In 1802 an act (George III, 1802, Cap. V) provided for the application of £1,200 currency to enable the inhabitants to “enter on the culture of hemp with facility and advantage.” The hemp was to be used for cordage for the Royal Navy. Committees were formed at Quebec and Montreal. The following advertisement appeared in the official gazette in English and French: “Notice is hereby given to persons inclined to raise hemp that seed will be delivered gratis at Quebec and Montreal to such persons as will engage to sow the same, not exceeding two and one-half bushels to one person, and that nine pence per pound will be paid for clean hemp of the growth of Lower Canada equal to samples of Russian clean hemp to be seen at Quebec and Montreal, and delivered on or before the 30th of September, 1803, and 12 shillings and 6 pence per bushel for good ripe hemp seed delivered on or before the 1st of January, 1803.” Premiums were offered to societies and in 1804 Mr. Isaac Winslow Clarke, chairman of the Montreal committee, received the gold medal from the Society of Arts for hemp grown in Lower Canada. Great interest was sustained for a time, but it was found useless to compete with Russia. Sir Joseph Banks, the president of the Royal Society, in reply to a reference from the Board of Trade, concluded that the exportation of hemp from Russia could not be stopped, that no matter at how low a price the British or colonial producer offered it, Russian hemp would still be lower.
Meanwhile the principal retail businesses, the butchers, the bakers, the candlestick makers, and the rest, were growing in importance in their shops on St. Paul Street over which they and their families lived. The historian, Heriot, says of these in 1805: “The habitations of the principal merchants are neat and commodious and their storehouses are spacious and secured against loss from fire, being covered with sheet iron or tin.” Speaking of the markets he also says: “The markets of Montreal are more abundantly supplied than those of Quebec, and articles are sold at more reasonable prices, especially in winter, when the inhabitants of the United States who reside on the borders of Canada bring for sale a part of the produce of their farms. Quantities of fish are likewise conveyed thither in sleighs from Boston.”
At this time there were 142 slaves in the Montreal district, although their importation had been forbidden in Canada since 1793, and their perpetuation in Lower Canada was disfavoured by the bill of 1799, in which year there was a petition of Montreal citizens to secure master’s rights over them. In the first issue of the Montreal Gazette of June 3, 1778, the following advertisement appeared: “Ran away on the 14th inst., a slave belonging to the widow Dufy Desaulniers, aged about thirty-five years, dressed in striped calico of the ordinary cut, of tolerable stoutness. Whoever will bring her back will receive a reward of $6.00 and will be repaid any costs that may be proved to have been incurred in finding her.”
In 1807 with the growing trade an act was passed for a new market house in Montreal. The year 1808 marks the advent of a second brewery firm, that of Dow & Dunn, with D. & D. on their bottles of beer and whiskey. The first brewery was at La Prairie and the liquor was shipped across the river. The business was started by Mr. Dow who shortly took Mr. J. Dunn into partnership. Its lineage is Dow, Dunn, White, Harris, Scott, Hooper, and it is now merged, about 1911, into the National Breweries Company, into which the Molson firm never entered.
In 1809 Mr. John Frothingham founded the firm now known as Frothingham & Workman. The factory was at Côte St. Paul and was the pioneer business to introduce the ax and tool industry generally into Canada. An interesting relic retained by the firm is an invoice for shelf hardware imported from England in the spring of 1815 and contains this note at the bottom: “The premium on insurance has risen since the reappearance of Bonaparte and the above is the best terms we could obtain.” The reappearance was due to Napoleon’s escape from Elba. In 1850 William Workman was admitted to the firm. He was the well known alderman, mayor, member of parliament—a good citizen. In 1809 the prospects of trade were heightened by Molson’s introduction of steamships in Canada. A third brewery was started in 1811 by Mr. Thomas A. Dawes. It was located at Lachine, probably for two reasons, the water supply and the opportunity to supply the northwestern expeditions into the fur lands directed by Sir George Simpson, the governor of the Hudson’s Bay Company, whose headquarters were at Lachine. The Dawes firm also lately became merged in the National Breweries Company.
A faded ledger of 1815, begun by Joseph Beckett & Company on St. Paul Street, marks the foundation of a Montreal drug firm almost a century old which, through Beckett & Company, Carter & McDonald, John Carter & Company, John Birks & Company, John Carter & Company, Carter, Kerry & Company, Kerry Brothers & Company, Weston & Company, leads to the National Drug Company. The ledger above mentioned is historically interesting, as it reveals some of the names of the leaders of social life in the early days of the nineteenth century. A study of it reveals the following facts:
First of all there are the Earl and Countess of Selkirk—regular customers of the firm, buying powders and pomades and perfume, attar of roses, and the like, as becomes extreme delicacy, high position and a super-refinement, not forgotten in a raw community.
We have Colonels and Captains and Lieutenants, who were in abundant evidence in the life of the city at the time; medical men; esquires by the score—all in account with Mr. Beckett for prescriptions and toilet articles, and delicate perfumes and aromatic waters and powders and lip salve and pomades to give the skin a satin appearance, and other mysteries of the feminine toilet—for the account is a family one, in each case.
We have General Proctor, Captain Thomas, Captain Barnes, Captain Despard, Colonel Dechambault, Major Courtenay, Captain Castle, the Hon. Judge Monk, the Hon. William McGillivray, the Hon. Judge Sewell, Major McGregor, Captain Weeks—but, really the military march through the pages, as thick as “autumnal leaves in Vallombrosa.” As for the medical men, their name is legion—Doctors Andrews, Arnoldi, Bender, Badgely, Brown, Dillon, Davis, Cazieu (Chateauguay), Emerson, Ferris, Forsyth, Grassett, Irving, Kennedy, Kimber, Lee, Morris, McLeod, McGale, Osborne, Nelson, Sleigh, Seilby, Stansfield—and many more. Evidently the people did not suffer for lack of medical advice a century ago in Montreal.
The doctors are down, of course, for the ingredients with which they compounded their own prescriptions, which was the general practice of the time.