Joe Beef – The friend of the working man

“Joe Beef of Montreal, The friend of the working man.”

How did a British army vet turned barman extraordinaire become the champion of Montreal’s working class? For starters, Joe Beef’s canteen provided a free lunch, cheap beds, and dubious entertainment to hundreds of the city’s laborourers, unemployed, and drifters between 1868 and 1889.

His booze-fueled charity was likely welcome at a time when the church was the only provider of social services. Always pragmatic, if poetic, Joe Beef handed out cards proclaiming:

“He cares not for the Pope, Priest, Parson or King William of the Boyne; All Joe wants is the Coin. He trusts in God in the summer time to keep him from all harm; when he sees the first frost and snow poor old Joe trusts the Almighty Dollar and good maple wood to keep his belly warm. For Churches, chapels, ranters, preachers, beechers and such stuff, Montreal has already got enough.”

Although Joe Beef brought in his fair share of coin – his assets were valued at $80,000 at his death – he is far better remembered for spreading around the wealth brought in at the bar.

In Joe Beef’s day, it was common for people to be arrested and fined for public drunkenness, disorderly conduct, or “vagabondism”. Those who were unable to pay a fine of about $1.50-$2.50 could be imprisoned for a period of around 10-15 days for this kind of infraction. Since they could not work while they were imprisoned, their families would often be the ones to suffer most. Joe Beef was known to keep a portrait of the town Recorder above his bar with a number of bills tucked into the corner of the frame. These he used to pay the fines of his regular customers.

Social services led by religious groups encouraged those who sought help to sign a pledge to abstain from “intoxicating drinks.”

Joe Beef’s canteen was also an informal place to look for a job and Joe Beef was agreeable to lend out the tools necessary to get a day’s work, for instance shoveling snow.

But his philanthropy went beyond paying the off fines and lending out shovels: He is known to have raised $500 a year for the Montreal General Hospital. He also proposed to support the hospital in providing a doctor to do house-calls in the working-class neighbourhood, an offer that was turned down.

But not everyone saw Joe Beef’s intentions as benevolent – his rival John Dougall, editor of the Montreal Daily Witness, proclaimed that this charity as nothing more than a way to entrap the city’s poorest citizens:

“He tempts into his place the unfortunates of the city, from the refuges and elsewhere, by the offer of a cheap meal and an enormous assumption of benevolence, and when he has them there he lets them treat each other – to death, or whatever may happen, in his bar… in their code of morality no meanness could be more contemptible than to take advantage of a free breakfast on Sunday and not drink at their benefactor’s bar all the week….bringing home his earning daily and nightly to hand over the counter for the poison which is his real pay.” (Montreal Daily Witness – April 5th, 1979, page 4. This editorial appeared after a man died “of drink” in Joe Beef’s tavern)

In defense of the working man

Lachine canal labourer’s strike, December 1877.

They say there is no such thing as bad publicity and Joe Beef’s popularity with both the English and French press helped to shine a light on the plight of the working class at a time when the first unions were beginning to form.

According to Peter DeLottinville whose article provided much of the information for this post, “What Joe Beef accomplished was to give (working class) culture a public face and voice, a figure upon which the local press and reformers could focus. In doing so, Joe Beef saved that culture from the obscurity which generally surround work cultures.”

When the Lachine Canal workers went on strike for shorter hours, better pay, an end to the truck system, Joe Beef provided bread, soup and tea to the picket line. In a show of diplomacy, he also sent a wagon of food to the army men who had been called in to help control the strikers. Many of the soldiers gave their bread away to the crowd.

The following day, Joe Beef was called out of his canteen to address a crowd of 2000 strikers and, while he encouraged them to hold out for their demands – $1 for a nine-hour working day,  he cautioned them to behave in an orderly fasion and refrain from drinking which would injure their cause.

Joe Beef’s speech to the Lachine Canal strikers was recorded in the Montreal Witness, December 21st 1877.

But the strike was not successful: after eight days without pay, the laborourers returned to their posts without a raise. Since the canal was a federal project, Joe Beef helped raised money to send a committee to Ottawa and in this way they were at least able to put an end to the company store payments, which further reduced the value of workers’ earnings.

Obviously Joe Beef’s vocal – and nutritional – support for the workers did nothing to endear him to the contractors. One wrote:

“All of the trouble which we have had on the canal this winter has been caused mostly by men that never worked a day on the canal and have been started in a low Brothel kept by the one Joe Beef who seems to be at the head of it all” (Source: Whitney and Daly 22 Jan 1878 in De Lottinville, 1981).

A corral for criminals

Nor was Joe Beef a favourite with the law. On top of bailing out his favourite drunks, the barman himself was in and out of court over his liquor licence and various incidents that allegedly took place at his canteen.

John Dougall, editor of the Montreal Daily Witness (pictured above) had it out for Joe Beef.

On April 12th 1880, the Gazette reported from the court-room in the case of Joe Beef vs The Daily Witness (the precise charges are unclear in the article). Those to testify against Joe Beef included police Sergeant Holmbrooke, who stated that the place was a very low tavern and that there had been frequent disturbances there. Sub-Chief Lancy said that the clientelle consisted of “rowdies and theives, and many complaints had been made against it.”

However, according to Lancy, Police Cheif Paradis had recommended the renewal of Joe Beef’s bar license because the institution served as a sort of corral for criminal-types. The cheif of police had apparently told his assitant that “it was better to have all these characters kept in one place so that they might be dropped upon by the detectives.”

Though he had a big heart, Joe Beef was an imposing, military man with “extraordinarily developed muscles,” and he enforced his own law within the world of his canteen. He never called the police to deal with the rough and rowdy characters that patronized his institution — unless they were actually highway robbers, in which case he had been known to slip a tip to the authorities.

Overall, he believed that providing men with food and work was a more effective way to keep law and order.  Despite the policemen’s harsh words, Joe Beef may have helped more than hindered the task of keeping law and order (DeLottinville, 1981). Much to the Daily Witness’ chagrin, Joe Beef never had trouble renewing his bar license.

Of course those who were fed, employed, paid in cash and kept out of jail were also more likely to have a nickel or two to spend at the bar.

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One more Joe-Beef article to go…check back next Sunday!

Where not otherwise indicated, the content of this post was from the following soruces: Joe Beef of Montreal: Working-Class Culture and the Tavern, 1869-1889, by Peter DeLottinville, 1981, in Labour/Le Travailleur (www.lltjournal.ca/index.php/llt/article/download/2632/3035); “Joe Beef” in The Globe (Toronto), April 24th, 1876, and the Dictionary of Canadian Biography Online (link).