Richmond, A. B. Intemperance the Great Source of Crime: Leaves from the Diary of an Old Lawyer. Meadville, Pa.: Press of The Crawford Journal, 1879. First Edition. [10705]
Green cloth, boards decorated in blind & black, gilt titles to spine, 7 1/2 x 5 1/4 inches, a few light spots to the binding, tight. Color frontispiece of stages of stomach disease showing the effects of drinking alcohol. 277 generally clean pp., a few showing shadows from floral or other inserts. Good. Hardcover.
The true first edition with the 1879 Meadville imprint.
An invitation from the Woman's Temperance Association to give a lecture on the contributing factor alcohol plays in criminal activity led to the author writing this book.
"It has been my object as far as possible to present the subject in a manner somewhat new; to travel out of the beaten path of temperance lecturers, and to convince my readers, if possible, that prohibition by law is the only means by which the traffic in alcohol can be abolished, and the country relieved of the great curse of intemperance." - Preface.
The book is full of examples from his law practice of the ruination caused by alcohol.
Almond Benson Richmond (1825-1906), b. Switzerland Co., Indiana; d. Meadville, Pennsylvania. Richmond was a direct descendant of John Richmond, a Puritan who came over on the Mayflower. His grandfather, William Richmond, was a soldier in the Revolutionary War; his father Lawton Richmond was a surgeon in the War of 1812 and a Methodist Episcopal local preacher.
A. B. graduated at Allegheny College, took the medical course at Meadville, practiced medicine for three years while studying for the bar, and "found his medical knowledge of much service in his law practice. Mr. Richmond is one of the most noted criminal lawyers in this State, have been employed in over 4,000 criminal cases, sixty-five being homicides. He is also a temperance lecturer and author for many years; was State Commissioner for Pennsylvania at the World's Fair, 1866." - Crawford County, Pennsylvania, History & Biography, (1885) pp. 765-66.
