Terminus Page 5

  In a small place like Pyrmont, most people would have known the householder’s identity.

  Daily Telegraph, 9 March 1882.

  An inquest was held over two days at the Lands End across the street. Everyone was anxious not to be implicated. Jessie Finch told the coroner that she had served Davie, as he was called, two small glasses and two medium glasses of beer over a couple of hours. He hadn’t seemed intoxicated and she believed he had fallen because he was ‘skylarking’ with a mate and had tried to ‘kick a man’s hat off his head.’ She said that this was an athletic trick he often tried, and that the usual way they dealt with him when he was drunk was to leave him in the parlour to sober up. No-one used the parlour for drinking, she said. Nobody else seemed to have noticed the attempted high kick. Some patrons who were present recollected that Quinn had drunk the beers in quick succession, not in the leisurely manner the publican’s wife thought would sound more acceptable to the coroner. Charles Weedon, a local butcher, testified that he had bought the drinks for Quinn, but denied claims that he had been daring him to drink as much as he could, with the next drink dependent on him downing the previous one in one swig.

  There was a post-mortem. It found that many of the man’s organs were diseased, and that his liver was two-to-three times the normal size, described as a ‘nutmeg liver … peculiar to drunkenness,’ but that also his lungs and brain were congested. The coroner decided that the drink hadn’t killed him. He had only drunk about a quart of beer, and ‘some men could drink two or three quarts or even a gallon of beer without injury.’ Furthermore, ‘it was not an offence to give a man as much drink as he could take.’ He found that David Quinn had died of ‘congestion of the lungs and brains, accelerated by intemperance’.65 He also remarked that all the witnesses had contradicted each other in their eagerness to avoid any blame.

  3

  Trouble at the Coopers Arms

  ROBERT Miller took over as publican of the Coopers Arms at the beginning of 1885. He was Scottish, indicated by him advertising for a ‘general servant, Scotch preferred, apply at once, Coopers Arms …’ Like Hilton before him, Miller was a dealer who advertised vehicles for sale at the pub, and tried to rent out the side yard but, unlike Hilton, he forked out the money for a billiards license.66 However he didn’t stay long, and by early 1886 the Protestant nexus was broken when Bridget Murphy, originally from Limerick, Ireland, took over. Bridget was an experienced publican and she probably fitted in well enough because she was still there almost four years later when, at the age of 68, she died at the pub.67 There followed a few months of shuffling the license between her daughter Ellen Murphy and a son-in-law, William Robb.

  During Bridget Murphy’s reign, there was a minor sensation when a government-appointed Intoxicating Drinks Inquiry Commission was reported in 1887.68 The findings that illegal sly grog was often just raw alcohol coloured to imitate whisky or brandy was probably not news to the drinking fraternity. The recommendation that there should be fewer pub licenses was just what you’d expect from a government that had started to listen to the wowsers. And the claim by the commission that there was more drunkenness in Sydney than in most European cities, but not so much as in Limerick, might have raised a smile from Bridget Murphy. But nobody expected to hear that their drink of choice, colonial beer, was literally poisoning them. Most beer at this time was ale. Although the report exonerated brewers who used pure ingredients, it found that all the samples tested, including those from the major brewers, contained excessive amounts of fusel oil. This is a mixture of amyl alcohol that is used today in paints, plastic and varnishes. The high proportion of this substance present was an unintended side effect of the high temperatures at which top fermented ales were brewed. Ale brewed in a more temperate European climate did not exhibit the same qualities. More scientific brewing techniques eventually eradicated this problem.69

  By now the boom of the 1880s was turning into the worst depression the nation had experienced; worse than the 1840s, according to those who could remember that far back. It was not a great time to be running a pub in Pyrmont or anywhere. In the early 1890s banks failed, businesses folded and employers undercut the wages that had been recently won by the emerging trade unions. It was class war as crippling strikes occurred across the maritime, mining and shearing industries. Union men refused to handle ‘black’ wool and scabs were given escorts to go to work on the wharves.

