was Rutherford a drunk person ? (page 3)

Witness 007

Good article Leiola...as the link states there is a link between beer and other hard alcohol but NOT wine...this is because wine especially red is full of anti-oxiadants, other alcohol is just plain bad for your intestines and anus. This is what confuses the statistics. Heavy Alcohol and a diet of high protien rich foods and smoking are what cause this desease. Rutherford had all of these. Alcoholics tend to have diarea problems and hemoriod problems on the anus due to the harsh alcohol in there system. {not talking about occasional heavy drinkers but chronic alcoholics}

Witness 007

Also the 1975 yearbook has his housekeeper say that RUTHERFORD would stay up working all night long and sleep all day long???? Weird behaviour for a President. But many alcoholics do this....even function reasonable well. They stay up drinking all night till they eventually pass out, then sleep it off most of the day.

R.Crusoe

Well 007 you have just confirmed an old argument I once had in front of a householder with an older brother who advised the catholic on his doorstep never to set foot inside his local church since asteroids were targeted for it as per the book of Revelation and some pre 1930 s literature he remembered!!

I was sure his age had confused him as to an article about Rutherfords heameroids but sadly he passed away a few years ago and I can never experience the satisfaction of letting him know!

Witness 007

There is alot of evidence and witnesses that he was an alcoholic....enough for any court to pronounce him guilty! Why would people make it up.....chubby Rutherford was in Time magazine in his cocktail room sipping some nice booze! And his best and only friend Society Lawyer Covington was many years later disfellowshiped for being an alcoholic.

Leolaia

Witness007...Yeah, I wondered about including the statement from the 1975 Yearbook, which is suggestive but open to interpretation. There was also an incident Olin Moyle mentioned in the trial which could easily be interpreted as a drunken rage, with Rutherford throwing a chair "the whole length of the room" (p. 1597), but again that is open to interpretation. The photo of Rutherford and the beer keg is, of course, another relevent piece of information. To me, C. J. Woodworth is most damning, as he basically concedes that Rutherford drank a lot but did so because of a medical problem that was very painful for him. Woodworth's statement also gives quite a bit of fodder for further research. I would love to see some chiropractor publications from the time that discussed the use of alcohol in treating ankylosis or other back problems, or the chiropractor view of the role of alcohol in the nervous system as the "perfect nutrient". It seems that Rutherford and his chiropractor believed that the amount of alcohol that he drank was not immoderate given his physical condition. Perhaps it would be immoderate for the average person who did not suffer with the pain that Rutherford suffered, but Rutherford apparently felt that his condition justified the amount of alcohol he drank in order to treat it.

boyzone

Is there any way of getting hold of Rutherfords medical records? I know they're confidential, but does that confidentiality last forever? Is there a point in time where these records come into the public domain?

Anyone know the name of his doctor?

Leolaia

Rutherford had a private chiropractor, not a doctor, and the WTB&TS supplied various nurses to care for him -- so I doubt those records would be public as well. I'm not sure where one would look for other records, but maybe there are some out there. Assuming that he was once a patient at the Pottenger Sanitarium, those records may have once existed but the Pottenger records were reportedly destroyed in a fire. The only thing I know of that is publically available is his death certificate.

Nathan Natas

I think you can't discuss Rutherford's documented affection fo booze without also asking the question, "When did this drinking start?"

My speculation is that Rutherford was not a drunkard in his youth, and probably not when he took his first position with the WTB&TS by joining the Bethel "family" as Watchtower legal counsel in 1907. Strangely enough it appears he DID NOT move his family to Brooklyn. When his son Malcom registered for the draft, he gave his address as Los Angeles, CA, and that is where the 1920 census found Mrs. Rutherford.

In 1916 the world turned upside down when CTR died. For whatever reason, JFR wanted desperately to be the top man in the Watchtower. Maybe he thought that then he would have access to the modern version of the "holy of holies" and actually be able to communicate with the spirit realm. He did claim that angels communicated with him. SURPRISE! Go directly to jail! In 1918 Rutherford was sentenced to four consecutive 20 year tems in US Federal prison. He could expect release in 1938 (which would have been four years before his death. Quite likely, given his weak constitution, he would have died in jail before 1938 had he been required to serve the full term.)

Rutherford had the real-life pressures of running the Watchtower organization and the spiritual pressure of unfulfilled expectations and speculations. Was the challenge too much for him to bear without "self-medicating"?

By 1925, Bible Students were getting impatient. They believed that Christ had returned nearly 50 years earlier in 1874. If so, when were things going to start happening? Where was the kingdom they had been promised. Rutherford electrified the membership with the announcement that "millions now living will never die!"

In 1926 JFR's mother died. Did SHE expect to be one of millions now living who will never die? Did her son have that expectation? It is unlikely that JFR just shrugged off his mother's death. In 1929 Beth Sarim was built and Rutherford moved in, living there until his death. His wife and son did not join him there.

One thing is pretty certain: by the mid-to-late 1930s, the testimony of his contemporaries shows that Rutherford had an intimate relationship with the bottle.

Leolaia

Definitely he was self-medicating, although if we may draw an inference from Woodworth, I would suppose that alcohol was prescribed by Mr. Eckols to treat Rutherford's condition. My guess is that Rutherford took it up especially under Eckols' encouragement, which would have been by 1927 at the latest (if not earlier in 1925 or 1926, it is not clear when Eckols began treating him). Of course, it may have been the case that he was drinking already. Gruss (2003:213) mentions that some have claimed that Mary Rutherford was an alcoholic. In any case, it is probable that he increased the amount he drank over time and that when it was clear that he was abusing it, he still justified his behavior as simply following his doctor's orders. At least that is how Woodworth justified it, and he likely was parroting the justification that Rutherford gave for it.

I have a letter written by Lenora Rutherford in 1920 on behalf of her son (apparently he had no birth certificate)...good point about her death, I have thought the same thing with respect to William Van Amburgh's mother and brother.

Lady Lee

Let's not forget that Rutherford's drinking pushed him to ignore the prohibition on alcohol. He had people smuggling booze from Canada.

Wikipedia states:

Prohibition in the United States refers to attempts to legally ban alcohol sales and consumption. The term often refers specifically to the period from 1920 to 1933, during which alcohol sale, manufacture and transportation were banned throughout the United States as mandated in the Eighteenth Amendment to the United States Constitution. Prohibition can also encompass the antecedent religious and political temperance movements calling for sumptuary laws to end or encumber alcohol use. [1]
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Prohibition_in_the_United_States

From 1920 to 1933. Rutherford's prime time. In Leolaia's first post on this thread "Re: was Rutherford a drunk person?" outlines evidence of Rutherford's drinking. Both documented letters and eye-witness accounts to Rutherford's excessive drinking are accessible.

was Rutherford a drunk person ?

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