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| Graham's Town, 1830, looking down High St, sketch by Guybon Atherstone. |
And evidently a substantial number of people were getting drunk.
An extraordinary number of pages in the opening issues of The Graham’s Town
Journal – the predecessor to Grocott’s Mail – are devoted to the attempt to
establish a Temperance Society. The correspondence about it took the better part
of a year to run its course – often long-winded, obscure, intemperate, and
inadvertently hilarious. Court records, also summarised in the paper, make it
clear that there was certainly a problem. Some horrendous, heart-wrenching
stories involved alcohol. For example, in early 1832 one “Adam Robinson,
European, stood indicted of Culpable Homicide, in having caused the death of
Mary Wild, an infant of four years old, by giving her one teaspoonful of
Brandy.” It seemed unlikely that a mere teaspoonful would have killed her, but
other witnesses alleged it had been a whole cupful, or more. An autopsy was
conducted by the famous Dr Atherstone, who used to live at the top end of High
Street (the building is now another café). He found a lesion at the base of
little Mary’s skull, apparently from being clubbed by a boy a week before,
causing a slow internal bleeding. So, although the brandy might have been a
precipitating factor, Robinson was found not guilty.
Not surprisingly, the
military was a particular vector for drunken violence. In April 1832 one S
Webber was “charged with having contravened the 10th sec. Ordinance 34, by
permitting liquor to be drunk in his house between the hours of 9 in the evening
and six in the morning, on the 16th day of March last”. It seemed that four
soldiers of the 98th Regiment, keen “to celebrate the festivities of St Patrick
… had gone (as they expressed it) a little queer to the house”. That is, they
were sozzled when they arrived, got increasingly unruly and, according to
Webber, forced themselves back in when he tried to evict them. Someone drew a
bayonet, a constable was injured. Your common-or-alehouse pub brawl, then.
Webber was nevertheless fined 5 shillings.
There was also no end of common
theft, not least on the part of so-called Hottentots, allegedly particularly
susceptible to the lures of grog. One Hendrick Michaels, for instance, was
“charged with stealing from a wagon journeying from Algoa Bay to Graham’s Town,
a quantity of wine, the property of Benjamin Norden” – Norden being a prominent
trader and auctioneer who weekly advertised his traffic in various alcohols,
among other goods. In court, it was recalled by “one old Hottentot with a wooden
leg” that five casks had been tapped and “from 15 to 20 gallons were deficient”.
Michaels “saw Dolph drunk, who gave him a cup, and told him to bring some wine
out of one of the casks; [Michaels] did so, and drank one half of it, Dolph the
other half”. He was given 12 months imprisonment, with hard labour.
Petty as
these instances seem, they were evidently pervasive enough, and the numerous
extant regulations sufficiently weak, that a major meeting to establish a
Temperance Society was held on 30 December 1831. It was spearheaded by local
commander, Lt-Col Somerset, who testified “That the unhappy propensity to the
use of distilled spirits is indulged to a most alarming extent in this colony,
and is the chief cause of poverty, disease and crime … [A] most improper
practice of giving Hottentots and other coloured persons sopies, or drams, had
obtained too generally, … with very injurious consequences." He himself had witnessed "the appalling spectacle of six men led out and shot by their comrades [in the
Native Corps] in expiation of the offences committed while under its baneful
influence!” Not so petty.
A later correspondent echoed the concern in an “analyzation of brandy”: "brandy, sir, … is so bewitching a poison, that it seems to entice a person on to destruction under the flattering idea of its being the only remedy for those evils which itself alone has created; for instance, sir, those alarming tremblings in the stomach … [B]randy, sir, also has a tendency to impair the intellectual faculties, by rendering the memory less retentive from its frequent attacks on the brain – the dignified seat of human understanding ..."
Still, Somerset’s points, however sensible,
would be vigorously debated, even opposed. Prominent townsman Daniel Moodie had
a very mild conception of a potential Temperance Society’s aims: "Members of
Temperance Societies did not trust to precepts, they employed the mild influence
of example; they did not pretend to be above temptation, but began by reforming
themselves. Many persons opposed this society by sneers, because they thought it
in vain to stem the torrent; but no one offered any argument against it."
Well,
there would be plenty of argument. One early respondent, on 13 January 1832,
claimed to be a “well-wisher to Temperance, but an anti-humbug”. Much of the
subsequent correspondence would throw back and forth accusations of “humbug”.
