Montreal 1865: A Grocer from Omagh
John Maguire's lost immigrant dream
There once was a boy who could run faster than anyone in Griffintown. He could outrun any grown man. When the school bell rang, he could outrun the Irish Christian Brothers. He could escape his father when he came at him with a belt. The little sprinter eventually ran far from Griffintown.
Before we can tell the story of the boy, we must first tell the story of the man who brought him to Canada, his father, John Maguire, a grocer with his own shop on the high street of Omagh, Tyrone, in the years just after the Great Hunger. Every family history has to start with one person who has no parents, and so this story begins with John Maguire, rising up from the floorboards behind the counter of his shop, already grown, in his tie, starched collar, and grocer’s smock. John was born in India in the early years of the reign of William IV to unknown parents. John was Catholic, but in India before the Raj there were no English-speaking Catholic priests. His parents probably made do with either a Portuguese or Church of England missionary, so this Catholic baby’s entry into the world went unrecorded.
John’s father may have been one of the mass of underemployed Irishmen who served as a soldier or a clerk with the East India Company. Such men did not ship out with wives, so John’s mother was Indian. But John Maguire could have been anyone. He could have even been an orphan of mixed parentage from the streets of Bombay who passed as Irish and decided to call himself “John Maguire.” The East India Company was known as “John Company,” and “Maguire” a common enough name. He may not have been born in India at all, and came up with an exotic story to conceal his true origin. Whoever he may have been, John believed himself to be somebody in the world, and that he had plans and desires that mattered.
If John were indeed born in India, he was probably the son of an Irishman who brought him home. Only a father could have paid his passage back to Ireland. Omagh was no doubt not far from his father’s people, otherwise John would have sought his fortune in Dublin, or London. Omagh was bigger than whatever place his father came from – it was a market town and the capital of that part of Tyrone. Omagh hosted hiring fairs at Candlemas, Lammas, May Day, and All Saints Hallowday for young people who came from as far away as Donegal to find work.
John was a very young man, only in his early 20s, when he married Catherine McKinney, a daughter of the man who owned the pub on Market Street. Did McKinney set up his young son-in-law in business? It did not appear that John inherited a shop, but he opened a grocery in a prime location, just down the street from the pub. He and Catherine had six children in quick succession. First Con, then Hugh, Andrew, John Jr., Catherine, and Mary Agnes. Little Catherine did not survive to her second birthday, but the other children thrived. Con never sat still. He loved all games, especially hurling. Hurling is an Irishman’s game, the fastest and scrappiest game there is.
John soon stood out in Omagh, throwing himself fully into any controversy. He loathed unfairness and refused to be pushed around, especially by fine gentlemen who spared no thoughts for common people trying to make a living. He brought suit against Captain Mervyn Archdall, of Castle Archdale, a Member of Parliament, breeder of racehorses, and Treasurer of the Grand Lodge of the Orange Order. John sued over the throwing down of Archdall’s own properties on Dry Bridge Street, which included the shop front belonging to his mother-in-law. Mr. Buchanan does not know what he’s about for he’s not a businessman in this town. The house was situated on Bridge Street, the best street for business after Market Street. For us to find another the same would be a letting value of £25 yearly, if such place could be found. He won his case, and the McKinneys were awarded £172.
One mild summer night, James Devlin challenged John to a duel over an affair of honor, and so they stripped to their smalls and boxed in McGorman’s yard until the police were summoned. Witnesses said that John was not the instigator. What were Devlin’s taunts? Bullies find their opening. Devlin may have noticed something about John that wasn’t entirely Irish. Maguire was provoked to a pugilistic encounter with his antagonist. Devlin was fined £10.
McKinney died, and John took over the pub. He now owned both a grocery and a pub. He opened a bakery. He was elected a town commissioner, debating the merits of street lighting and deciding shut-shop days with Omagh’s other leading businessmen. The dispute over the street lamps was bitter, with John’s side in favor dubbing the side against the Party of Filth and Darkness.
John seemed to get the better of everyone, and win every dispute. Then in 1859, his luck began to turn.
There was a project to extend the Portadown-Dungannon rail line to Omagh, where it formed a junction with the Londonderry and Enniskillen Railway. The project manager, Latimer Whittle, opened an account at John’s store for provisions for his gang of navvies, who racked up a tab of £90. John used all his remaining credit from the so-called “monster houses” of Dublin, the warehouse wholesalers of every kind of good, from fabrics to booze, to sell to these men. £90 was almost quadruple the value of his store and home on Market Street, which he did not own. What a light in his eyes as he scanned the accumulating lines of ink in the account book. £90 in sales. Railroads were progress, and so many men saw fortunes grow alongside the spreading railway lines. John imagined a string of shops, or his own “monster-house,” rising like a brick fortress on Sackville Street in Dublin.
