I had intended to get into the 1900s but have gotten stuck in the newspapers out of my town from the nineteenth century. From its first days at the western edge of the British Empire, as this pretty poor image of an early 1800s map shows, Kingston had a Brewery Street. Its still there even if renamed Rideau. We still have some of our Victorian and maybe even Georgian brewing buildings, re-purposed for other things.
Who wouldn’t get interested with ads like the “ALE! ALE! ALE!” Kingston City Brewery ad from page 3 of the Kingston Daily News on 8 October 1863. Interesting to see that the copy editor had not that much imagination give the “Baths! Baths! Baths!” header for the next ad. The City Brewery was on the waterfront and I think is long gone but the shop the beer was being sold at 158 Princess Street may well still be there, it’s just selling mens’ clothes now.
Kingstonians were not only enjoying local brewed beers, however celebrated, in the early 1860s as the ad to the left from the same paper’s 7 October 1862 issue shows. Mr. McRae of Brock Street had plenty of barrels of the empire’s finest Guinness, Barclay Perkins as well as Allsopp beers to be had – along with a range of imported sherries, ports and brandies. The Morton’s “Family Proof” Whisky he offered was locally made. Not sure that it was immune from family members absconding with it or if it had been, conversely, subject to the proof and acceptance by all family members. The Morton distillery and brewery buildings are also still with us and currently under redevelopment as an arts hub. The building which held MacRae’s shop could well be there, too. Another Brock Street store, Cooke’s which opened in 1865, still operates.
The town seems to have had a fairly rich relationship with beer and other alcohol but it was not all fun and games as this 1867 article from The New York Times explains. The watchman Mr. Driscoll of what is likely the same Morton works was murdered the year before during a burglary. His Detroit murderer was sentenced to hang. They’ll each both be still here, too – buried around here somewhere. The town is like that.