1901: Costigan doomsday

One of the books that most influenced me when I was a young man was Doomsday Book and Beyond by Frederick William Maitland. The Doomsday Book is a compilation of data that William the Conqueror had collected to determine what taxes people owed from before he invaded England. It became known as Doomsday because there was no appealing the evidence therein. If the book said you did or didn't own something, no other proof could be advanced against it.

One unintended effect of the Doomsday Book was that it collected an immense amount of data English society. We know far more about what people did and had and how they lived and died at that moment than we know about any of the hundreds of years that preceded it and the hundreds that followed. The book, then, is a useful lens to view English history through.

The same is true of the history of the descendants of James Costigan. We have a lot of data about the family in 1901, far more than we have on the 50-60 years they were in Canada up until that point and far, far more than we know of the family history in Ireland. We will eventually know a lot more about the years after 1901 but much of the relevant data is still protected by privacy laws and hidden in letters and diaries that no one knows about just yet.

1901 was also a year of massive change for the family. To be blunt, the family stopped being outlaws and became successful social climbers. Social climber is not usually a term of respect, although it's definitely a step up on "outlaw", but it should be. The family went from living the slums of Saint John's Irish ghetto to upper-middle class suburbs in just 60 years and that is damned impressive. 1901 was also the year that the family went from being dominated by men to being dominated by women. The successful social climb was mostly driven by two women—Annie Gertrude and Kathleen Costigan—who taught and pushed their children to make the move. They showed them how to rise above being, as Kathleen often put it, "cheap and common people".

But before we get to that we need to get back to 1901. We know a lot about the family and a lot about the world they lived in. I'll be sharing what I have learned on the blog over the next few weeks.

Overcoming Irish shame

I have a friend whose Ukrainian ancestors were so poor, they spent their first winter in Canada living under their wagon. They turned it upside down on the prairie and piled sod against the sides to keep the cold air out. For their descendants, it's a matter of family pride that they have such rough and ready characters among their ancestors.

In Irish families, we aren't so proud. We too are descended from rough and ready, and very colourful, people. And yet we are ashamed of it and go to great lengths to lie about it. The Irish in North America, and this generalization is warranted, not only lie about our past, we make up myths to replace it and behave as if this mythology was true.

The following is a list of things that are true of virtually all Irish Catholic families whose ancestors came to North America in the 19th century.

1. Our ancestors were dirt poor. In Ireland, they lived in a hut with a thatched roof and a dirt floor. They came over steerage. When they got here, they lived in slums. They didn't get out of those slums until the twentieth century. Your grandparents started off life with nothing, crammed into a tenement with relatives and boarders and lived in constant fear of things getting much worse.
2. They were probably illiterate. In the unlikely event that they could read and write, they did so at about the same level as someone with a grade 3-5 education does now.
3. They weren't particularly religious. Although they, like everyone else, got swept up in the major Catholic revival of the 19th century, only about one in three Irish Catholics practiced their religion when they got here. The Irish were notorious for saloon going on Sunday morning in 19th century Saint John.
4. Our female ancestors were house servants and they felt damn lucky to be. This continues into the 20th century up to about 1930.
5. There is a very good chance our male ancestors were criminals at some point in their lives. There weren't nearly as many jobs for men as there were for women. As  consequence, the men spent a lot of time just hanging around and they got up to no good in various forms. They were prone to violence and theft. Go through court records and newspapers from the 19th century and you will find that your male ancestors were "known to the police".
6. They died like flies from diseases such as cholera, consumption and diphtheria.
7. They drank staggering amounts of alcohol. Historians estimate men drank the equivalent of two 26 ounce bottles of 90 proof liquor each and every week; that's about 6 times as much as a typical adult male drinks today. And that's the average drinker! (And while that seems insane, it almost certainly helped some of them avoid cholera.)
8. As a consequence of the above, alcoholism was rampant. So was drunkenness on the job and domestic violence. 
9. They suffered sudden and brutal financial reversals in North America. It is a 100 percent certainty that some of your ancestors ended up in the poorhouse.

In theory, that ought to be all we need to know in order to stop being ashamed of it. It doesn't work that way with the Irish. This is a people with a deep-seated shame. Where this comes from, I don't know—though I mean to explore the issue.

The anti-crimps Pt 2

Just as everything we know about witches in the middle ages derives from a few crazed witch hunters who wrote books designed to make everyone hate and fear witches, so too is everything we know about crimps written by their enemies. The important fact you won't learn about them is that seamen really did value the services crimps provided. Crimping wasn't a respectable business but it provided something that was really sought after just as bootleggers did during prohibition.

Last time, I talked about people who had a direct financial interest in the matter. Shipowners saw that crimps tended to drive up the wages they had to pay seamen. On the other hand, ship owners also needed crews and, while they disliked the crimps, they were unwilling to provide an alternatives so they, while maintaining they were opposed, ended up playing along. But they weren't the only ones opposed.

There was another group who opposed crimps for moral reasons. They cared little what seamen got paid or how hard it was for them to find work. They thought that crimps led seamen to drink and whore about more than they otherwise would do.Here, for example, is an extended quote from Seamen's Missions: Their Origin and Early Growth by Roald Kverndal.

The Crimping System was destined, in years to come, to rank as the most notorious international impediment to the spiritual and social welfare of seamen. By the 1820's, the "crimp" was already only too well established on the British waterfront, as a species of seaport parasite whose sole profession was to separate the sailor from his hard-earned wages by fair means or foul, normally foul. His method consisted in attaching himself to his victim from the earliest possible moment, and thereupon exploiting every peculiarity of the seamen's situation and character to serve his mercenary end. 

For this purpose, a successful crimp would organize a whole hierarchy of helpers. Himself often a wealthy publican or boarding-house owner, he would be in league with any or all of the following, as listed by G.C. Smith" "Runners," "brothel-keepers," "pot-house bullies," "cheating slop-sellers," and "pettyfogging sea-lawyers." With their aid, the crimp would establish a virtual monopoly, in meeting those two basic needs of any homecoming seafarer—relief from the privations and stress of sea-life, and re-employment when no longer willing or able to remain ashore. 

The resultant system of "marine slavery" (as Smith called it) seemed completely fool-proof. By devious means the seaman was duly fleeced, both of what he had earned on his arrival, and of any advance (generally two months wages) obtainable on his departure. Meanwhile, the crimp cunningly contrived to make the shipowner dependent on him for supplying new hands when and where needed. Incredible as it may seem, this unscrupulous gangster was, in fact, the principal "shipping agent" of his day, a position he reinforced by impressive expertise in legal evasion.

This is not fact-free. My great-great grandfather James Costigan and my great-grandfather Denis Costigan were both publicans and boarding-house owners. They no doubt did have connections with all manner of dubious denizens of Sailortown. They unquestionably pocketed an awful lot of sailors' money and they took a portion of a sailors' advance pay in return for delivering them to new ships to sail out of town on. And we have seen that they were willing to use criminal business methods to achieve those ends. Furthermore, we will later see that the combined boarding-house keepers in Saint John were very successful in making the shipowners dependent on them (and that they may have done so in collusion with port authorities).

But note that both liquor and room and board are actual services. We might ask why sailors didn't go elsewhere for these? Why didn't they go to s seamens' mission house, for example? Well, one reason was that the mission was dry, having been set up by those joyless reformers who sought to "improve"others lives in ways that no one asked them to.