POSTING #125

"No Good Deed Goes Unpunished" (Quotation attributed to Clare Boothe Luce)

In last week's Posting (#124), I told a family story about the province-wide Prohibition in Ontario from 1916 to 1927, and about Port Credit fishing boats that supposedly carried booze to Cuba.

In this Posting, I would like to tell another family story, this one from the 1880s, when my great-grandfather, Thomas Lush, got enmeshed in an attempt by governments of the time to deal with the problem of alcohol abuse by allowing local communities to ban the sale of alcoholic beverages.

First a tiny bit of history. (I am indebted to Jim Dills, a former editor of the Canadian Champion, Milton's weekly paper, who went through reels of microfilm of old editions of the Champion at the Milton Public Library searching for references to Thomas Lush. Jim provided his notes to my brother, also a 'Jim', who kindly let me have a copy. Thanks to both of you!)

Thomas Lush was born in 1844, in the US, probably near Joliet, Illinois, and at the age of 3 moved with his family to Eramosa Township in Ontario. He married Margaret Jane Howson in 1867. They had 13 children, the eldest of whom we met briefly in Posting #124, Reuben Lush, the Justice of the Peace in Clarkson, Ontario during Prohibition.

Thomas began a successful butcher shop in a brick building on Main St. in  Milton, Ontario. He was noted for his entrepreneurial innovation and energy. For example, The Champion said in 1885 that he had installed a refrigerator, "that was capable of holding the carcasses of two or three animals at one time and it will keep the meat fresh for weeks without the least taint". In an advertisement in another edition of the paper, Thomas said that he had managed to make arrangements so that, "White fish, Salmon &c caught in the morning at Collingwood (...will be) delivered at Milton by eleven o'clock of same day".

He served as a councilor in Milton, was active in his church (Methodist, I believe), and was a teetotaler who had campaigned for the Canada Temperance Act (CTA), a law sometimes called 'the Scott Act', a reference to its sponsor, Sir Richard William Scott. The Act, which was passed by the Canadian Parliament in 1878, allowed communities to prohibit the sale of alcohol, if a majority of voters agreed.

A vote was held and Milton became a 'dry' community.

I am sure that my great-grandfather rejoiced when the Milton prohibition was approved. Little did he know that the Canada Temperance Act would soon create enormous problems for him.

It happened like this.

Innkeepers and hoteliers were adamantly opposed to the CTA, arguing that they couldn't stay in business with just the revenue from meals and room rentals. They claimed that they needed the income from selling alcoholic beverages to run a viable business. But there existed in Ontario at that time some apparently successful 'Temperance Hotels', which offered rooms and meals, but no liquor.

In the 1870s in Milton there was a hotel, the Thompson House, which served alcohol. Enthused with the 1878 victory on the CTA, some prominent prohibitionists in Milton, including Thomas Lush, formed a syndicate to lease the Thompson House for a period of 5 years at $500 per annum and turn it into a temperance hotel, the Milton Temperance Hotel.

In this undated (but judging from the cars, about 1920) copy of a post card entitled "The New Royal Hotel", the men are standing in front of what was the old Thompson House---the part to the left was added later on.  Today, the building at 165 Main Street East, Milton, houses on the ground floor a popular restaurant, La Toscana. The original of the post card belongs to John Duignan. This copy was kindly provided to me by Jim Dills.

The syndicate members worked hard to make the hotel profitable, but after three years the hotel had lost nearly $2000 and they felt they could no longer continue supporting it. According to a story in the Champion of May 24th, 1883, the other syndicate members turned to my great-grandfather and asked him, as a successful entrepreneur, to take over the hotel for the remaining two years of the lease.

Great-grandfather agreed and after some financial matters had been sorted out he took over responsibility for the hotel.

Thomas's move was kind and generous---truly a good deed.

At this point it is perhaps appropriate to remember Clare Boothe Luce's quotation which I have used as the title of this Posting: 'No Good Deed Goes Unpunished'.

Scarcely a month after he took over ownership of the Hotel, a Canada Temperance Act inspector accompanied by a constable searched the hotel on the basis of a warrant issued against Thomas Lush by the Milton police magistrate.

An August 30, 1883 Champion article states that two charges were filed against Thomas Lush for permitting the sale of intoxicating liquor. The police magistrate found him guilty and sentenced him to two months in jail. The article then says, "As the ex-member of the syndicate is at present in Uncle Sam's dominions and will probably stay there, it is not likely that the sentence will ever be carried out".

