[taken from Chapter 9 Manx Worthies, A.W.Moore, 1901]

THOMAS CAINE (b. 1809, d. 1878),

the son of Matthew Caine, an inn-keeper in Douglas, was a farmer in early life. He employed his spare time in educating himself with a view of entering the Church, which he accomplished in 1839. In the following year, he was appointed to the chaplaincy of St. Luke's, Baldwin, where he remained for thirteen years, till he became Vicar of Lonan. He was a good parish priest, and greatly endeared himself to his people by his quaint, hearty, kindly ways, and his profound sympathy with their chief pursuit (farming), of which he had a thorough knowledge. But it was as a leader in the Manx temperance cause that he will be best remembered. By his persistence and earnestness, he exercised a great and well deserved influence, one proof of which is that it was declared in evidence before the Poor Relief Commission, which sat in 1878, that it was mainly due to him that the parishioners of Lonan had so greatly improved in sobriety. A stone was erected in Kirk Braddan Churchyard by the Manx Temperance Union, of which he was president, with the following inscription:—

In memory of the Manx Apostle of
Total Abstinence, the REV. THOMAS
CAINE, Vicar of Lonan.
Born December 21st, 1809.
Died November 15th, 1878.
Erected by friends of temperance
throughout the Island as a tribute
of respect and admiration of his
consistent and self-denying labours.