  When men met at the Coopers Arms in late 1890 for a ‘monster public meeting’ organised by the Labor Defence Committee, the crowd in the street was addressed by various labour representatives, including leaders from the seamen’s and stonemasons unions.70 Someone from the Farriers’ Society also spoke, a reminder that there were hundreds of working horses in Pyrmont, with carters moving bags of sugar from the Colonial Sugar Refining Company (CSR), and goods to and from the wharves. The crowd was, as always large, but probably not many people had money to spend on booze. When they did, families went without and tensions rose in many local households. William Robb only stuck it out for a year before the license was passed on to James Johnston in July 1891.

  COOPERS ARMS PUBLICANS 1885–95

  JANUARY 1885 ROBERT MILLER

  DECEMBER 1885 WILLIAM HACKETT

  FEBRUARY 1886 BRIDGET MURPHY

  DECEMBER 1889 ELLEN MURPHY

  JUNE 1890 WILLIAM ROBB

  JULY 1891 JAMES JOHNSTON

  THE COOPERS ARMS LOSES ITS LICENSE

  What happened to Johnston and the Coopers Arms in the 1890s needs to be understood in the context of the Liquor Act.71 After many years of lax liquor laws, a new Licensing Act 1882 made a few concessions to the temperance lobby that was gathering strength in the community. Sunday trading, which had been permitted for a few hours in the middle of the day, became illegal. Pubs had to close at 11 pm, while previously they could remain open until midnight. This Act also nodded to the growing focus on children’s welfare. It became illegal to serve anyone under 16 years old, which disturbed the local custom of sending a daughter or the lad down to the pub for a pitcher of ale. Licenses could be denied on the grounds of proximity to a school or a church. At the time this legislation was passed, the new John Street School was being built, with three hotels in very close proximity. As the decision to build the school post-dated the arrival of the hotels, they were safe on this score. All the same this shift in thinking was part of a growing official concern that there were just too many pubs.

  At the time the Act was passed, there were 3436 hotels in NSW; one license for every 228 people. The ratio was higher in places like Pyrmont and the police were anxious to reduce the number of licensed premises. The Act introduced the practice of Local Option that gave ratepayers a vote to either allow an increase in the number of licenses in their area, or to continue with the existing number. They could not vote to decrease the number at this stage.

  In 1893 Johnston got his license renewed, but not before the police objected ‘for various reasons’.72 We don’t know what these reasons were, but it may have been nothing more than an attempt to limit the number of pubs in the area. In the spirit of the new liquor laws the police were working toward this outcome everywhere, and the number of hotels across NSW did fall in the 1890s because of both the Act and the economic depression.

  Securing the license did not secure patronage, and by 1895 the owner of the hotel, James C. Pratt and his wife, Julia, went to the Supreme Court in an attempt to recover possession of the Coopers Arms because Johnston was in arrears with rent for £57 5s; roughly the equivalent of about $9000 in 2017. The Pratts won and the following day Johnston filed for bankruptcy. But he probably never left the pub; despite the fact that it was advertised to let, Johnston remained. He had met with his creditors and discharged the debts so he was again eligible to hold the license and his difficulties in making the pub financially viable ensured that there would be little interest shown by anyone else in running it.73

  By now there was bad blood between the owners of the Coopers
Arms and its licensee. This could explain the next move in 1896 when everything went horribly wrong. At the appropriate time Johnston applied for and was granted renewal of the license. He then had four weeks to pay the license fee of £30. He didn’t pay it and the license lapsed. He probably didn’t have the money and he possibly believed that this would make things difficult for Pratt, which it did.

  James C. Pratt and Julia Pratt (nee Brennan) and their children.

  Courtesy of Don Shearman, a descendant of the Pratt family. Private collection.

  Johnston refused to budge from the hotel and Pratt had to use the full force of the law to get him ejected. Then, with Johnston gone, Pratt re-applied for the license. The magistrate sitting on the Licensing Bench rejected Pratt’s application on the grounds that because the license for the Coopers Arms had lapsed, this was an application for a new license and the Local Option vote had gone against allowing new licenses in the area. Pratt would have been surprised. It was widely believed that the Local Option vote was a farce and very few voters bothered to turn up for it. Local publicans in the area would have voted for it – why allow for an increase in competition? – but this vote would not have been intended to result in the closure of an established hotel such as the Coopers Arms. Pratt went to the Supreme Court of NSW.74

  Pratt’s formidable legal team argued that the Metropolitan Licensing Board should be instructed to reconsider its decision. Getting a higher court to overturn a decision of a lower court in this way was something that was not often done. The Supreme Court decided that this was a matter of sufficient gravity to be referred to a sitting of the full bench. During this second hearing, one of the judges expressed some concern that there would be hardship because once a license had lapsed in this manner a re-application could not be made to the Metropolitan Licensing Board for three years, but the other judges argued that hardship was irrelevant to this case. The law was clear that Local Option had meant that a new license could not be applied for and this was a new license. The previous license was dead and the Coopers Arms was now just a house, no different from any other private house. The application was dismissed.

