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- Mrs Frances Eva celebrated her 93 Birthday on 20 Feb 1988 and found the following from the WCTU of March 1988, where her daughter, Miss Marjorie Eva, stated her mother was involved in the in the WCTU all her life. Mrs Eva has a recollection of a very large (to her) gathering when she was three years old.
The family were living in Cape Town at the time, where Mrs Eva's father James Thomas was a printer with the Citadel Press (Salvation Army). His wife, Mrs Emily Thomas (nee Coombe) was an active worker in the temperance movement and a Salvation Army worker. On the occasion mentioned above, Frances Thomas, aged 3, was taken on to the platform at a meeting and had a large white ribbon bow tied around her and a lovely gift of a doll given to her. She was then proclaimed the first Little White Ribboner of South Africa! Mrs Eva (the little girl of ninety years ago), thinks the occasion may have been the Grahamstown Convention of 1898 for she remembers a fairly long journey. Mrs Eva's parents moved to Queenstown where Mrs Thomas made a considerable contribution to the work of the WCTU. She helped to pioneer the Coloured WCTU work there approximately between 1908 and 1910. Mrs Eva was Superintendent of the Little Ribboners for a number of years.
In the WTCU (Transvaal) Secretary's annual report for 1968/9, Mrs Nortje, the Transvaal Evangelistic Superintendent quoted Mrs Frances Eva's June 1969 circular letter in which she said: "Look at Isaiah 62:6 where God says "I have set watchmen". She also quoted from a later circular letter the following inspiring words:
"Take courage, temperance workers,
You shall not suffer wreck
While up to God the people's prayers
Are ringing from the deck.
Wait cheerily, ye workers
For daylight and for land,
The breath of God is in your sails,
Your rudder in His Hand."
Mrs Frances Eva
From the internet ~ The Woman's Christian Temperance Union (WCTU) was the first mass organization among women devoted to social reform with a program that "linked the religious and the secular through concerted and far-reaching reform strategies based on applied Christianity."Originally organized on December 23, 1873, in Hillsboro, Ohio, and officially declared at a national convention in Cleveland, Ohio in 1874, it operated at an international level and in the context of religion and reform, including missionary work as well as matters of social reform such as suffrage . Two years after its founding, the American WCTU sponsored an international conference at which the International Women's Christian Temperance Union was formed.
The connections and contradictions between the two parts of its purpose - Christianity and Temperance - meant that the women involved confronted ideological, philosophical, political and practical dilemmas in their efforts to improve society around the world. Although some labelled the Union as gender-biased, others disagreed by pointing out the many male supporters behind the scenes.
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