Pre-Confederation Spectator a time capsule
The day is long gone but the paper endures
Some people find old news boring, but I kind of like it.
Yesterday’s story is today’s history lesson. And if you want to better understand what makes a city tick, take a look at what used to be current events.
That’s one of the reasons I keep a copy of an1864 Hamilton Spectator hanging in my home. It’s also a neat conversation piece and a reminder that many generations have walked in this city before us.
The eight-page Spectator — that was published 157 years ago this week — was a gift from my wife, Linda. She put it in a nifty frame that displays four of the pages; two on the front and another two on the back that can be seen when the frame is turned around. The remaining pages are stored inside the enclosure out of view.
The Vol. XIV, No. 39 Jan. 14, 1864 edition miraculously survives in excellent shape because it was carefully kept after being printed on rag-based pulp that is far more resilient than the wood fibres that are generally used today.
The paper was purchased in 2019 at The Hamilton Store that used to be located on James Street North, but now operates only online through Facebook and Instagram.
Store owner Donna Reid says she acquired the old Spec, with a couple of other 19th-century newspapers, from a seller “who was clearing out a parents’ or grandparents’ home. It arrived in its protective sleeve. It’s one of those things that gets a lot of interest and starts many conversations. In time it finds the right person to take it home.”
I guess the fact that the paper ended up with someone who worked at The Spectator for nearly 40 years — who decided to write a column about it for the anniversary of its printing — suggests Reid was onto something with her prediction that it would find the “right person.”
I think of the paper as a bit of a time capsule from an 18-year-old city in “Canada West” three years before Confederation. And while it doesn’t have earth-shattering news, it gives insight into what it was like to live in those times, what people in the city were interested in, and how journalism was practised all those years ago.
When I look at the paper I imagine reporters racing off to assignments on horses or horse-drawn buggies, a blustery editor barking out orders, typesetters frantically arranging movable type one letter at a time and a clackety press knocking out copies for newsies to sell on the street.
The big news in my paper was about senior government minister Michael Hamilton Foley going rogue with criticisms against his own party. The paper praised him for this.
The Civil War in the U.S. received heavy coverage with news that a Maryland cavalry unit suffered
heavy losses in the Battle of Loudoun County in Virginia. There was a major storm in Buffalo leading to widespread flooding.
Closer to the home front, the paper took shots at the Toronto Globe newspaper for insinuating that Hamilton’s Isaac Buchanan was lax in his loyalty to Great Britain.
The saddest story was about a four-year-old girl who died in a kitchen fire. A coroner’s inquest heard that “the poor girl was burned … from the sole of her foot to the crown of her head.”
A different fire at Saenger’s Saloon on John Street was extinguished without injuries. But the article noted there was “a great want of discipline” by the firefighters. “Instead of one chief, there seemed to be a dozen issuing his orders and none of them obeyed.”
As well there was a bizarre story about a Mr. O. Nowlan who came upon a horse that was in a “peculiar attitude” — frozen to death in frigid weather but still standing.
Here are some other observations:
> The paper was called the “Weekly Spectator.” In the 1860s, The Spectator — that started 175 years ago in 1846 — published a weekly edition on Thursdays, semi-weekly editions Wednesdays and Saturdays and daily papers each morning. á The editor was a fellow named William Gillespy. He took over after the newspaper’s founding editor Robert Reid Smiley died in 1855.
> The Spectator at the time was published from a building at the southeast corner of Main and Hughson that is no longer standing. That would have been the newspaper’s second location after previously operating on James Street North, opposite York Street.
> The paper featured a large number of advertisements for dubious medicines and ointments to cure everything from baldness, lethargy, afflictions of the “throat, lungs and chest including consumption (tuberculosis)” and “bad legs, bad breasts, scrofulous and glandular swellings.” There were even chocolate-flavoured pills for stomach worms.
> Stray cows and other farm animals must have been common. There were three ads from people looking for owners of lost livestock.
> The paper got right to the point on the top of the front page. It listed “Births, Married, Died,” one after the other. I wonder how many Hamiltonians managed the triple crown of having their names show up in all three categories over the course of their lifetime. á There were no photos in the paper, just lots of type and the occasional etching, usually with ads. Photographs wouldn’t start appearing in the paper until decades later.
> The paper had a motto: “Hearts resolved and hands prepared. The blessing we enjoy to guard.” It’s a slightly altered quote from the 18thcentury Scottish poet Tobias Smollett.
I didn’t notice it at first, but there was a bit of whoopsy on the front page. Directly below the masthead it says Thursday, Jan. 14, 1863, when, in fact — as the paper notes elsewhere — the proper date was a year later, Thursday, Jan. 14, 1864.
They say that journalism is history in a hurry. And I guess the editors were in a particular hurry that day. But I suppose all these years later it makes my paper even more of a collector’s item.