One persistent writer, who styled himself “Mountain Dew, alias Highland
Whiskey”, trumpeted, “I confess my utter inability to perceive that the
Temperance Society affords even a chance of compassing its object.” But there
was no agreement on what that aim might be. In answer to Mountain Dew on 3
February, “Mountain Breeze” acknowledged the problem, but rather hard-heartedly
opined that “this appalling vice ought in his opinion to be to be left to
itself, and no merciful hand put forth to save others from approaching a gulph
of wretchedness into which millions have been precipitated.” There was recourse
to Plutarch and various poets, and to various American examples. Someone
suggested replacing the dop wage with candy.
A fortnight later, “Mountain Dew”
alleged that “Temperance Societies are neither more nor less than associations
of the wealthy for depriving the poor of the only restorer of ‘man overlaboured
with his beings strife’ which their limited means afford them”. So there was a
class element, too; as well as some sympathy for the tough lives of slaves and
the otherwise impoverished. Why deprive them of a wee dram of comfort? And a
week after that, “Lowland Common Sense” told Mountain Breeze that temperance
societies “lead to deceit, hypocrisy and lying. … [He] has got into the clouds
and would do well to descend from such airy regions”. Indeed, he said, one might
as well establish an Anti-Sheep Stealing Society, for all the good it would do.
Another correspondent noted that “even the Christian Divines of this Colony have
been, and are, distillers, from the very parsonage and Glebe lands, and from
their private estates, for the sake of furnishing the spirit to their fellow
creatures.” We aren’t about to accuse our own pastors of humbug and cruelly
depriving the poor, are we?
Besides, there was a lot of trade going on; people
worried that a Temperance Society would damage their businesses. “A Decayed
Tapster” summarised the divisions of opinion: “I tell you the opinion of the
world goes for nothing, besides they can’t all read. One refuses [support]
because there are 2,000 signatures on the Temperance list; another because the
scheme ‘has not even a chance of compassing its object’; one because no effort
is required; another because our best efforts would be of no avail.” He cited a
“former customer” who, when he asked the latter “to taste a ‘leetel’ drop more,
said to me, I can’t drink any more, but pour it over me, I love the smell on’t.”
Meanwhile “Tapster” had lost half his custom, and the price of brandy dropped
25%. He threatened to leave altogether, for some place where sincerity
prevailed. Good luck with that.
And what, “A True Briton” asked in trumped-up
working-class argot, if these “new fangled Temporal Sisyties, as the parsons is
now making sich a devilment about”, actually succeeded “to cast the gifts of
Providence in his teeth”? Why, next thing you know “they’ll soon be getting up a
Sisyty to prevent prevent people from eeting beef and muttin, because some
dokters says that vegetable dyet is more holesomer as haminal food.”
Vegetarianism! Horrors! Meanwhile, “em speetchified and preetchified so long
about drunkenness, and blackened the Christemens and whitewashed the Ottentots
so much, as you never seed in your born days.” In short, “its my pinion that
such a Sesyty will cause nothing but ‘ternal skwabbels, and be a hexellent skool
for pokrisy.” They should stick to their “Spiritual” activities and leave the
rest of us to enjoy our “Temporal spirits”.
There’s a great deal more of this
argy-bargy, until the steam seemed to go out of the effort. By January 1833, a
correspondent could write: “Pray Mr Editor, what has become of our Temperance
Society? Have those who lately in your columns so nobly advocated its cause
become thus soon cold and indifferent to its interest?” They had “become the
butt of ridicule to those who have all long been opposed to it”.
Meanwhile, men continued to fight each other and rape women while under the influence; others to complain about adulteration of grog with “some pernicious and poisonous mineral”, causing “violent spasms” and death. The Thompson Brothers continued to advertise for the well-to-do “a quantity of very superior claret”, while “Quarles, Harris & Sons celebrated Port and Sherry Wines”; and letter-writer “Q” would complain: “I wish some of your correspondents would inform me why so much Cape Beer is sent to Graham’s Town? We have two Brewers here, cannot they brew sufficient? Or is the quality so bad that the public prefer Cape Beer? In either case it calls aloud for competition.”
The market prevailed, of course. If you are unlucky
enough to get caught up in the broil of Grahamstown-Makhanda’s New Street of a
Saturday night, two centuries later, you’ll be forgiven for thinking not much
has changed.
*****
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