Trove archive: Two vans belonging to the Sons of Scotland Temperance Friendly Society stand in a street of Larkhall (where the headquarters were based), Dalserf parish, Lanarkshire, in around 1955. As a friendly society, the Sons of Scotland promoted saving. Some payments into the society were used like insurance to help members when sick, injured at work, bereaved, at marriage and in education (see W.MS.1993.35/12 in the Scottish Life Archive). After the end of World War II (1939 – 1945), the starting up of the National Health Service made some of these benefits out of date. Twos of the saving clocks (mantle clocks that doubled as piggy banks) from the society are now in the collections of the National Museums of Scotland along with a number of other artefacts: [H.1993.623-630]. When the Sons of Scotland was set up in the 1840s drunkenness was seen as a great social problem. Temperance, or teetotalism, was seen as a path to better wealth, health and moral fibre. The first, least successful, temperance societies promoted reasonable drinking. It was only those which demanded abstinence of their members that stood the test of time.
Motherwell Times, 9 October 1959:
The Sunday Post, 22 April 1962:
