1852–1887 · American temperance orator & chairman of the Prohibition Party
John Bird Finch (17 March 1852 – 3 October 1887) was an American educator turned professional temperance orator who rose to chair the Prohibition Party in the mid-1880s. He toured the United States and Canada arguing the case for prohibition as a mock courtroom trial — The People Versus the Liquor Traffic — and the fist-and-nose illustration was one of his set pieces, a bit of physical comedy used to show that personal liberty has edges. He died in Boston in 1887, the same year his speeches were collected into the volume that preserves the earliest known version of the saying.