DRINK
One day a man known as Ironstone George died at one of the
public-houses on the field, entirely from the effects of drink. It
is really infamous that no one has any power to interfere in such
cases. I had seen the man hopelessly drunk, day after day, at the same
public-house, and had warned the owner that I should take the first
opportunity of taking away his license.
Being the only resident magistrate on the field, I held an inquest on
the body. In the inquiry it appeared that the publican had supplied him
during a fortnight with as much liquor as he could drink, but had never
given him anything to eat. A nearer approach to wilful murder it is not
easy to imagine. I took the opportunity of repeating my assurance to
the publican that he need never expect a license again, coupled with
an expression of my unfeigned regret that the law of the land did not
allow me to hang him.
I was unfortunately unable to attend the first licensing board for the
diggings, and the rascally local magistrates granted no less than six
licenses for the Mount Britten field.
These public-houses are a perfect curse all through the Bush of
Australia, and no finer field was ever open to a philanthropist than a
crusade against the iniquity that goes on in them.
In touching upon this subject, I wish very clearly to state the ground
that I take up, which is not so much reduction of drunkenness as the
prevention of murder. In spite of the most specious attempts on the
part of such fanatical optimists as Mr. Gladstone, Mr. Mundella,
and others, to cook the returns of drunkenness and liquor consumed,
statistics show that the amount varies very little. Wherever a certain
number of the British race are gathered together, there a certain
amount of liquor will be consumed, and my own conviction is that
legislation can do little or nothing to prevent drunkenness. It can,
if it please, force men to get drunk in their own homes instead of in
public-houses, but here its power ends.
There is no truer picture of humanity than John Leech’s cartoon of the
British workman arriving home on Saturday night, laden with an enormous
jar of liquor, to provide against the inconvenience of a Sunday Closing
Act.
But legislation can and ought to do a great deal towards the prevention
of such monstrous crimes as are universally prevalent throughout
the Bush public-houses in Australia. The most violent poisons are
habitually used to adulterate the liquor sold, and to an extent which
renders a very moderate consumption sufficient to destroy life.
Bluestone and tobacco are the most favourite drugs in use, the effect
of them being to cause temporary insanity, accompanied by raging thirst.
I have seen a strong sober man driven perfectly mad for the time being
by two glasses of so-called rum, supplied to him at one of these
shanties. He had not the slightest appearance of being drunk about him,
but every appearance of having been poisoned, and he did not recover
from the effects for a fortnight.
There is not a shadow of a doubt that scores of perfectly healthy men
die every year from the immediate effects of being poisoned at these
infernal dens. It is a very common occurrence for a man to be found
dead within a short distance of one of them. Possibly he has retained
sufficient vitality to drag himself a few hundred yards on his journey,
after exhausting his credit with the publican. Possibly he has actually
died in the house, and been dragged a little way down the road by the
publican, to avoid the unpleasantness which an inquiry into a death in
his house might entail. Fear of any such unpleasantness, however, must
be purely sentimental, for I never heard of a single case where any
death of the kind brought serious consequences to the publican.
It is by no means necessary that a man should be a drunkard for him to
fall a victim to this system of secret murder.
After a twenty-mile tramp, or a fifty-mile ride along a scorching road,
the traveller arrives at the public-house, possibly the only building
that lies between him and a similar journey in front. There is no
earthly reason he should not have a drink. He is tired and thirsty, and
the water is probably very bad. And yet it is possible that the very
first glass he swallows may entirely deprive him of his reason.
The object of every Bush publican is to make anyone with money, who
visits his house, as quickly as possible drunk, in order that he may
either voluntarily hand over all he has got to the publican, and drink
it out, or become so helpless as to allow himself to be robbed.
A system known as “knocking down one’s cheque” prevails all over the
unsettled parts of Australia. That is to say, a man with a cheque, or
a sum of money in his possession, hands it over to the publican, and
calls for drinks for himself and his friends until the publican tells
him he has drunk out his cheque. Of course he never gets a tithe of
his money’s worth in any shape or way--indeed, the kindest thing a
publican can possibly do is to refuse him any more liquor at a very
early stage of the proceedings; for cheques for enormous amounts are
frequently “knocked down” in this way. A quarter of the worth of them,
if honestly drunk out in Bush liquor, would inevitably kill a whole
regiment.
