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In which we discuss the whole “who was first” thing
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It’d be hard to get out of a biography of James Squire without giving a bit of time to that hoary old argument about whether it was him or Boston who was first. The TL:DR answer? Squire. Squire was first – he was so clearly first that it does my head in that we even talk about Boston being a candidate.
Before we get into the evidence, there are a few explanatory notes. Firstly, the title of “Australia’s first brewer” does not mean they were the first person to ever brew a beer in this country. Because if that’s the criteria, neither Squire nor that charlatan Boston was first. There are records of beer being brewed on the First Fleet. It was most likely awful but it was definitely beer. Arthur Bowes Smyth, the ship’s doctor on board the convict transport Lady Penrhyn, brewed some spruce beer on the way over and left us a recipe in his diary (complete with random capitalisation) – “take 10 gallons of water, lukewarm, eight pounds of molasses (or treacle), Six Table spoonfulls of Essence of Spruce, One pint of Yeast, Stir it well together – it will be fit for bottling in a week & for drinking in a week after”.
The good doctor hung around in Sydney until late April and it seems to me quite plausible that he brewed at least one batch on Sydney soil before then. And he wouldn’t have been the only one able to knock up a batch. So by the time Squire got around to making beer more than two years after landing in Sydney Cove, there would almost certainly have been people who had done it before him.
Secondly, the title of our first brewer definitely includes what we’d think of today as homebrewers. Because, in the first 10 years of Sydney Cove, every brewer would have been making their stuff at home.
Thirdly, they’re not making it to get themselves smashed but to sell to others.
Oh, and one other thing. We have to assume the two of them are the only ones in the race and there wasn’t some other person lost to history who beat both of them to the punch. The colony was fighting for survival in those early years so it’s not as if someone would be preoccupied with taking copious notes about who was brewing beer; they’d be more interested in getting enough food to eat.
The sum total of Boston’s joke of a claim comes from an observation made by NSW colony’s judge advocate David Collins about the price of a range of goods in Sydney just before he left in September 1796. One of these goods was beer made by Boston, which Collins mentioned in his work An Account of the English Colony in New South Wales.
Collins wrote that it was “brewed from Indian corn, properly malted, and bittered with the leaves and stalks of the love-apple, (Lycopersicum, a species of Solarium) or, as it was more commonly called in the settlement, the Cape gooseberry. Mr Boston found this succeeded so well, that he erected at some expense a building proper for the business, and was, when the ships sailed, engaged in brewing beer from the abovementioned materials, and in making soap.”
Incidentally, Collins wasn’t too crash-hot when it came to identifying plants – the love apple is a tomato, not a cape gooseberry.
In his journal article ‘Australia’s First Brewer’ David Hughes suggests Boston started brewing a bit earlier than late 1796. His paper gives evidence to suggest he and his partners were brewing in their house as early as winter 1795. But even if that is true, then Squire has that beat by more than a year. In his case we have Squire’s own words as to when he started brewing, in his evidence before the Bigge Inquiry in 1819.
“I have been in the colony from its earliest establishment and for 30 years I have been a brewer. At first I lived in Sydney, and brewed beer in small quantities. I sold it then for 4d per quart and made it from some hops that I got from the Daedalus. I also brewed for General Grose and Col Patterson for their own consumption from English malt. I have been established at Kissing Point as a brewer for 28 years, and have brewed beer from Indian corn and colonial barley.”
Based on that evidence, Squire was brewing as early as 1789. Now you could mount a case to suggest he was talking about events that happened three decades ago, so he could have been a bit foggy on the exact year he started.
However, there are corroborating details in that statement that help to nail down a time. He said he was brewing for General Francis Grose, who left the colony in December 1794 – less than two months after Boston’s arrival. For Boston to have beaten Squire to the title of first brewer, he needed to be brewing as soon as he got off the Surprize, and we know he wasn’t doing that at all.
There’s also the mention of the ship HMS Daedalus and that it was carrying hops. Researchers checking the ships logs found the Daedalus delivered 16 cases of essence of malt, seven casks of malt and four casks of hops to Sydney in 1793. That’s a year before Boston arrived in Sydney. It’s very believable that Squire did use those ingredients – or at least the hops – to make beer. Otherwise, it would see a bit odd that he knew the ship had some on board and would still remember it and be able to mention it to the Bigge Inquiry 30 years later.
That independent evidence points to Squire brewing in 1793 – though he could have started before then. But still, starting in 1793, is early enough to kill off any claim Boston has to being the first brewer.