  HOTEL PLEASANTON

  James Pratt was not going to let go of this corner real estate that was valuable as a pub, but not so desirable as a residence. He moved to Plan B. The Liquor Act exempted large hotels from the restrictions of Local Option, and therefore he had architectural plans drawn up for an enlarged and improved hotel. The plans show a building of twelve rooms, with a further twenty-one new rooms to be built on the vacant ground along the Harris Street frontage.75 Two months after the court case, on the basis of this proposal, he was given a conditional publican’s license, but not before the Reverend J. K. Turner had raised objections. He had no specific issue with the Coopers Arms, but with pubs in general. He told the bench that if he could have his way he would close them all.76

  The plans were approved by the City Council in November 1896, stamped as being the plans required by the agreement of the conditional license and lodged with the Central Police Court by the end of December. The plans did not give the hotel a name and were labelled simply ‘New Buildings corner of John & Harris Street’ because even if Pratt had wanted to keep on calling the hotel Coopers Arms, this license could not be made available until three years had lapsed since its extinction. He would have to come up with a new name. Written in pencil at the top of the plans, barely legible, are the words ‘Hotel Pleasanton’. Whichever clerk or archivist picked up a pencil and scribbled this notation rescued these plans from certain anonymity and allowed them to be catalogued and ‘discovered’ in 2017 when this history was being written.

  Architectural detail of James Pratt’s extension plans for the Coopers Arms, 1896 (the full plans can be found in the gloss insert).

  State Records NSW, AO Plan No. 62981.

  Hotel Pleasanton was not a name that fitted well with the culture of working-class Pyrmont. Locals probably kept on calling it the Coopers Arms, because that is what it had been for so long, and because Hotel Pleasanton was not a name that rolled off the tongue. On the other hand, it was fashionable at this time for shedding older kinds of names.

  The Land’s End across the road had opted for the more modern name of Royal Pacific by 1886.

  WHAT’S IN A NAME?

  The reason why the Pratts decided on the name Hotel Pleasanton may never be known, but it definitely had an American connection. Around the same time as Pratt’s license was approved in May 1897, news filtered through of the death of General Alfred Pleasonton who had served in the American Civil War. Several United States towns were named after him, spelt Pleasanton.

  The Pratts had travelled to the States and may have been familiar with the exceedingly grand Pleasanton Hotel on Suttor Street in San Francisco. Intriguingly, back in 1880 a Sydney newspaper published a letter from ‘A Travelled Australian’ of Pyrmont extolling the virtues of that city’s cable trams. He mentioned the Suttor Street line and recommended consideration of trialling the method in Harris Street.

  Maybe the Pratts won the money to fund the hotel extension on the New Zealand horse called Pleasanton – ‘a shapely Yankee trotter’ recently transported from the States on a steamer from ’Frisco.

  Perhaps the hotel was named after the town of Pleasanton in Kansas. A few years earlier it had been reported that this town was the first in the States to elect a female mayor. The lady’s name was not provided, but the newspapers alleged that when she came to office she immediately sacked all the police and filled their positions with prohibitionists who closed all the liquor outlets in town.77

  In 1897 construction progressed rapidly and, by May, James Pratt had obtained a license for the Hotel Pleasanton.78 Pratt still had no intention of playing the role of publican, and the license was briefly held by Amelia Boulton until July when Mary Lea became the publican. She was a 50-year-old widow, Pratt’s sister-in-law and Julia’s younger sister. After the Pratt’s experiences with Johnston, perhaps they felt that keeping it in the family was the safer option.

