Masters and Servants by Scott P. Stephen

Author:Scott P. Stephen [Stephen, Scott P.]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: Business & Economics, Corporate & Business History, History, Canada, Pre-Confederation (To 1867), Political Science, Colonialism & Post-Colonialism
ISBN: 9781772124996
Google: 8SvJDwAAQBAJ
Publisher: University of Alberta
Published: 2020-01-09T00:57:36+00:00

Drunkenness and Sobriety

Alcohol was a frequent point of contention between masters and men, both in Britain and in Hudson Bay. Drink played an important role in the early modern workplace. At Prince of Wales Fort on 3 June 1732, Richard Norton “laid ye first stone in ye foundation of our new fort & gave our people some liquor in wch wee all drank a health to our masters success to ye building.”86 When the main residence was completed a long eight years later,

I gave our men liquor for housewarming with which wee all drank the following healths, and discharged a vollie of small arms and 3 pieces of cannon at each health vizt. to church and king, to the Prince of Wales and the Royal family, to the Honble Hudson Bay Compy, to success to the fort against all Enemies, to all the Comp. as servants in genll and concluded the Evening with Repeating ye Honble Y Govr ye Depty Govrs and Committees healths separately.87

In the context of both work and leisure, such strategic use of alcohol encouraged workplace conviviality, harmony, and fellowship. John Nixon had advised that “yow aught to send us a litle more liquors for indeed the couldness requereth it, which would cause your business to goe one cheerfully that the men might have a dram now and then, when occasion serveth, for if it be well applied it is a soveraigne remedy to all their melancholic distempers.”88

The Committee certainly took this advice to heart and was understandably hurt and concerned when it discovered that the beer and brandy sent out for the servants’ “Refreshment” was being sold “amongst Them selves at Extravagant Prises.”89 The gentlemen’s mess at every factory was particularly well supplied with alcohol, and homeward-bound factors often received gifts of wine or brandy for the voyage. The Committee was usually quite blunt about its motives, as in 1770, when it sent “the Chiefs Table” at Moose forty gallons of French brandy “[a]s a farther encouragement for Our Council at Moose Fort to prevent all Private Trade and the more earnestly to comply with Our present Orders.” Ferdinand Jacobs at York and Andrew Graham at Severn received thirty-six and twenty gallons respectively in 1773, “in full expectation that these Encouragements will induce all Our Officers to consider the Companys and their own Interest to be jointly united.”90

Like other employers, however, the HBC drew a connection between drink and idleness (or worse).91 When the Eastmain sloop was lost in the ice near York in October 1714, the crew placed the blame entirely on Captain Michael Grimington Jr of the Prosperous hoy for delaying their departure from Albany: “he neglected his Business…he & his men were all Drunk, broaching the Compies Liquors.” As well, James Knight was told “that he has deny’d to to go to Winter at the Eastmain wth the Hoy, if all these things be true, pray Send him home…for no Man shall stay here, that fails in his Duty to Serve the Company.”92

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