Rough trade

James Costigan had three sons. Two of them—Denis and Daniel—helped him in his business dealings while the third, Michael, went to sea. The following article from the Saint John Daily Sun of April 16, 1879 gives a good idea of the business practices of the Costigan family.

I think we can take that as the smoking gun proving the Costigans were crimps. (There is a Wikipedia page on crimping, it focuses on the practice found on the west coast of the USA, which was a particularly extreme form of crimping, but it is useful for background.)

This sort of rough stuff was apparently not the usual for the crimps at Saint John—being more the sort of thing they did in Quebec City and San Francisco—but neither was it completely unheard of and the Costigans were apparently willing and able to use force when they deemed it necessary. While we can hardly approve of what was done, we must allow that Daniel Costigan must have been one serious badass. He did this alone! I love the line claiming that Cotter had made Costigan prisoner but "let him go before the captain's arrival". Yeah, that sounds like what must have happened.

Two days later the steward from Queen of the North, one Charles Scott, assaulted Cotter, opening up a gash from the centre of his forehead to the tip of his nose. It's quite possible the two events were related.

I am, as I have cheerfully admitted, quite prepared to romanticize these people but it's a lot easier to do that more than a century later than it would have been at the time. The Costigans were a rough and tough lot and you wouldn't want to mess with them. On the same day that Charles Scott, mentioned above, was sentenced, Daniel's older brother (and my great-grandfather) Denis Costigan failed to appear in court to testify against one Henry Ballaty who he had accused of stealing a coat from him. Instead of waiting for the police, Costigan had retrieved the coat by force several days earlier and, no doubt, "administered" such justice as he felt appropriate directly.

Oh yeah, you might be wondering how it was that Daniel Costigan escaped legal prosecution given that he clearly committed serious, go-to-jail crimes and there does not seem to have been much doubt about his identity. The answer to that is long and complex and I plan to get to it in subsequent posts. A shorter version might go like this: 1) This all took place in a no-longer-existent part of Saint John called "Sailortown" and 2) Forget about it Jake, it's Sailortown.