Isaac
Buchanan was at the head of one of the leading business firms in Hamilton, and
in the early fifties took a prominent part in securing the building of the
Great Western railway. He established the Banner newspaper in 1854 in order to
have a personal organ through which he could present the claims of the Great
Western to the people of Hamilton as well as to the government for a measure of
support in building up the interests of the road from the Falls to Windsor. It
was a big undertaking in those days to finance a great line of railway for the
government had not yet gotten into that liberal mode which it has since shown
in gridironing the whole of Canada. The Great Southwestern railway was
projected as a rival line for through freight and passenger traffic from the
Falls to the Detroit river, and the friends of the Great Western were pulling
every string to head off the other road. Mr. Buchanan was very much in earnest
in his opposition, for he looked upon the rival road as a competing force to
the Great Western. In order to help Hamilton, Mr. Buchanan was induced to use
his name on a check for a large amount, the money to be used to pay the first
installment on a number of shares of the Great Southwestern railway sufficient
to enable Hamilton to control that line. The Great Western company proposed to
double track the through line from the Falls to Detroit, and thus secure
control of the railway business of the peninsula. It was never dreamed for a
moment that the signing of the check should embarrass Mr. Buchanan or that he
should be called upon to pay a dollar of it, but parties in the London money
market got hold of the paper, and in order to injure the Canadian enterprise,
placed Mr. Buchanan in a very embarrassing position. To save the members of the
firms of which he was the head, Mr. Buchanan felt it his duty to withdraw from
the partnership in the different firms till such time as the railway matters
could be adjusted. In due course of time, everything was arranged, and Mr.
Buchanan emerged from the financial cloud with honor to himself. He never
expected to be benefited a dollar by signing the check. How many business men
or others, are there in Hamilton today who could take the chance Mr. Buchanan
did to help the city in which he was so much interested?
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Speaking of the Hamilton Banner brings
to mind some of the trials and tribulations had to undergo half a century
ago. . Nicholson, McIntosh and Hand, the
practical men who managed the paper at the start, had not a dollar invested in
it, the original capital being furnished by Major Bowen to give his son,
William, a business start, Mr. Buchanan, advancing money to keep it alive.
Billy had no knowledge of the printing business, but he was soon taught how to
run a hand press, at which he became quite skillful. Alexander McKinnon, a
young lawyer, brother of a former chief of police in this city, was the editor,
and, for a time, he wrote not only the editorials, but also the principal in tems
of local interest. William Nicholson took part of the local work, and used to
report the public meetings. The Banner was an aggressive paper in some
respects, and a number of members in the council did not always approve of the
uncomplimentary things said about them. It did seem in those days as if the
taxpayers in Hamilton were easy in selecting some of the men they elected to
manage city affairs, and while there were some good men on the board, there
were enough unscrupulous ones to make a hot time in the old town on the nights
the council met. Bill Nicholson knew the gang from the ground up, for he had
spent his life in this city. One night he was attending a meeting in St. Andrew’s
ward, of which Terry Branigan was one of the members in the council. Terry had
been a target for the Banner, and having indulged copiously ay his own bar
before he went to the meeting, he was just in the mood to square up accounts
with Nicholson, and while the latter was writing the proceedings of the
meeting, Terry approached him and let Bill feel the weight of his heavy fists.
Bill was no coward, mind you, but he had too much self-respect to strike an
infuriated drunken man. The next day Terry was invited to a séance with Captain
Armstrong, who was the presiding judge of the police court, and then turned his
tongue loose on Nicholson, and as Terry was very free of speech, and could not
be held down once he had started fairly, he gave a very glowing picture of
Nicholson’s life. Bailiff McCracken and the police magistrate tried to head off
Terry in his oration, but they might just as well have endeavored to stop the
water from flowing over the Falls as to check him. Nicholson wanted the case
continued to the recorder’s court, but Terry was too smart for that, and
changed his plea to guilty. Captain Armstrong thought as Terry had had so much
fun out of it, he should be willing to pay for it, so he assessed him $20 and costs.
The next year the council elected Terry market clerk in order to get rid of him
at the council board. It was dangerous in those days to criticize the actions
of some of the men in the council, for they were fighters from the word go.
