Some Lighter Moments in Our Past
Here we are, another New Year, and it occured to me to lighten up a little. In the course of the past year the Chronicles has covered numerous tragedies, from crimes to shipwrecks. All great stories if I may be so modest as to say, but...
To begin a brand-new 2023, let's take a walk on the lighter side, with a chuckle or two from my archives. We have all year to get back to the darker side of our history...
Victoria in the 1860's. It wasn't all bad news that made the pages of the Colonist and other newspapers. After all, don't we call them the good old days?
So, for this first Chronicle of the new year, a random sampling of some cheerier news stories from the pages of the Victoria Colonist that found their way into my archives.
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Times have changed, as most are aware, but never more obviously than when one explores old newspapers, the social chroniclers of their day. We live with war in Ukraine with its latent threats of nuclear holocaust, terrorist attacks, increasingly severe and more frequent weather events triggered by global warming, renewed world epidemic, homelessness, drug addiction and spiralling inflation...
Victorians in bygone years enjoyed a more leisurely pace, as reflected in yellowing pages of the Colonist. International incidents that were well short of world war, shipwrecks, coal mine disasters, sensational crimes, economic downturns and chronic political controversy and scandals were necessary evils of life but, all in all, things appear to have been quieter and less unsettling.
For the most part, journalists chronicled a happier parade than that of the latter 20th and early 21st centuries. At least, so it would appear from this distant view of 2023.
Following are a few of these forgotten lighter moments of the past.
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The first from my files dates back to February 1860 when it was reported, with an obvious chuckle, that police court had been delayed for more than half-an-hour by the absence of “a very young man, lately appointed deputy sheriff”. As the magistrate and learned counsel had fumed impatiently, messengers scoured the city for the truant deputy without success.
Until “it was ascertained that he’d locked himself in with the jury and was coolly listening to their debates,” chortled the Colonist, adding, “Smart young man, that!”
The magistrate’s views, unfortunately, weren’t recorded for posterity.
Three years later, my notes tell of “an expensive ride”. This, referring to an unhappy error in navigation of the part of a gentleman named James Bailey who’d been unfortunate enough, while somewhat under the influence, to steer his horse into Mr. Pierpont’s Hotel on Government Street, causing damage to the tune of $20 (about $500 today).
Hauled before magistrate A.F. Pemberton, a chastened Bayley explained that he’d not been aware of his actions. Whereupon Pemberton, moved no doubt by his apparent remorse, and often a soft touch to a sob story, simply ordered Bayley to pay for the damage.
More than once, pioneer police magistrate Augustus Pemberton fell for a sob story and let the convicted felon down lightly. —Find A Grave
One of my favourite cases occurred only 30 days later and afforded pioneer Victorians with a favourite topic of conversation for weeks after. This rip-roaring event, the Colonist entitled, the “Bombardment of Quarles-Ville.”
“Yesterday afternoon a difficulty occurred on Douglas Street, near Fort, between two gentlemen when the wife of one, seeing her husband being worsted, chased his antagonist with an armful of bricks into his house.
“Not content with driving him from the field, she bombarded his castle with brickbats until the ground-floor windows were all smashed, besides sundry pieces of furniture, including piano and mirror, considerably damaged. The case, we presume, will be heard this morning in the police court.”
The newspaper had presumed correctly and all of Victoria probably laughed heartily as the case became more and more entangled.
Protagonists—or should we say, antagonists—of this long forgotten legal encounter were Mrs. Marion Stapleton, her husband, and F.W. Quarles and his wife and their maid, Sarah Jane.
Their day in court had been delayed by the intense interest generated throughout the city. The moment the doors of the courtroom were opened, a near-riot of would-be spectators, “eager to secure the best places for hearing full details of the siege,” surged in.
An angry Magistrate Pemberton immediately ordered the court cleared, that citizens might file in in a more orderly manner.
When this was done to his satisfaction, all were disappointed to hear Mrs. Stapleton’s lawyer, defending her against a charge of “violent assault,” request an adjournment so that he might further study her case. As well, there was the matter of Mr. Quarles, the plaintiff, being summonsed on a charge of of assaulting Mr. Stapleton, not to mention the Quarles’s second complaint against Mrs. Stapleton concerning his damaged household.
A possibly relieved magistrate immediately adjourned the confusing case for two days. At that time Mr. Quarles was sworn and took his place on the witness stand to testify that, on the evening of June 30, Mr. Stapleton had knocked at his door.
"Why don't you make that — — of a wife of yours hold her tongue?" he quoted Stapleton as demanding.
"I shut the door in his face," smugly recounted Quarles. "He burst it open. He had a claspknife in his hand and wanted me to come and fight him. I wouldn't go as long as he had the knife, and told him if he put away his knife I would come out."
At this point, he said, Stapleton had indiscreetly seized him by his collar, whereupon he grabbed his horsewhip and warded off his antagonist. "I threw him down outside and held him till Mr. Pitts came and fetched a policeman."
It was then that Mrs. Stapleton had charged to her fallen mate's rescue, he grumbled, "with some bricks in her hand. I then let hm go and went into the house. She threw one at me which hit me on the neck, and when I was in the house she threw some more bricks and stones at me through the window,"
At his lawyer's bidding, he cited damages to windows, a blind and his piano to a total of $48.
