Matthew Burnett

Matthew Burnett (1839-1896), the ‘Yorkshire Evangelist’, spent more than twenty years denouncing alcohol in the Australian colonies. He is said to have been a wayward youth, who was saved, in 1857, by the prayers of an admirer; they subsequently married. In 1863 the couple arrived in Victoria. Immediately Burnett began urging a life of strict sobriety – combined with industry, thrift, self-reliance, pluck, perseverance and loyalty to principle – upon the young men of Melbourne. Between 1864 and 1867 he was on the goldfields, where he is said to have secured 11 000 pledges; in Ballarat alone he persuaded 3600 women to renounce alcohol. Well before the Salvation Army appeared in Australia, his meetings were enlivened by choirs, brass bands and torch-light processions. From early 1880 the famed ‘apostle of temperance’ was in South Australia, where he influenced the establishment of the city’s huge ‘coffee palaces’, alternatives to pubs. By 1889 he had received pledges from 140 000 people. That year, he gave his first lecture in Sydney, supported by representatives of the Independent Order of Rechabites, the Congregationalists, the Blue Ribbon Army, the Sons of Temperance, the Baptists and the Sailors of the Port; it was remarked that he was so hoarse from his years of shouting at crowds, he could hardly be heard. In 1890 he returned to England.