Nellie H. Bradley (c. 1838 – February 13, 1927) was an American writer of plays and songs in support of the temperance movement. She published her songs under the pen name Stella or Stella of Washington.

Nellie H. Bradley
DiedFebruary 13, 1927 Edit this on Wikidata
Washington, D.C. Edit this on Wikidata
OccupationWriter Edit this on Wikidata

She was the daughter of Henry Harper Hazard and Harriet Amanda Bibb Hazard. She married Francis M. Bradley, an employee of the Bureau of Indian Affairs.[1]

Bradley was superintendent of the Washington, DC chapter of the Woman's Christian Temperance Union (WCTU). She wrote numerous melodramatic, one-act plays dramatizing the dangers of alcohol consumption. These plays were not indented for professional theatre productions, but for amateur performances at temperance meetings and similar gatherings. She wrote the words to a number of temperance songs, set to music by E. A. Parkhurst, including the most famous of the genre, "Father's a Drunkard, and Mother Is Dead."[2]

Bradley's crusades were not limited to alcohol. In 1887 she campaigned against the display in Washington cigar shops of reproductions of Alfred Alboy-Rebouet's painting of a scantly-clad woman, Night, then owned by the Corcoran Gallery of Art.[3]

Nellie H. Bradley died on February 13, 1927, in Washington, D.C. at the age of 88.[1]

Bibliography

edit

Plays

edit
  • The Young Teetotaler; or, Saved at Last (1867)
  • The First Glass, or, The Power of Woman's Influence (1868)
  • Marry No Man If He Drinks, or, Laura's Plan and How It Succeeded (1868)
  • Reclaimed, or, The Danger of Moderate Drinking (1868)
  • The Stumbling Block: Why a Deacon Gave Up His Wine (1871)
  • Wine as a Medicine, or, Abbie’s Experience. (1873)
  • A Temperance Picnic: With the Old Woman Who Lived in a Shoe (1888)

Songs

edit
  • "Don't Sell Poor Father Rum"
  • "Father's a Drunkard, and Mother Is Dead."
  • "I'll Marry No Man If He Drinks"
  • "Let Me Die at Home"

References

edit
  1. ^ a b "Mrs. N. H. Bradley Dies at Age of 88". Evening Star. February 14, 1927. p. 7. Retrieved November 2, 2022 – via Newspapers.com.
  2. ^ Beard, Deanna M Toten (2006). ""The Power of Woman's Influence": Nineteenth-Century Temperance Theatricality and the Drama of Nellie H. Bradley". Theatre History Studies. 26: 52–70, 166.
  3. ^ Arnebeck, Bob (July 26, 1987). "There's Nothing Nude Under the Sun". Washington Post. ISSN 0190-8286. Retrieved October 27, 2022.