Whittle disputed the sum and did not pay the money owed. John travelled to Dublin to take Whittle to court and won his case, but it was too late. The wholesalers had advanced him large amounts of credit at low rates for months, but when he could not repay them, the consequences were swift and pitiless. Within ten days of missing a payment, his wholesalers called for a court order to press John into bankruptcy. His ruin was published across every newspaper in Ireland. In Insolvency - John Maguire, late of Omagh, in the County of Tyrone, grocer, baker, and spirit dealer.
As a shopkeeper, John had the right to declare bankruptcy and so was spared the dirt and disgrace of the Omagh Gaol, whose inmates were largely debtors. The Omagh Gaol was a dark, fetid place of Victorian nightmare, filled with sewage, where prisoners lived on oatmeal and walked on the treadmill, a pointless punishment to “grind the wind.”
John’s debts were discharged in bankruptcy. He was back in business on Market Street with a grocery that also sold spirits. Somehow he got credit to open the new shop. Perhaps Catherine had squirreled away from their creditors some of the settlement the McKinneys had received from Captain Archdall, if it had not been sacrificed to John’s grand gamble. Or one of Catherine’s brothers-in-law, perhaps Smyth the draper, lent them the cash. Or they sold the McKinney china, now sitting cold and unused on the sideboard, waiting for company who no longer came because of the duels, the lawsuits, the controversies, the bankruptcies. Maguire, he’s a chancer.
John continued on for a few more years, but a plan to leave was already taking shape in his mind. Wiped out by the monsters of Dublin, all there was left was this shop. He’d had a taste of fortune. It had come so close. The years and decades to come appeared in his mind’s eye in flickering scenes as if from a magic lantern he’d once seen at the fair: years of standing behind the counter, weighing Mrs. McAleer’s Sunday chops. Trim the fat there, Mr. Maguire, before you weigh them. Or at the bar, pulling beer for Donnelly, Kelly, and the other mediocre small-town men, forced to listen to their small talk. Omagh could not contain him. He had seen vast cities in India. He had already crossed an ocean.
His restless thoughts turned to America. A number of Omagh men, Catholics like himself, had immigrated to Montreal, where they were quickly making fortunes. The Mullin brothers had a grocery wholesale business, with their own handsome brick building in Griffintown. Doherty, too, had gone to Canada and opened a shop. McGoldrick was also in Montreal-- it was reported he was making good money in trade. Why not John? He was equal to any of them. Let him try his luck in America. He sold the store and its fixtures and bought steamship tickets to Quebec for himself, Catherine, and the children, in the spring of 1864.
Montreal was teeming with Irish. Less than 20 years before, 70,000 filthy starving people had washed up in a city of 50,000. Thousands had died of typhoid lying in the fever sheds near Peel Basin, as many as 6,000 in the “Calcutta Summer” of 1847, when the temperatures had soared to over 100 degrees. The dead were buried together at Windmill Point. The survivors fanned out across North America, but thousands stayed in Montreal, settling in the grubby neighborhood of Griffintown, home to Irish immigrants who worked at the port, for the Grand Trunk Railway, or in the many brickyards and metal shops that had sprung up along the Lachine canal.
John leased commercial space from James Curran, a young master-carter who was also in the grocery business. John opened a grocery and tavern on Colbourne Street. The next spring, the banks of the St. Lawrence overflowed, the rising water flooding Griffintown, filling it with sewage and disease, forcing people from their homes. People in upper flats gave shelter to those downstairs but often could not feed them. Their larders were soaked, food ruined. So were neighborhood shops, so nothing could be replaced. John lost his shop inventory, and his family was forced to move house. The people of Griffintown made rafts out of the floating remains of wooden sidewalks. John wrote peppery letters to the newspapers, the city officials. There needs to be a formal Enquiry into the causes of this disaster, identifying the perpetrator of this negligence that resulted in the River overflowing, with necessary remedies to prevent its recurrence. Nothing was done about it. Griffintown flooded every year.
Trouble came the following winter, when John could not pay his $8 gas bill. The New City Gas Company sent around a plumber named McIntosh to remove the gas line from the premises. John walked into his store to see an Orangeman shutting off the gas. Enraged, John grabbed McIntosh by his collar and dragged him out of the shop. Don’t ya dare come back. If ya try to swetch it aff, I’ll thrash ya.
Louis Beaudry, the managing director of the New City Gas Company, pressed charges against John. Defiant John did not appear in court. The cheek. Beaudry himself came to court and prosecuted the case himself. The New City Gas Company would make an example of him. If we allow any rate payer to refuse to pay, how can any of us safely engage in commerce? Beaudry strode across the court room to accuse John’s empty seat. If furthermore we allow him to assault a representative of the New City Gas Company, how do we defend the rule of law? Mr. Beaudry did not know that when John walked in on McIntosh going about his work, his back to John, following the source of the light to the gas fixture, and capping the line, he already knew what would happen next, already had the taste of ashes.
