Editorially speaking…
Viewer Discretion Advised.
*In his 1905 reminiscence, The Passing of a Race, then-retired Colonist publisher D.W. Higgins credited Butts with having been instrumental in swaying public sentiment against Vancouver Island’s being annexed by the United States in 1866. “Butts suddenly became intensely loyal, and erected a miniature gallows on Wharf Street, from which he used to turn off the annexationists, naming each ‘traitor’ as the drop fell.
Victoria’s legendary town crier John Butts. —Author’s Collection
“I have often thought that this burlesque execution business did as much to check the disloyal sentiment as the opposition the Colonist offered to the agitation, which was short-lived, although at one time influential if not numerically strong.”
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John Butts isn’t being totally forgotten. If you Google him, you'll find he has passing mention in a June 2013 article in the National Post about the history of Victoria's Pioneer Emmanu-El synagogue. Entitled, “Congregation at Canada's oldest synagogue celebrates 150 years of multiculturalism and Jewish firsts,” Terry Glavin threw in this provocative paragraph:
“The city's laissez-faire sensibility was such that, in 1860, a jury of townspeople agreed to spend the night in jail themselves rather than agree to a sodomy conviction against Victoria’s notoriously fabulously gay town-crier, John Buttts, the ‘Hero of a Hundred Acquittals.’”
Hero of a Hundred Acquittals? As we seen, hardly! Fabulously gay?
Glavin appears to have taken his cue for this reference from the ‘Pilgrim’s Rest aka the Mess’. A Dec. 11, 2002 post on this website excerpts Adele Perry's chapter on the incidence of homosexuality in colonial British Columbia in her book, On the Edge of Empire: Gender, Race and the Making of British Columbia.
After summarizing Butts’ various legal encounters in a sympathetic matter, even portraying him as a victim of homophobia rather than the author of his own misdeeds, Perry refers specifically to the January 1860 charge of his having committed “an abominable offence on the person of a little English boy, employed at the Union Hotel”.
The “poor little English boy,” 16-year-old William Williams, who was also described as “rather good looking,” testified before Chief Justice David Cameron that Butts had offered him work and a place to stay. They had ended up in bed together and had sex—“he had connection with me," Perry quotes William Williams’ actual testimony which was not recited in the Colonist report while acknowledging that it was given in “a straight forward, unhesitating manner”.
But Williams was contradicted “in several points” by two witnesses, Andrew Coyle and Robert Cooper. At the conclusion of the evidence, John, conducting his own defence, called no witnesses and addressed the jury thus:
“This is a case, gentleman, the disgusting nature which requires a great deal of brass to handle; but I hope you will sift the matter thoroughly, and if I am declared guilty I am willing to suffer the severest penalty the law can inflict. I want you to examine the evidence produced and do me justice, and I hope you will bring in a verdict which you will not be ashamed of yourselves, which I will not be ashamed of, the judge will not be ashamed of.
“The whole charge is a conspiracy to get my house and lot from me; the men I expected as witnesses have gone up the river [off to the Cariboo gold fields—Ed.] and I am left without any. Gentleman, I leave the case in your charge.”
Unable to reach a verdict by 9:20 that evening, the jury was sequestered overnight. Next morning, after further instruction from Judge Cameron, they deliberated until mid-afternoon, then declared they were deadlocked, with a final vote of seven for conviction and five for acquittal, and were discharged.
So much for Gavin's interpretation of their “voluntary” night in jail rather than convict.
Butts was immediately retried and acquitted, the second jury ruling not guilty after just five minutes’ deliberation. Discharged, Butts left the courtroom, “rejoicing”.
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As recently as December 2013, Britain's Ministry of Justice revoked the old- fashioned sounding offence of being an “incorrigible rogue,” coined early in the 19th century. It was one of 300 obsolete offences that were discontinued in that year
Aimed at “idol and disorderly persons,” another law, the 1824 Vagrancy Act, also would have applied to Butts although “incorrigible rogue” referred specifically to a homeless person (vagrant) who violently resisted arrest or escaped confinement. This was never the case of our John B. who appears to have had a fixed address to boot.
Lest it be thought that John Butts was the only “rogue and vagabond” who bootlegged to Natives in Victoria in the 1860s, this nugget from the Jan. 19, 1869 Colonist, courtesy of indefatigable Victoria resident Leona Taylor:
“John Livermore, old, odd habitue of police court, and almost the last of the old 1858 gang [referring to the original rush of prospectors to the Fraser River, not a criminal gang], was arrested for about [the] 200th time, and sent to the chain gang... Justice is satisfied and so is John, for he has comfortable quarters secured him for [the] remainder of winter.”
But, just 10 days later: “John Livermore, known for many years here as ‘Whisky John,” died Jan. 28th at [the] hospital of a dropsical complaint. Livermore was [a] native of U.S., aged about 50. He came to [Victoria] in 1858 from California, having been a hotelkeeper at Placerville, where he is said to have had respectable connections.
“During the 10 years that he figured in this locality he must have served out 50 short terms of imprisonment for selling whisky to Indians [sic]. Contemporaneous with John Butts and ‘Liverpool Jack,’ Whisky John excelled both as a salesman among Indians, and has probably poisoned more natives than any other man, living or dead, on this northern coast.
“As an instance of retributive justice, we may say that Livermore has fallen victim to the very vice he encouraged in his fellow men—drunkenness.”