded by Robert Lockhart, became a notable chain offering refreshments in a teetotal environment. They had support from the leading businessmen of the day – John Cadbury of Cadbury’s Chocolate was, unsurprisingly perhaps, one of them.

But the cocoa rooms were more than simply a high-minded experiment – they were businesses run on commercial principles. They may have been founded following Temperance ideals, but still had to offer a real service to working men and women, places they could find relaxation and comfort.

As well as hot cocoa to drink, customers could expect to find tables and chairs with plenty of newspapers, and games such as cards, chess and draughts. Such establishments tended to have a good reputation, often with their own brand crockery, and offered tea, coffee, cocoa, soft drinks and simple food at affordable prices. Lockhart’s even offered their own token with a value of one penny (1d), which entitled a customer to a penny’s worth of refreshments at any Lockhart’s cocoa room.

By the end of the 19th century there were over sixty Lockhart’s cocoa rooms in London alone and approximately eleven in Glasgow, three in Leeds, nine in Newcastle, two in South Shields, with one each in Darlington, Jarrow and Gateshead. Each establishment typically employed five or six members of staff from the manager to the waitresses and cook (source: A Mudlark’s Diary, Liz Anderson).

Temperance refreshment-rooms were also introduced into railway stations as a means of promoting healthier, cleaner and more family-friendly travel. Refreshments typically included tea, coffee, cocoa, lemonade and various light snacks. The Great Western Railway (GWR) and the London and North Western Railway (LNWR) were among the early adopters of Temperance refreshment rooms.

Purves family and the cocoa rooms

So where does the Purves family come into the story? In 1881, 18 year old Elizabeth Rycroft Spence was living in Newcastle with her parents, an insurance agent and a dressmaker, at 180 Stone Street (perhaps Store St) in the west end of the city. Like her older sister Louisa, Elizabeth was employed as a cocoa-room waitress.

Her future husband, 23 year old William Purves, was still living in Edinburgh with his parents; his father was a railway porter. Perhaps young William was travelling to Newcastle regularly. Because at some point he met and fell for Bradford-born Elizabeth – they married at Blackett Street Presbyterian church in July 1883. Children followed rapidly, four girls and a boy.

It seems the family moved around for a while. William and Elizabeth’s eldest child Elizabeth Spence was born in South Shields. However by 1888 they had settled in the west end of Newcastle – the couple’s third child Florence Augusta was baptised at Arthurs Hill URC (Presbyterian non-conformist church demolished in the 1970s) on Northcote Street, while the family were living at 257 Beaconsfield Street, a Victorian Tyneside flat.

In 1891 the couple, with three daughters, were living at 164 Croydon Road, a row of pleasant Victorian terraces, in Arthur’s Hill. William was already the manager of a cafe.

In 1894, Ward’s directory showed the firm Lockhart, Smith & Co. as running over 16 cocoa rooms across central Newcastle. William Purves was also listed as a cocoa-room manager, although whether the premises he managed was part of the Lockhart chain is unknown. By 1897 the family had moved to 137 Croydon Road, and William was still shown as a cafe manager.

Yet in 1901 the Purves undertook a considerable move, from the west end of Newcastle to Stannington Avenue in Heaton. Why did they transfer across the city to the east end, bearing in mind that it was further away from William’s business in the city centre? It may be that the birth of their fifth child, William Alexander Thomas, drove a desire for more space and cleaner air.

But I think it is likely that William, with his non-conformist sympathies and Liberal views, found Heaton both more congenial and more convenient for meeting like-minded friends and associates. As a cocoa-room proprietor he would probably have known James Birkett, President of the Byker and Heaton Temperance Council, who as a well-known Liberal councillor was a man of influence in the city.

The Temperance Council was known to meet in Moore’s Cocoa Rooms at 46 Shields Road, Byker (opposite the present Morrison’s supermarket) throughout the 1880s-1890s. By 1910 William had also become a member of the Byker and Heaton Burials Board, of which Birkett happened to be chairman.

In any case, in 1901 William Purves, now 42, his wife Elizabeth Rycroft and their five children ranging in age from three to 15 years settled into Stannington Avenue, together with a servant, 21-year old Mary Robertson from Stockton. William was still listed as managing a cafe in the city, but retained voting rights at 137 Croydon Road rather than in Stannington Avenue – presumably while the registers caught up with the family move.

Wards 1901 directory shows him as the cocoa-room proprietor of an ‘Eating House’ at 19 Clayton Street, next to Grainger Market. It must have been a prime location – perhaps more likely to be serving customers at the market who didn’t want to go into a pub, hence the term ‘Eating House’ rather than cocoa room. In 2026 the premises has become the Olive & Bean cafe.

The 1901 census also shows his eldest daughter, 15-year old Elizabeth Spence, employed as an assistant in a cocoa room. It isn’t stated, but I imagine it was the same cafe.

A reputation for activism

It seems that by this time some cocoa-room proprietors were attempting to move more upmarket. Prime city centre locations were becoming valued meeting places for the more liberal and activist members of Edwardian society.

The cocoa rooms espoused by the Temperance movement would have provided congenial venues for example to Britain’s growing number of Women’s Suffrage societies. In Wales, the first branch of the National Society of Women’s Suffrage Societies was set up at The Cocoa House in Llandudno on 23rd January 1907.

