American Toby Jug Museum 

Father Matthews salt glazed stoneware toby jug produced by Oldfield & Co of Brampton, England, circa 1830. Theobald Mathew (1790 - 1856) was an Irish priest and orator known as the "Apostle of Temperance." Ordained in 1813, Mathew entered the Capuchin order, of which he was made provincial in 1822. Concurrently, the earliest European temperance organizations were forming in Ireland, and in 1838 Mathew became president of the Cork Total Abstinence Society. Between 1838 and 1842 he traveled throughout Ireland where people flocked to hear him, and whole crowds took the temperance pledge. The number of abstainers in Ireland alone in 1841 was estimated to be 4,647,000, and in three years the consumption of spirits dropped approximately 50 percent, much of this decrease attributable to Mathew's efforts. He traveled to the United States in 1849 to spread his message but suffered a stroke two years later and returned to Ireland, where he remained relatively inactive for the remainder of his life. This is an Ordinary Toby jug, featuring a seated common man of the time wearing 18th century clothing and a tricorn hat, with Father Matthews impressed on the front. The jug is impressed on the back "Oldfield & Co Makers."