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The fashion in eating changes as it does
in everything else. Some say that civilization came in with the candle. In the
olden times, people laid down with the lamb, rising up with the lark, but it
has always been a mooted question whether early rising made one healthier. The
fable about the early bird catching the worm may be good in theory, but it is
not comfortable in practice. The old Hamiltonian will remember when he had to
turn out in winter, with the mercury down below zero, eat his breakfast by
candlelight, and be at his workshop sharp on the stroke of seven. We have
learned better in these twentieth century days than to waste candles. Therefore
we put off the beginning of work an hour later. A newspaper writer has been dipping
into the past and tracing the changes in custom down to the present. In the
fifteenth century, the habit was to rise at five, dine at nine, sup at five in the
evening, and back to bed at nine o’clock, thus divesting ten hours to the god
of dreams. A century earlier man rose with the daw, and when the curfew bell
rang at eight, he was ready for bed. There were only two meals a day then,
dinner at nine in the morning, and supper at four or five. No much chance at
dyspepsia through overeating. The first mention of breakfast was in 1463, which
was a trifling meal of bread and ale or wine. Queen Elizabeth and her court
rose at six, quenched their thirst at 7 with gorgeous draughts of ale, and at
eleven in the forenoon ate a hearty dinner. At one o’clock, the theatre was
opened, and the performance filled in the afternoon till supper time, which was
between five and six o’clock. Shopkeepers dined at noon and supped at six. They
ate no breakfast, and were at their desks never later than seven in the
morning. Very few merchants or businessmen of Hamilton think of getting down to
store or office before nine or ten o’clock in these luxurious days of the
twentieth century. Cromwell changed the dinner hour to 1:30, and it was then
that the gentlemen of his days settled themselves down to gratifying their
bibulous appetites, ending their debauches before the early hour for retiring.
The fashionable world in Queen Anne’s time were late risers and did not bestir
themselves till nine o’clock, and till eleven all levees were held. The dinner hour
was changed to two, and the gentlemen tarried with the wine till six, after
which they were ready to spend the night at the gambling table. Toward the end
of the eighteenth century, on account of the dinner hour being run too late in
the afternoon, breakfast parties began to be given at noon, at which fish and
cold meats were served with bread and butter and radishes, and a plentiful
supply of ale. Tom Moore, the genial Irish poet, was in his happiest vein at
the noon breakfast, and sang some of his sweetest songs for the hostess and her
guests. Beginning with the nineteenth century, there were three meals a day,
breakfast, dinner and supper. This good old fashion is the prevailing one in
the workday world; but the business class and the idlers who rise late and
retire very early in the morning, eat light breakfasts at nine in the morning,
lunch at one, and dine at six. That class of people have only two salutations –
good morning and good night. It is morning with them until six o’clock in the
evening, and after that it is night. However, common people will stick to the
old way of morning, afternoon, evening and night. The six o’clock dinner is
getting to be more of a custom with workingmen, especially in the large cities,
who take a cold lunch for the noon hour, and then with their family enjoy a
hot, substantial meal at the close of the day’s toil.
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Not that we would recommend a revival of the
free-and-easy clubs that met on Saturday night in Hamilton fifty years ago, but
merely to call attention to an old country idea that became quite popular here,
do we call an old custom. The free-and-easy clubs met in large upper rooms over
saloons, and probably there were half a dozen of them in Hamilton. Down the
center of a room, from thirty feet and upwards in length, was a table along
which was a line of armchairs on either side. Everybody was freely invited, the
only qualification required being that visitors must act decently and in order.
If one became boisterous through overstimulation, he was quietly invited to
retire, and if he declined to go, the bouncer of the house took him in charge.
The landlord of the tavern furnished bowls of cut tobacco and long clay pipes
(church wardens) free, and the customers made up for the accommodations and the
smoke by liberal orders for liquid refreshments, each man paying for himself,
for it was an established rule that there should be no treating of each other.
The company would select a chairman for the evening, and everyone present had
to either sing a song, or give a recitation. The session of jollity would begin
at an early hour in the evening, and on the stroke of twelve all proceedings
stopped, even though someone was singing, reciting or telling a story. Don’t
fancy that it was only beer drinkers or those indulging in something stronger
who were the only ones attending the free-and-easy – they call them smoking
concerts now – for the music and the recitations made it attractive to those
who drank only a weak decoction of lemonade or a glass of Pilgrim’s fluid compounds.
One thing to the credit of the free-and-easy was the tabooing of smutty stories.
Jolly fellows, generally, were the chairmen, and they had the happy facility of
keeping up a lively interest from beginning to close. Now and then the managers
invited a glee club as a special attraction. Saturday night free-and-easies
were not a good school for the youth of Hamilton, and it is just as well that
they have not been perpetuated. Probably the seven o’clock closing law had much
to do with breaking them up.
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