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.

The anti-crimps part 1

That is from Judith Fingard's Jack in Port (page 187). As you can see from the large text in bold italic, the act the handbill was making sailors aware of was called the Act for the Protection of Seamen from Crimps. However, when I read the smaller text above (click on the image to see it larger or read below) I begin to think that it wasn't protecting seamen at all:

IN consequence of the inconvenience to which Ship Owners are subjected by the Desertion of Seaman at Quebec, and the extortionate Wages demanded for the return to the United Kingdom; the Legislative Assembly of Canada have passed an act...

Ah yes, I love it when the government decides to protect me from receiving "extortionate" wages. That's really putting sailors' interests first. And it's worse than that for the act puts extra responsibilities on seamen and informs them that, should they fail to follow these provisions, they will be subject to "imprisonment and hard labour".

Who do you think the legislature was more likely to listen to: wealthy ship owners or poor sailors?

I'm not saying crimps like my ancestors were gentle and sweet men who never hurt anyone's feelings never mind used deceit, violence or extortion to get what they wanted. There is clear evidence that they did. But it is also clear that corrupt and unjust labour practices, a speciality of the 19th century, created an atmosphere in which they could thrive.

Wages on this side of the ocean were three to five times what they were in Britain. I would think that would give sailors a powerful economic incentive to desert. On top of which, they seem to have had very little recourse other than desertion when sailing masters, who had absolute authority at sea, abused them or failed to look out for their security or were just plain incompetent. It's not unreasonable to suspect that magistrates were biased favour of the ship owners and their captains. Finally, ships sailing between Canada and Britain were carrying mostly lumber and I've read that that task was reserved for ships at the end of their career. As a consequence, these boats were often run down and in poor repair; a sailor might well want to desert for fear of his life.

My suspicion is that those factors combined with rising standards of living in the 19th century made it increasingly difficult to find and retain sailors. The shipowners blind, as we all are, to the the ways in which their interests and the general moral truth diverged appealed to the British government which dutifully stepped in to "protect" sailors from crimps by protecting ship owners' interests. The colonial government in Canada, in turn, immediately stepped up and adopted the relevant provisions as their own.

Crimping had always been part of port life. The British government had long engaged in crimping itself through press gangs. Their crimping practices had been one of the prime causes of the War of 1812 (and, while they and many Canadians continue to insist that they won what was, in fact, an inconclusive war, the British gave up crimping after that war). What was changing in the 19th century was that wealth was increasing at a tremendous rate and the British and Canadian governments were doing everything they could to make sure that wealth did not trickle down to the poor. Not from lack of caring mind you; as we will see as we further explore the subject, wealthy ship owners and other concerned rich people were willing to do all sorts of charity for the poor. What they weren't willing to do was allow them to earn their way up because "down", as in firmly stuck in a lower class, was what they wanted to maintain for the poor.

As I keep repeating, crimps weren't nice guys and what they did was not only criminal but also often unfair, unkind and even evil. But the prohibitionist and class-maintenance  approach governments took to the problem actually created a sort of golden age of crimping in the last half of the 19th century.

I leave you with two thoughts:

1. Virtually everything we think we know about crimps comes from people who were opposed to them. Crimps themselves, being engaged in an illegal business, were hardly likely to document their business practices.
2. Suppose you were a dirt-poor Irishman who'd had to come across from Ireland, where your family and friends were dying like flies because of British law, in the hold of one of those leaky, old lumber ships. How much respect are you going to have for British law?

The ship owners were not the only people opposed to crimps. There were also the Protestant reformers. I'll discuss them next week.

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.

James Costigan

Today is the 129 anniversary of the death of James Costigan, the first of my Irish ancestors to come to Canada. He seems to have arrived in 1850. He worked first as a labourer, then as a saloon keeper at 4 North Street. This was right on the waterfront. It was at a very rough 19th century commercial waterfront with all that entails. He later converted that business to a sailors' boarding house. Most of his income, however, derived from crimping, which was the illegal practice of inducing seaman to desert the ships they arrived on in order to serve on departing ships.

This is his tombstone.

If you try to remove the moss and lichens on the surface, the rock tends to come with it. It says he died on August 24, 1886. It also says he was a native of Bantry, Ireland.

There has always been a whiff of scandal associated with the man but I don't think many in the family knew that he was a crimp or what a crimp was. As a result, they tended to project their worst fears onto him. Most assumed the scandal was related to his dealings in liquor. I do have at least one (female) relative who is terrified I am going to end up proving he was running a whorehouse. I doubt that very much but it tells you something about how the Irish mind works.

What's more, I suspect that while crimping cannot be explained away, it is less of a scandal than we might imagine if properly understood. Like piracy, crimping can only exist when aided and abetted by governments that either 1) pass stupid laws that inadvertently make it more prosperous than it otherwise would have been or 2) corruptly look the other way because they think they benefit from the existence of the trade. I think Saint John did both in the 19th century.

There is also an Irish tendency to make history into "the past". What I mean is that there is a tendency in Irish families like mine to make every tale serve a moral purpose. The crimping trade served the family well until the age of steam came and made it unnecessary. Family fortunes declined after that. There was also a terrible decade of death between 1900 and 1910 that, as near as I can figure out killed off the entire family save for a few women. My suspicion is that they started telling a tale of the family's decline that put it to moral failures of James and his eldest son Denis rather than new technology.

By the time I came along, the family had successfully climbed it's way into the upper middle class and they no longer wanted to talk about the man or of the moral failures they used to attribute to him. That, I think, is why I and my siblings and cousins only picked up a whiff of scandal. The people who knew (my grandparents' generation) didn't want to open that door and the people who didn't (my parents' generation) were left to imagine what the scandal might be and they projected their worst fears into the vacuum.

I don't want to justify the way James and Denis made their living but I think it has a certain romance about it and I am not immune to romance.

Lobster roll #1: purism versus modernism

I'm on vacation and that's a lobster roll. I made that one myself. It's a sort of benchmark for the rest of the vacation.

That's almost a classic lobster roll. Nowadays, most places will serve you a hot dog bun with a lobster salad made with Hellman's mayonnaise and, you hope, little else. And those are yummy. The original lobster roll was made with lobster meat, butter and nothing else. Except a roll.

That's a ciabatta in the picture. It wasn't chosen for any highfalutin reasons. Hot dog rolls were only available eight at a time. The end result was really good.

The key, if you want to make one of these yourself, is to clarify the butter. Then you brush a little on both sides of the bread and grill it. You sauté the lobster meat, cut into little chunks, in the rest of the butter and then assemble. You'll need napkins.

The purist versus modernist distinction comes from Lynn Hoffman's book Short Course in Rum. It's a useful distinction. The purist might insist on the Hellman's version or the hot butter version but always with a hot dog bun. Hot butter with ciabatta is just messing up categories. Sure was good though.

We're here on vacation but I'm doing some research while I'm at it. I hope to have the smoking gun that proves my ancestors were crimps before I leave. More to come ...

PS This is the view from where I'm blogging: