John Lloyd Thomas
John Lloyd Thomas was an English-born American journalist, housing reformer, and prominent advocate for prohibition. Born in Witton Park, England, he emigrated to the United States with his family in 1867 and was educated both in England and Maryland. Thomas initially pursued a career in journalism while actively supporting the National Prohibition Party, significantly contributing to its organization in the southeastern and northeastern states during the 1880s. He served as secretary of the party from 1888 until 1892, a period marked by the party's highest electoral success.
In addition to his political endeavors, Thomas became increasingly concerned with the living conditions of urban workers, which he believed contributed to social issues such as alcoholism and crime. His efforts led him to manage the Mills Hotel in New York City, a progressive initiative that provided affordable, sober accommodations to workers. Thomas also edited various publications advocating for improved housing conditions for the urban poor. His legacy reflects the broader concerns of the progressive era regarding social reform and the impact of industrialization on urban life. He passed away in 1925 in Mamaroneck, New York.
Subject Terms
John Lloyd Thomas
- John Lloyd Thomas
- Born: April 22, 1857
- Died: February 6, 1925
Prohibitionist, housing reformer, and journalist, was born in Witton Park, England, the son of the Rev. Isaac Thomas and Mary (Hopkins) Thomas, who emigrated to Cumberland, Maryland, in 1867. Thomas was educated in schools in England and Maryland and attended college in Utica, New York. In April 1880 he married Mary A. Brant.
Thomas supported himself as a journalist but in the 1880s devoted his energies to promoting the National Prohibition party, of which his father was an active supporter. He created party organizations in Georgia and South Carolina and worked to strengthen existing organizations in several northeastern states. From 1884 through 1888 he served as the Maryland delegate to the national committee. In 1888 Thomas was elected secretary of the party, an office he held until 1892.
The year 1892 was a high point in the party’s history: its presidential candidate received two percent of the vote, the largest percentage any of its candidates would ever receive. But the party was soon superseded as the major prohibition organization in the country by the Anti-Saloon League, which maintained that a prohibition party was unnecessary—that citizens could successfully apply pressure on the two major parties to bring about an end to the liquor traffic. This was accomplished in 1919, with the passage of the Eighteenth Amendment.
From 1888 Thomas lived in New York City, where he wrote about alcoholism and other social problems for newspapers and magazines. He also edited the Constitution, the journal of the National Constitutional League, of which he was secretary for several years. By 1896 he had become convinced that the stress of living in insanitary and crowded rooming houses was responsible for driving many urban workers into alcoholism and crime, and he had traveled to Europe to investigate efforts to provide decent housing for urban workers.
Until his retirement in 1923, Thomas served as the manager of the Mills Hotel, one of two hotels built in 1896 with the financial support of Darius Ogden Mills, the businessman and philanthropist. The Mills Hotel provided cheap, clean rooms to workers on condition that the tenants remain sober and well behaved. It represented an effort to promote morality among urban workers, but it also reflected the larger concern of the progressive era for improving conditions in urban industrial society.
Thomas edited the Brotherhood, a journal that promoted better housing, and wrote and spoke in behalf of the cause. He died in Mamaroneck, New York, at the age of sixty-seven.
Biographical information may be found in Who Was Who in America, vol. 1 (1943). For Thomas’s involvement with the National Prohibition party, see D. L. Colvin, Prohibition in the United States (1926), and for the Mills Hotel see J. L. Thomas, The Mills Hotel with Some Account of the Workingmen’s Hotels in Europe and America (n. d.). Obituaries of Thomas appeared in The New York Times, February 7, 1925, and The New York Herald Tribune, February 7, 1925.