It originated, as we learn from the Landmark, with a man named Turner, a member of the Preston Temperance Society, who, having an impediment of speech, in addressing a meeting remarked, that partial abstinence from intoxicating liquors would not do they must insist upon tee-tee-(stammering) tee total abstinence. Teetotalers.-The origin of this convenient word, (as convenient almost, although not so general in its application as loafer,) is, we imagine, known but to few who use it. Greenough stated that "nobody ever thought teetotum and teetotaler were etymologically connected." Ī variation on the above account is found on the pages of The Charleston Observer: One anecdote describes a meeting of the society in 1833, at which Turner in giving a speech said, "I'll be reet down out-and-out t-t-total for ever and ever." Walter William Skeat noted that the Turner anecdote had been recorded by temperance advocate Joseph Livesey, and posited that the term may have been inspired by the teetotum however, James B. Richard Turner, a member of the society Preston Temperance Society, is credited with using the existing slang word, "teetotally", for abstinence from all intoxicating liquors. Since at first it was used in other contexts as an emphasised form of total, the tee- is presumably a reduplication of the first letter of total, much as contemporary idiom today might say "total with a capital T".
The word is first recorded in 1832 in a general sense in an American source, and in 1833 in England in the context of abstinence.
According to the Online Etymology Dictionary, the tee- in teetotal is the letter T, so it is actually t-total, though it was never spelled that way.
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