22: MotherhoodSince the change in the licensing laws a few years earlier, the risk to landlords of having their patrons drunk in public was heightened and should a landlord himself be found in a state of intoxication it was a certainty that he would lose his licence. The Temperance movement was gaining ground all the time in Middlesbrough and looking for any excuse to shut down a public house or strip a landlord of his licence.
After his drunken collapse during the birth of Marian, Jack stayed off the bottle. He was ashamed of what the drink had done to him. He hated the loss of control and was mortified that he had been reduced so low, bent over a bucket puking his guts up. The pounding head, nausea and exhaustion had lasted long enough to convince him that the after-effects of alcohol w