  There were ten new bedrooms upstairs, and a kitchen and several dining rooms along the whole of the new wing on the ground floor, with sitting rooms and a bathroom at the rear. Mary Lea advertised the Pleasanton as having ‘all the comforts of home, combined with civility and attention’, offered to visitors at the moderate rate of 4s a day or 21s a week.79 There were plenty of rooms for cheaper rent in the city compared to these rates. The hotel was clearly being positioned as respectable, offering bright new rooms not yet scuffed by time. This was Pyrmont, however, and it is unlikely that things turned out as well as she or her brother-in-law had hoped. It is possible that Pratt’s real interest in expanding the pub was to right a wrong and to secure this license. Depressed labour conditions and high unemployment made it a good time to build ‘on spec’.

  LICENSEES OF THE HOTEL PLEASANTON: 1897–9

  APRIL 1897 JAMES PRATT

  MAY 1897 AMELIA BOULTON

  JULY 1897 MARY LEA

  LICENSEE OF THE TERMINUS: 1899–1901

  APRIL 1899 HUGH GALLAGHER

  TOOTH & CO . MUSCLE IN

  The Hotel Pleasanton would have been in excellent condition when it was advertised for sale at the beginning of 1899. It was to be sold with or without the old house behind it at 77 John Street, the one that had long ago been the Pyrmont Hotel, the first licensed house in Pyrmont. The property was positioned as ‘handy to Darling Island and the wharves … a freehold sterling property … those in search of a free hotel are directed to the sale of this well situated corner property.’80 The reference to the hotel being ‘free’ meant it was not ‘tied’ to any brewery, but the vendors were not ruling out a sale that would result in it becoming a ‘tied house’ as the advertisements were directed to ‘Brewers, Hotelkeepers, Capitalists and Others.’

  Auction notice for Hotel Pleasanton. The law firm handling the sale is the partnership of Messrs Pratt and Clayton. John Horatio Clayton is J.R. Clayton’s son and the gra
ndson of the convict Joseph Clayton and Elizabeth Brennan (nee Clayton). Percy J. Pratt was the son of Charles Pratt and Julia Pratt (nee Brennan) and the grandson of both Peter Brennan and James Pratt, the original licensee of the Land’s End.

  The Sydney Morning Herald, 28 January 1899.

  In March 1899 Tooth & Co. Ltd, the largest brewers in NSW, bought both the hotel and the old house behind it. At £3500 (approximately $520,000 in 2016 prices81), it was a bargain. Tooth & Co. – commonly called Tooths – had been steadily buying pubs cheaply during the depression and often acquired adjoining property in anticipation of future expansion.

  Tooths’ Kent Brewery had been a landmark since the 1830s on George Street West, now the site of the Broadway ‘Central Park’ residential development. Because it was close to Pyrmont, it was possibly already a major supplier of beer to the Coopers Arms/Hotel Pleasanton. Until the 1880s, drinkers had a choice of beers from 17 breweries in Sydney, but Tooth & Co. already controlled 36 per cent of the share of the entire NSW beer production. By the start of World War I, it was producing over half the total brew. Country breweries were closing down, often because of the aggressive policies of the big breweries, and by then there were only three breweries left in Sydney.82

  The auction advertisements also pointed out that the hotel was at the terminus of the new electric tramline that was being constructed at this time. Hugh Gallagher was Tooth & Co.’s first publican. He arrived in April 1899 and in June had successfully applied to the Licensing Court to have the name changed from the Hotel Pleasanton to the Terminus Hotel.83 The locals would have breathed a sigh of relief.

  TRAMS ARRIVE IN PYRMONT

  There had been some trial runs on the Harris Street line and then on Friday 8 December 1899 the first tram made its scheduled run. The last stop was outside the Terminus, where it turned into John Street and did a triangular shunt to reverse its direction before heading off back into town. The Daily Telegraph thought it was just as well there was no official opening as one of the engines ran hot and there were some issues with fused wires, but it was hoped that these problems would soon be ironed out. It took 25 minutes to get from Circular Quay to John Street, and on that first day the free rides offered were a great hit with the local kids.84 The trams also introduced danger. John Street had several lines for shunting. When nine-year old James Lesleure, who lived on John Street, misjudged the movements of a shunting tram, he was run over, losing a leg.85 There was always a lot of heavy traffic here with horses and drays passing, and now the electric trams. Accidents and deaths involving children as well as adults were a regular and sad consequence of living in this area.