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In which it is suggested James Squire had a surprising effect on beer from beyond the grave
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Squire’s brewery lived on for more than a decade after his death. James Jr took over the operations in 1823 and reportedly pumped out a decent amount of beer until he joined his dad in the ground in 1826. If James Jr’s obituary in the Sydney Gazette was anything to go by, he wasn’t missed as much as his dad. On March 11 the paper reported “DEATH – On Sunday last, Mr James Squire of Kissing Point. The deceased was much respected”. The shortness of the obituary really leaves one thinking that maybe he wasn’t that well respected at all.
At the very least a convict named Hans Peebles didn’t respect him. In September that year Hans was busted stealing one of the late James’ beer casks. A fellow brewer spotted him rolling it down the street. Hans claimed it had been in his house for ages and had just been wheeling it to a cooper for repairs when he was spotted. The court didn’t believe a word of it and sentenced him to 28 days on the treadmill. And not like a treadmill in the gym either; rather it was a large, long rotating cylinder used to crush grain. Convicts would power the cylinder’s rotation by walking on it all day – 40 minutes on and a 20-minute break – and with the risk of being mangled in the machinery if their foot slipped.
The brewery didn’t reopen again until 1828, when Squire Sr’s son-in-law Thomas Farnell (who had married Squire’s daughter Mary) took over. He placed a notice in the Sydney Gazette to let people know the brewery and hotel were back in business. “TC Farnell will spare no pains or expense, in order to supply his friends with good wholesome beer, not to be excelled by any house in the colony.”
Having just spoken of the quality of the beer, Farnell followed it up with this somewhat arrogant remark, “The above brewery is too well known for the quality of its beer, to need any further comments.”
A year later, Farnell seems to have changed the name of the Malting Shovel Tavern to The Adventurer. A list of licenced publicans in The Australian shows Farnell’s premises in Kissing Point as having that name.
By 1834, Farnell too was in the ground; the Sydney Herald reported he died aged 34. “His remains were followed to the grave by nearly the whole of the brethren of the three Masonic Lodges of Australia, and a great number of private friends.”
Two people had taken over Squire’s operations and both of them died a few years after they started brewing – it’s enough to make you wonder if the place was cursed.
While this may have been the case (hint: it probably wasn’t), James Squire wasn’t quite done with making beer. There’s a chance that he was involved in a beer almost 100 years after his death. And I mean “involved” quite literally.
Squire was interned in the Devonshire Street cemetery. You can’t go there anymore because Central station is there. In 1901, the government took back the cemetery to build the station, giving descendants two months to remove the bodies and take them elsewhere. Squire’s body ended up going to Botany Cemetery where, according to a footnote in David Hughes’ journal article ‘Australia’s First Brewer’, his headstone “cannot now be identified”.
But while the Devonshire Street Cemetery was in the centre of town, it was a pretty crappy area – even as cemeteries go. In 1878, the Illustrated Sydney News called for work to improve the drainage in the area “to carry the essence of decayed humanity into the harbour sewers, or to remove the brick and stone buttress in Elizabeth Street, through which slimy and offensive matter oozes after rainy weather”.
Now almost across the road from the place leaking “decayed humanity” was the Albion Brewery. And guess where the brewery got its water? According to David Clark’s essay on the Sydney water supply “Sydney’s pollution problems are alleged to have actually improved the taste of the local beer. The Albion Brewery’s water reservoir received the drainage from the Devonshire Street Cemetery and the beer it produced had a distinctive flavour, later found to be a product of the pollution”.
So it’s possible some of James Squire found its way into the Albion Brewery’s water supply and from there into their patrons’ beer glasses. Cheers!