Women were joining the Temperance societies in order to fight the negative effects of alcohol on families, and the cocoa rooms provided a social space where they could gather and discuss issues including women’s rights and suffrage. In Heaton, one leading campaigner was Florence Nightingale Harrison Bell, who lived on Hotspur Street for over 20 years (a black plaque commemorates her life).

At 19 Clayton Street in the city centre, William continued to manage the cocoa room all through the early 1900s, until by 1910 the premises was known as a ‘Dining Room’.

War and the British Army in India

The Purves were still in Stannington Avenue at the start of the First World War, when in 1915 the family’s youngest, William Alexander Thomas, enlisted into the British Army at the age of 18. William junior joined the Royal Field Artillery, and in October 1917 was posted to India as an artillery clerk.

In April 1918 he joined British Army troops as a Bombardier at the Jubbelpore cantonment in Jabalpure, in Madhya Pradesh, India. Jabalpure was an important administrative centre in the Central Provinces of British India. It was also a railway town – a key junction on the original Bombay-Calcutta trunk railway line, with large rail workshops and employing significant numbers of people on the railway.

He did not remain long however. Within a year, on 17th February 1919 he was moved back to the British Army transit camp of Deolali, close to Mumbai. Conditions in the camp were said to be unhealthy for anyone assigned there for lengthy periods. So much so that they gave rise to the term ‘doolally’ to describe the effects on mental health. Fortunately, by 22nd February 1919 Bombardier Purves had embarked at Mumbai for the return voyage to the UK.

End of an era

On demobilisation, William Alexander returned to join the rest of the family in Stannington Avenue. In 1921, his father William was now director of Swans Cafe at 19 Clayton Street, his older sister Elizabeth Spence had left home, and another sister Eveline Annie had become a schoolteacher.

But British society was changing fast after the end of the war. In the 1920s, worldwide recession brought extreme economic hardship, especially in once-thriving industrial centres like the north east which had depended on exports for their prosperity. The number of unemployed UK-wide reached into the millions, and the impact for many was starvation.

With such real issues to face, people were less inclined to concern themselves with Victorian principles about alcohol. The influence of the Temperance movement began to wane, and the cocoa rooms, with fewer customers, became less popular. The Lockhart’s name appeared less frequently, and the Temperance-oriented refreshment rooms at railway stations also began to vanish.

In any case it seems that by 1922 the Purves family had decided to move. In 1923, William, Elizabeth and their youngest William Alexander Thomas settled into Lesbury House, 46 Lesbury Road, Heaton. ‘Purves Cafe Ltd’ remained in business at 19 Clayton Street. In July 1924, William junior married Agnes Clark in Newcastle and moved away, eventually becoming an accountant. The couple went on to have one child, another William Purves.

Purves Cafe continued at 19 Clayton Street with William and Elizabeth living at 46 Lesbury Road until 1933, when a second Purves cafe opened at 101 Percy Street. It is likely the Purves sensed an opportunity, because this second cafe was situated directly across the road from Newcastle’s brand new bus station on Haymarket, constructed in 1930.

William Purves passed away aged 78 on 4th October 1936. He was interred in Heaton Cemetery on the 7th October, leaving some £5,961 19s 5d to his widow Elizabeth Rycroft Purves as sole beneficiary. That same day, the Newcastle Evening Chronicle carried an article announcing his death, and remarking his notable 50 year association with the city catering trade.

The two cafes continued in business however, presumably now run by William’s widow Elizabeth, until the start of the Second World War in 1939. In 1940 Elizabeth chose to downsize to a smaller home, moving to 18 Cotswold Gardens in High Heaton. She also closed the second cafe, keeping only the original premises at 19 Clayton Street.

But it seems that the events of WWII were too much for the continued survival of the business, and by 1947 the name Purves Cafe could no longer be found. Number 19 Clayton Street showed only the premises of a fruiterer. Elizabeth passed away in January 1950, leaving some £12,179 1s 1d to her daughter Eveline Annie and son William Alexander Thomas. She was interred with her husband at Heaton Cemetery, together with their daughter Florence Augusta (who had died in 1933).

The Purves family, which had risen to prosperity through its association with the Temperance movement, then disappeared into the pages of history, more or less at the same time as the passing of the cocoa rooms. Their generation was perhaps among the last holders of the confidence and surety that characterised 19th century Victorian society, and a self-belief that disappeared as the twentieth century changed Britain forever.

Back to Part 1:
The House on Victoria Street, Part 1

© Philip Hunt 2026

More information

https://heatonhistorygroup.org/2022/11/06/town-with-no-cheer-1890s-heaton/
‘Town with No Cheer’, 1890s’ Heaton – Heaton and Temperance, Heaton History Group.

https://heatonhistorygroup.org/2022/08/02/heatons-building-society-uncovered/
Moores Cocoa Rooms in Byker, a meeting place for Temperance campaigners, suffragistes and other Liberal activists. Also home of the putative Newcastle upon Tyne East End Economic Building Society.

https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-england-london-68256090
Restoring London’s Smithfield Market, including a Lockhart’s Cocoa Room.