I remember a man who, for years, had been a hard drinker. He went on
the square--that is, he kept perfectly sober--for five years, during
which time he raised a cheque of £600. With this he started down to
the coast, intending to go home to the old country. On the way he was
persuaded to have a drink. The old madness came over him, and in three
weeks he had drunk out every penny of his cheque.
At one of the public-houses at which he stayed he had champagne at a
guinea a bottle, in a bath in front of the house, with a pannikin by
the side for all comers to help themselves.
As if by instinct, crowds of loafers assemble at a Bush “pub.” where
a good cheque is going, like flies round a honey-pot, and the wildest
orgies prevail. The scene is generally pretty much the same. A crowd of
noisy blasphemers, enveloped in a haze of tobacco-smoke, elbowing each
other to get near the counter where drinks are served.
Behind this stands the barman and the landlord, the obsequious
expression on the latter’s face indicating to the initiated that the
time has not yet arrived when his conscience will allow him to declare
the cheque drunk out. He is still anxious to supply everyone with
everything they want.
In one corner of the room lies huddled a shapeless mass, which few
would suppose to be the hospitable individual at whose expense the
company are drinking. An inarticulate moan bursts from the sufferer
on the ground. Possibly he has been in the same position for some
twenty-four hours. The landlord, who is civility itself, springs to
attention at once, and hastening to him bends over him.
“Beg pardon, sir--what did you please to say?”
Another groan.
“Certainly, sir. All right; Jim” (to the barman), “drinks for thirteen.”
And so it goes on. Half the men drinking at the unfortunate wretch’s
expense probably never saw him before, and the other half do not care
if they never see him again--until he has raised another cheque.
The prevalence of drinking throughout the Bush, and in all the big
towns of Queensland especially, is one of the most extraordinary
features of the country. If it were possible to obtain any accurate
returns, it would be very interesting to ascertain the exact proportion
of the whole amount of wages earned in the colony that passes into
the hands of the publicans. The amount of liquor consumed in no way
represents it, owing to the system to which I have just alluded,
which enables the publican to get possession of a man’s money without
supplying him with anything like the value of it in return. It is
no exaggeration to say it is the universal custom of most of the
working-classes of Queensland, whether stockmen, miners, sawyers,
carpenters, fencers, or shepherds, to spend the whole of their earnings
in drink.
Their method of doing so is peculiar, and not many of them are what
could fairly be called habitual drunkards. That is to say, they do
not, as a rule, drink while they are at work, and they make a practice
of working steadily and industriously for long spells at a time. But,
in working, the object of nine out of every ten of them is simply to
raise enough money for a spree. A periodical spree seems a necessity
in the life of a Bushman. It is, to him, what an annual excursion to
the seaside is to an overworked London tradesman. It brings him into
contact with fresh faces and scenes, empties his pocket, restores him
to cheerfulness, and sends him back with renewed ardour to work.
Now, if a Bushman were sure of being supplied with good liquor, instead
of poison, it is doubtful whether this mode of living would ever do
him any harm at all. It is notorious that a man who gets occasionally
drunk, and drinks nothing between whiles, suffers far less than a man
who is continually drinking without ever getting drunk at all. Further
than this, a Bushman, while at work, is of necessity restricted to
the simplest possible fare. Vegetables, or luxuries of any kind, he
can seldom procure. A prolonged course of nothing but tea, beef, and
damper, renders a change of living indispensable, to ward off scurvy
and similar diseases.
Under these circumstances, though it is extremely to be regretted that
he should carry it to the length of the orgies that prevail amongst his
class, it is certain that an occasional drinking-bout does a Bushman
more good than harm.
