James Squire by Glen Humphries
Author:Glen Humphries
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: James Squire, beer, Beer in Australia, Australian history, First Fleet
Publisher: Last Day of School
Published: 2017-11-29T16:00:00+00:00
20
Sign Your Name
In which James Squire gets invited to a wedding
***
On June 13, 1793, convicts Matthew Gibbons and Margaret Gordon got hitched. Not much is known about the bride, but the groom came over on the Second Fleet (on the Surprize, the ship that brought Squire brewing rival John Boston to town. We’ll hear more about him in the next chapter). Gibbons was done for stealing one-and-a-quarter pounds of tea and got seven years in Sydney for his trouble.
In Sydney Cove he ran a pub (which was more like a room with a few containers of beer than anything we might call a pub today) named The Dragoon in George Street. In the same year he was married, Gibbons joined the NSW Corps. According to Michael Flynn’s book The Second Fleet, he headed back to England with the disgraced corps when they left. He and Margaret had two children in England before heading back to Sydney for 13 years, then went back to the Mother Country and then back to Sydney again, where he would ultimately kark it as an old man.
But what is relevant to us is that James Squire was a witness to that couple’s special day. And it’s special for us because he signed his name on the marriage certificate. Near as I can find, that’s the only thing we have written in his own hand (though I’m pretty sure he did initialise his own will). Which makes it pretty important if you’re a massive James Squire geek.
What’s also worthwhile about the signature is that he was able to write it at all. This means he was literate – he could spell and write his own name, which shows he had some level of education. Some on the First Fleet couldn’t write and would initial any documents with an X. The bride Margaret Gordon was one of them – instead of a signature, she scrawled an X next to where someone else has written her name.
Secondly, it’s worth noting that, in his signature, James Squire drops the S at the end of his name. From before the time of the First Fleet through to his death notice in the Sydney Gazette, his name is consistently written as Squires. And yet when the man writes his own name, he spells it without the S. Weird. Even weirder is his gravestone drops the S too. Did the government spell his name wrong for most of his life and he was too polite to correct them? Or did Squire have some quiet sort of objection to the S at the end of his name and chose to remove it himself?
One other curious thing about his signature is that it does not resemble the one that features on the modern-day beer brand that bears his name.
Here’s the genuine James Squire signature from the marriage certificate
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