(You can multilply that by 25 for today's equivalent. And, most window glass still had to come round Cape Horn in 1863.—TW)
Then it was defence counsel's turn. He inquired as to whether Stapleton had asked him (Quarles) to stop his servant from bothering Mrs. Stapleton, to which the witness replied that he didn't remember. Further questioning did produce the admission he'd been holding his vanquished neighbour by the throat when he was attacked by Mrs. Stapleton.
Asked why he hadn't thwarted her barrage of bricks and stones, he replied with a grimace, "What could I do with her?"
Another question brought forth the answer that, yes, Mr. Stapleton had once complained about remarks made by his servant, Sarah Jane, to which he'd retorted, "I told him if he would stop his wife's tongue I would stop my servant['s]."
Alas, "Some disclosures were then entered into of a nature unfit for publication when the court objected to the questions being put," said the Colonist.
Its readers were no doubt disappointed, but the spectators in court got hear all and leaned forward in rapt attention as the case continued to unfold. Cross-examined by his own counsel, Quarles testified that this confrontatoin hadn't been the only disturbance betwen the neighbours.
At this point defence counsel interposed with the observation, "a wife is perfectly justified in defending her husband".
"Yes, but not to throw brick-bats!" roared the opposing counsel, to a roar of delight from spectators.
The laughter swelled when two bricks and a large stone—"the shells and mortars"—were produced as evidence, to the defence's acid comment, "You had better bring scales and weigh them."
One in the packed arena, however, didn't laugh, Quarles complaining, "That large brick struck me on the neck and knocked a hole in the wall!"
Sarah Jane, his maid, then took the stand to testify she'd witnessed Stapleton kick down the Quarles's door and retreat before her master's whip. When asked by the defence, "Is your story as serious as your countenace?" the grinning girl burst into laughter, "in which she was joined by the whole court".
She sobered immediately when queried if she'd ever made a personal reference to "cigars and accommodation"?
Here, Magistrate Pemerton intervened, stating he wouldn't allow his court to "go into matters of scandal".
It's here—at last—that the sordid truth begins to filter through if one reads between the lines.
It seems that Mrs. Quarles and Sarah Jane had no use for their neighbours, having loudly and often suggested that at least one house on their street wasn't necessarily a home.
Worse, on more than one occasion, they'd hailed passerbys with testmonials to the popularity of a "back room" across thee way, adding that gentlemen needn't continue on to McCann's Saloon, and mentioning cigars priced at $2.50.
(This strongly suggests the offer of more than a smoke in an age of five and 10-cent cigars.)
By this time the galleries were deathly silent as all ears strained expectantly. Alas for the evil-minded, ther was to be no more. Magistrate Pemberton had had enough.
Reserving judgment, he listened briefly to Stapleton's suit charging Quarles with assault, and the complaint of damaging property against Mrs. Stapleton.
Finally, waving his hands in exasperation, he fined Mrs. Stapleton $5 for assault because she'd continued her attack long after Quarles had quit the field. But he dismissed the charge against her of malicious damage to property, ruling that the plaintiff had "brought it on himself by his conduct towards the husband".
0Last but not least, he fined Quarles $5, decreeing that no matter how justified he may have been in evicting Stapleton from his home, he'd had no reason to horsewhip him.
And with that verdict worthy of a Solomon, Augustus Pemberton concluded the outrageous case of Quarles vs. Stapleton.
That is, so one would think as there appears to be no further references to the affair in the newspaper. It's a safe assumption, however, that it was quite some time before true peace reigned once more at the beleaguered intersection of Douglas and Fort streets.
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Another intriging chapter in Victoria history dates back to 1869 when an oddly named ship dropped anchor at Port Moody to load lumber. The Colonist had been swamped with inquiries as to the origin of her unusal name, and had been favoured with an explanation.,
Originally, the story went, the bark was to have been christened after an attractive young socialite. To celebrate, upon the proud day of launching, the ship's owner had prepared a sumptuous feast for guests when, to his horror, the shipyard was invaded by a horde of what would be termed today as "party crashers".
Or "Egyptian locusts," as they were called then.
A crowded harbour scene at Port Moody where one of the oddest named ships ever to dock at the lower Mainland lumber port piqued the curiosity of the Victoria Colonist. —City of Vancouver Archives
As the host watched in helpless shorror, his uninvited guests had consumed his entire feast—everything, in fact, but the bottle of champagne to be broken across the waiting bark's bows.
"The builder was indignant, the invited guests were indignant, and the young lady was so very hungry that she resigned all claim to the ship's name and left the yard in a great 'huff'!"
While all this had been taking place, the shipwrights had calmly proceeded on schedule, reminding the stunned owner as the last block was knocked clear and his ship began sliding swiftly down the ways—unchristened.
"What shall we call her?" shouted the head carpenter from the deck of the rapidly receding vessel.
"Call her," cried the desperate owner, with a vengeful look at the departing locusts, "Call her the Bums!"
And so B.U.M.S. she was christened!