Great-grandfather had taken off for the States!

But then he came back---sort of.

A report in the Champion on November 29th, 1883 reminded its readers that Thomas Lush had been convicted of CTA offenses but had absconded to the US. The article went on, "He, however, had paid his family a clandestine visit last week, which was discovered by Constable Dent, who captured him on the road near his house on Thursday morning, and lodged him in jail where he will probably be compelled to remain four months".

The Champion for December 6, 1883 said it had received a letter from Thomas Lush and reported on the letter in this manner: "Writes from jail. His perspective on the temperance question and being fined for selling ginger wine which he thought was a temperance drink."

On December 13, 1883, the Champion reported that Thomas Lush had been released from jail the day before on paying a fine of $100. The paper said, "Scarcity of funds for the enforcement of the Act probably had something to do with the compromise in this case. Perhaps the fact that Mr. Lush is an old-time temperance man was remembered by our worthy Police Magistrate when he exercised his clemency in favor of his whilom associate." (I had to do a dictionary check on 'whilom', and found that as an adjective it means 'former; sometime, late'. It would appear that Thomas and the Magistrate had had some prior relationship, probably in the temperance movement.)

Poor great-grandfather's problems with the Milton Temperance Hotel were not over.

It appears that at some point during the judicial proceedings, he sold the Hotel to a William Murray. But Murray decided after a few months that he could not make a go of the hotel and moved out.

The Syndicate then sued Thomas Lush for $200 for rent and 'installment on furniture'. The case went to a jury, which rejected the claimants' arguments and found for Thomas.

The indefatigable Jim Dills has found more references to Thomas Lush in the microfilm record of the Champion, references that sketch out his life after the brush with the CTA.

In 1887, the Champion reported: "Mr. Thomas Lush has exchanged his brick store and dwelling on Main St. with Mr. McFerran for the 'Walker Farm' at the foot of the mountain in Nelson. Mr. Lush paying a difference of $3,500."

In December 1888, Thomas brought a rock from his farm into the Champion's office that he thought might contain silver. An assay showed that it did not contain any silver.

(May I add a note from family lore. During this farming period, Thomas used to travel to England to bring back breeding stock for his farm. Reuben Lush, who accompanied his father, told his children that on one return from Britain their ship was wrecked on Anticosti Island!)

In 1890, Thomas offered his farm for sale by auction.

He died in 1909 at Huntsville in his 66th year, while he was living, I believe, with one of his children.

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Our family is deeply grateful for the information that Jim Dills has collected about our ancestor. It adds important dimensions to him, and helps to bring him alive. He was obviously a remarkable man, and the eleven children who survived infancy made important contributions to the community, each in his or her own way. One of them, Clifford, is supposed to have invented an endless-belt oven for Weston's Bakery, so that loaves of risen bread went in at one end and came out at the other fully baked.

It would be good to have a biography of Thomas and his family---perhaps some history buff in the family will take up the challenge.

I think before leaving the story we should try to deal with an issue that may be in the minds of some readers: is it credible to think that Thomas Lush really believed that ginger wine was non-alcoholic?

Perhaps I am biased because of my familial links to him, but I think it may well be that Thomas, who I am sure never had a drink in his life, did indeed believe that ginger wine was non-alcoholic.

However, this being a democratic blog, I will let the reader decide what s/he thinks.

Note:

I have condensed somewhat the story of the temperance hotel incident, leaving out details that would have been necessary for a scholarly historical article but did not seem important to the story I was trying to tell. Mr. Dills is a serious historian of Milton and Halton County and I will be pleased to amend the Posting if he feels that I have done violence to key facts.By the way, I searched without success for photos of Thomas Lush and of the Thompson House. I would love to include one or both, if anyone can help me.

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See you on October 23rd for Posting #126th with more stories from our family’s universe! If you have comments or suggestions, please leave a comment at the bottom of this posting,  or email me at johnpathunter@gmail.com.

Note:

I have now uploaded four Postings on The Icewine Guru blog: one about the dangers of the US income gap; one about a possible lesson the US could learn from Canada about how to deal with its unemployment crisis: one about whether 'Western' countries should ban the wearing of face coverings by Muslim women; and, one which asks the question, 'Is Obama a Wimp?'. The topics are serious but I have tried to give them an entertaining treatment. If you haven't tried the Guru blog yet, you might like to browse these Postings by clicking on the link below. The next Guru Posting will appear when I feel I have something to say about an important public issue---at http://theicewineguru.blogspot.com/