In considering the question, and the best means of dealing with it,
it is better at once to relegate to a visionary Utopia the hope of
universal thrift and sobriety; we may take it for granted that as
long as men retain their individual freedom of action, they will
drink just exactly as much as they want to. Of course, it admits of
argument whether you cannot educate men up to the point of wanting to
drink less. But the votaries of any such scheme would derive little
encouragement from studying the subject in Queensland. So far from
drunkenness being confined to the uneducated, it is, if anything,
more prevalent among the upper and middle classes than any other.
They drink incessantly, while the lower classes can only afford to
drink occasionally. Preventive legislation, in the shape of early
closing, or penalties for drunkenness, will never do the slightest
good. Early closing only makes men drink at home, and drunkenness is
not a vice upon which the fear of consequences will ever exert any
great restraint, for the simple reason that few men, when they start
drinking, do so with the deliberate intention of getting drunk, and
when they are under the influence of liquor they are, of course,
utterly indifferent to consequences of any kind.
What legislation can and ought to do, is to interfere to prevent a man
being made to get drunk when he does not want to, and to save him from
being poisoned after he has lost all command of his senses.
The conduct of the Queensland Government with regard to the
adulteration of liquor in public-houses is perfectly scandalous. The
penalties for its detection are by no means such as the gravity of
the offence calls for, and are rarely enforced. The excise is most
inefficient, and its duties are discharged in a way that no one
acquainted with the morality of Colonial Government would credit. It
is not long since the Queensland Government sent the excise round some
public-houses in the neighbourhood of Brisbane. They had no difficulty
in collecting a quantity of sixteen different sorts of deadly poisons,
used for the adulteration of liquor. Instead of destroying them, the
Government had the shameless effrontery to sell these poisons by public
auction.
A great deal might be done by the local magistrates if they chose. They
have discretionary power to grant or refuse licenses to holders of
public-houses, and there is no appeal from their decision. If it were
known that a man’s license was certain to be refused him if he were in
the habit of adulterating his liquor, it would undoubtedly act as a
check upon the practice.
If, in addition to this, a man were liable to be hanged, if convicted
of causing the death of a fellow-creature by supplying him with
poisonous liquor, it would go a long way towards stopping it altogether.
The extreme difficulty of obtaining any such conviction, the isolated
position of these Bush publics, which makes supervision next to
impossible, renders some extreme legislation on the subject imperative.
Owing to the scarcity of population, and the consequent facilities
afforded to crime, rape is punishable in Queensland by hanging. I
cannot conceive that the crime of wilfully taking a man’s life by
poison calls for a less severe sentence. As a matter of fact little or
nothing is ever done towards the prevention of this most dastardly of
all forms of murder.
The reformation of Bush public-houses in Queensland would be a
difficult task, even supposing that any large section of the community
were interested in its accomplishment. It is rendered hopeless by
the universal indifference on the subject that, to a certain extent,
pervades every class in the colony.
The sympathies of the whole of society are largely with the publican.
The squatters themselves, of whom the licensing board is usually
composed, will always uphold him. They may regret that he sells
poisonous liquor to stray travellers, but they have no fear of being
treated in the same way themselves--at least, by the publicans in the
neighbourhood of their own station. In return for the assurance of his
license, the publican has always the wisdom to keep a supply of decent
liquor on hand for his supporters when they pay him a call.
A visit to the seat of power in Brisbane would be the reverse of
encouraging to anyone interested in this subject.
A crusade against publicans is not likely to find much favour with an
executive composed of men who spend half their time loafing around the
drinking-bars in the town, and whose ranks generally contain one or two
notorious drunkards, who are not in the least ashamed to take their
seat in the House, or to be seen in the streets while in a state of
intoxication. It is no uncommon thing to see a telegram in a Queensland
paper to the effect that at such and such an hour “Mr. So-and-so, who
was intoxicated, rose to move the adjournment of the House.”
Our neighbours in New South Wales and Victoria are not behind us in
this respect. If anything, the Queensland Assembly is the most sober
of the three. The drunkenness of the judges throughout Australia has
become such a byword as to entirely deprive the time-honoured proverb
of any but a sarcastic meaning.