John was fined $52. He now owed $60. More than a month’s pay for any working man in Griffintown. The sum could be levied by distress, meaning the court sent bailiffs to John and Catherine’s home to seize their belongings in lieu of cash. They would take the dishes, the furniture, the sheets from their beds. Catherine sent the children outside to play in the streets, telling Con to keep them out, into the snowy twilight of the Canadian winter afternoon. They should not see the bailiffs come. And the bailiffs should not get their overcoats.
Unbowed, John reopened a smaller grocery store in a worse location. Not long after, Tom Doherty opened a new grocery not far from John’s former premises on Colborne, taking over his trade.
John stayed in business with James Curran, who told John that he would backstop him. Curran had a dozen carters working under him, and a stable of his own horses- he seemed good for it. Then Curran, only 28, died suddenly, having never paid John the money he had promised to advance him for the goods in the shop. Hoping to get some cash to keep going, John called on Curran’s wife, Ellen, married just five months before, but the weeping young widow closed the door on him. John sold the store and the $104 note from Curran to his creditors, the Mullin brothers. Mullins were rich and had the means to pursue Ellen Curran, to get at the carts and the horses. John did not. Tom Doherty took over the lease to the shop.
John went to work as a clerk for the Grand Trunk Railway. The Maguires lived on Shannon Street, one of the scruffier streets in Griffintown. At the bottom of Shannon Street, at the corner of Ottawa Street, towered the gasworks of the New City Gas Company. The Maguires walked in the shadow of its chimneys every day, the smell of sulfur and lime from the gasworks filling their noses.
The last weeks of John’s life, the summer of 1872, was another deadly hot season. The Quebec Morning Chronicle reported day after day of air overcharged with electricity and how behind the banks of heavy clouds was seen a sky flickering with lurid flame. John died, at the age of 42, from one of the many infectious diseases that took so many people in Montreal back then, first borne along by the spring flood water and then lingering in Griffintown, killing the old and the young, the weak as well as the strong. He died as the heat broke, at the tail end of a wave of deaths from smallpox, just as the epidemic had been declared over.
There was no obituary in the newspaper. It cost fifty cents to publish a notice, which Catherine did not have. The Daily Witness that day instead reported that Boss Tweed had escaped trial in New York, a hot air balloon from Plymouth, New Hampshire had travelled 300 miles over the Maine wilderness to alight at daybreak at Sayabec, Quebec, and that Reverend John Tecumseh Jones, a frugal and industrious Ottawa Indian, had bequeathed the sum of $60,000 to the cause of Baptist ministerial education in the State of Kansas. Newspapers advertised Cincinnati hams, Pattison’s Chest and Lung Protectors, voice lessons with Madame Elena Waters, and Dr. Roberts’s celebrated ointment known as the Poor Man’s Friend.
Con was 16, and had already left school to apprentice as a printer. With their father dead, the younger children also went to work. His mother did as the other Griffintown widows, taking in mending and making hot lunches for working people in the neighborhood. She would take in a boarder, who would claim one of the beds. One of the littler children would be made to sleep on two chairs in the kitchen.
There is no trace of John. When he died, his body was no doubt tipped into a mass grave with other victims of whatever outbreak killed him.
Catherine Maguire never remarried and died in Montreal in 1899, at the age of 66. Her obituary was carried in the Tyrone Constitution, which noted that she came from one of the oldest and most respected families in Omagh.
Ellen Curran lived for many decades a widow on her own, then remarried late in life to another grocer, Francis McCay. She died in 1914 at the age of 76.
The Mullin brothers of Omagh founded the Canada Cold Storage Company. J.E. Mullin became a city councilman, and his obituary noted that he was prominently identified with all movements tending toward good civic government. His brother Patrick died in 1904 at age 80 at his summer home at Cacouna, Quebec.
Tom Doherty of Omagh made his fortune importing tea.
Mervyn Archdal retired to the South of France and died in 1895, at the age of 83.
Latimer Whittle retired to Jamaica, and died in 1891, at the age of 78.
The New City Gas Company still stands in Griffintown. It’s now a nightclub.
Thank you for telling John’s story in such detail. I have to say that John had amazing resilience, especially considering that most of his misfortunes were not his fault. That he started again so many times, it seems very unfair that he did not make his fortune in the end.
It is important to tell all the stories - not just the ones of the fortunate.
Extraordinary lives brilliantly told!!!! Just wonderful ♥️