Cora Frances Stoddard
Cora Frances Stoddard was a prominent American temperance writer and educator, born in Irvington, Nebraska, and raised in East Brookfield, Massachusetts. She graduated from Wellesley College in 1896 and initially worked as a teacher and in business before dedicating her career to temperance advocacy. Stoddard became involved with the Woman's Christian Temperance Union (WCTU) in 1899, serving as private secretary to Mary H. Hunt, which led to her pivotal role in advocating for scientific temperance education in public schools across the United States. Over the next three decades, she held key positions in various organizations, including the Scientific Temperance Federation, where she edited the Scientific Temperance Journal and authored materials highlighting the effects of alcohol. Stoddard's work was influential in the broader prohibition movement, and she represented the U.S. at international congresses on alcoholism. Despite facing health challenges, she continued her efforts until her death in 1936. Her writings remain significant in the history of temperance advocacy, reflecting a complex blend of scientific inquiry and moral perspective on alcohol consumption.
Cora Frances Stoddard
- Cora Stoddard
- Born: September 17, 1872
- Died: May 13, 1936
Temperance writer and educator, was born on a farm in Irvington, Nebraska. Shortly after her birth, the parents, Emerson Hathaway Stoddard and Julia Frances (Miller) Stoddard, brought the family back to their native Massachusetts, settling in East Brookfield. There both parents became active in temperance work; her mother was president of the local Woman’s Christian Temperance Union (WCTU). Although the family was Episcopalian, Cora Stoddard became a Congregationalist in later life.
She was educated in public schools and then at Wellesley College, where Stoddard received her bachelor’s degree in 1896. A one-year teaching job at Middletown, Connecticut, was followed by two years in business in East Brookfield.
Stoddard’s reform activities began in 1899 when she accepted a position as private secretary to Mary H. Hunt, director of the Department of Scientific Temperance Instruction for the national WCTU. As a result of the department’s lobbying efforts, most states required their public schools to provide some form of education on the subject. Stoddard’s task was to evaluate, prepare, write, and edit books and other temperance materials destined for school use. In 1904 she resigned for health reasons and took an administrative post at the normal school in Cortland, New York.
Two years later, however, she was called back to related work by a group in Boston that had formed the Scientific Temperance Federation. The organization wanted to continue the work of Mary Hunt’s Scientific Temperance Association, which endorsed science textbooks supporting its position and received royalties from publishers for an imprimatur. When Hunt died in 1906, Cora Stoddard—asked fey the Boston group to take over—became executive secretary and ran the federation during the next thirty years.
Aside from editing the organization’s Scientific Temperance Journal, she wrote pamphlets and articles on the social and physiological effects of alcohol, prepared exhibits, and compiled statistics. In 1913 her association and its journal became affiliated with the Anti-Saloon League, which was leading the fight for a prohibition amendment to the Constitution.
In 1918 Stoddard was also asked to become director of the national WCTU’s Bureau of Scientific Temperance Investigation and, during 1922, of its Department of Scientific Temperance Instruction in Schools. She accepted similar duties with the world WCTU in 1925 and served as an associate editor on the Standard Encyclopedia of the Alcohol Problem (6 vols., 1924—30), issued under the auspices of the Anti-Saloon League.
Through her publishing activities, Stoddard became known in prohibitionist circles around the world. Along with other activities, she represented the United States government at the London Twelfth International Congress Against Alcoholism, in 1909, and during 1921 delivered a paper on “Visual Education Against Alcohol” at the Sixteenth International Congress Against Alcoholism, in Lausanne, Switzerland.
Her analysis of the liquor problem relied on the rapidly developing concepts, language, and findings of modern science and medicine. These, she argued, provided objective means by which to ascertain the pernicious consequences of even moderate drinking and also offered some hope for treating the physical and neurological damage that drinking produced.
Despite a zeal for the scientific, however, Stoddard was not a disinterested, or formally trained, scientist. (Instead, like many prohibitionists, she regarded alcoholism largely as moral weakness, a cause rather than a result of economic and social deprivation.) Her aforementioned Scientific Temperance Journal reflected such a compound approach with its international selection of articles by writers and researchers. A typical issue (vol. 40, 1931) included anecdotal material on drinking behavior, a discussion of “The Elusive Case of Liver Cirrhosis,” and a “German Philosopher’s Interpretation of Alcoholism,” among dozens of other articles and notes.
Stoddard’s crippling arthritis forced her to resign in 1933 from all positions except one with the Scientific Temperance Federation. Three years later, at age sixty-three, she died of cancer at the Oxford, Connecticut home of her brother Hubert. She was buried in Walnut Grove Cemetery, North Brookfield, Massachusetts.
Still useful among Stoddard’s writings are Wet and Dry Years in a Decade of Massachusetts Public Records (1922), Alcohol’s Ledger in Industry (1914), and History of Scientific Temperance Instruction (n.d.). A bibliography of her works can be found in Who Was Who in America (1942). Notable American Women (1971) provides the best account of her life. Also useful are entries in the Standard Encyclopedia of the Alcohol Problem, vols. 5 (1929) and 6 (1930).