I read, the other day, in the _Sydney Bulletin_, the following
interesting comment on the subject:--
“We have all of us heard the expressions ‘as drunk as a lord,’ and ‘as
sober as a judge.’ Can anything be more ridiculous? Who ever heard of
a lord being drunk, or a judge being----(ED.--There is no occasion to
continue this subject any further).”
It is by no means an uncommon occurrence for a magistrate or a judge to
take his seat on the bench in a state of intoxication. Not long ago a
most absurd scene took place at the petty sessions at a township which
shall be nameless, but which is not a hundred miles from Bowen. One
magistrate, as not unfrequently happens, was sitting in solitary state
on the bench. His features wore that expression of ludicrous solemnity
by the adoption of which a man who knows himself to be drunk endeavours
to disguise the fact from his neighbours.
A prisoner was brought in, charged with having removed goods to the
value of 1s. 4d. from a store. Before the evidence was half finished, a
terrible frown gathered on the magistrate’s brow. Jamming his battered
cabbage-tree hat well over his eyes, in imitation of the awful ceremony
of putting on the black cap, he rose slowly up, and, pointing a shaking
finger at the culprit, said: “Take’imawayand’ang’im!”
“Beg pardon, your Worship,” said the constable, “this is only a case
of----”
“Take’im-’way--and _’ang_ ’im!” repeated his Worship, more slowly and
impressively than before.
“But, your Worship,” expostulated the bewildered official, “you have no
power----”
“No power! Just ain’t I, though,” shouted the now thoroughly infuriated
magistrate. “’Ear what I shay? Take ’im away and ’ang ’im!” And,
subsiding into his seat, he was heard to add, in a voice of maudlin
pathos: “An’ Lor’ a mercy on his soul!”
Seeing that remonstrance was useless, the constable removed the
prisoner, and shortly afterwards returned.
“Taken’imawayand’ung’im?” asked the magistrate, cheerfully.
“Yes, your Worship.”
“All right. I ’shmis shcase.”
As long as the supervision of Bush public-houses remains in the hands
of such men as these, no reform is possible. And no reform will ever
come until a healthier tone as regards the subject of drunkenness
pervades every class in the colony. Throughout the whole country the
reputation of being mighty to mingle strong drink carries no little
admiration along with it, while the fact of getting occasionally drunk
entails little or no reproach.
Of course, in and near the big towns the possibility of a visit from
the excise makes the adulteration of liquor rather more difficult than
in the Bush. Away in the back blocks it is done openly and shamelessly,
and looked on, by everyone concerned, in the light of rather a good
joke.
A friend of mine went into a Bush “pub.” near Hungerford, on the
borders of New South Wales and Queensland, accompanied by three or four
other men, for whom he was going to “shout.” The usual invitation,
“Give it a name, boys,” was followed by requests on the part of his
friends for various sorts of drinks. One called for rum, another for
beer, and a third was just remarking that gin-and-bitters was what the
doctor had ordered, when a cynical smile was observed on the landlord’s
face.
“Hold on,” he said, “it’s no use going on like that. We’ve run out of
every drop of liquor, and been drinking ‘Pain-killer’ for a week. So
you can take that or leave it alone.”
On another occasion I remember hearing a man ask for a glass of gin,
at a very out-of-the-way Bush shanty. He was supplied with a glass of
bluish-white-looking stuff, which, after the fashion of dwellers in the
Bush, he swallowed raw, intending to help himself to water afterwards.
No sooner had he swallowed it than an expression of awful rage and
terror came over his face.
“Why, damn everything an inch high,” he exclaimed, as soon as he got
his breath, “that ain’t gin--that’s kerosene!”
“Well,” said the woman who had served him, “and what if it is? There’s
no call to make any flaming fuss. There’s three gentlemen in the
parlour drinking Farmer’s Friend for rum, and they don’t say anything.”
On the next annual licensing day after my arrival on the diggings, I
took the opportunity of refusing licenses to every single publican on
the field except one.