David Mathlin and Paul Harris, new owners of the Terminus, wanted to know a bit about their pub, and were generous in commissioning me to write its history. The team at Ventura Press produced the book with professional skill. Zoe Hale, managing editor, and Melissa Faulkner edited the book with meticulous care. Stefan Sadecki, site manager for Peloton Constructions, was generous in letting me and others explore the pub while the restoration and refurbishment progressed. He and his team now join the many thousands of people who have worked in Pyrmont and drunk at the Terminus.
ABBREVIATIONS
AHA (NSW) Australian Hotels Association (New South Wales)
ALP Australian Labor Party
ASN Co. Australasian Steam Navigation Company
CSR Colonial Sugar Refinery
LRB Liquid/Refreshment/Beverage
LPI Land and Property Information
MO Manager’s Office
MSB Maritime Services Board
NLA National Library of Australia
SL NSW State Library of New South Wales
Tooths Tooth & Company Ltd.
ULVA United Licensed Vicuallers Association
ENDNOTES
1Because of its location, the Pyrmont peninsula was easily accessible by canoes, known as nuwi. Nearby clans of the Eora nation whose members possibly visited the area would have included the Gadigal, Gommerigal and Wangal clans.
2Adapted from S. Fitzgerald & H. Golder, Pyrmont and Ultimo under siege, 2nd edition, Halstead Press, Sydney, 2009. The reference to Ikin’s sale is Sunday, 26 May, 1912.
3Many early images of Pyrmont are reproduced in J. Broadbent, Transformations: ecology of Pyrmont Peninsula 1788–2008, online, www.cityofsydney.nsw.gov.au, accessed online 15 September 2017.
4Sydney Free Press, 8 February 1842, and other papers.
5The Colonial Observer, 16 February 1842.
6The Sydney Morning Herald, 14 April 1842. NSW State Archives & Records, Reel 1236 p. 463.
7In April 1841 an application from Henry Hawkins for a license for a Pyrmont Inn was rejected. The Sydney Morning Herald, 1 May 1841.
8Sobriety, Teetotaller & General Newspaper, 8 January 1842.
9Sydney Gazette & NSW Advertiser, August 9, 1842; The Sydney Morning Herald, 2 October 1841.
10The City of Sydney assessed the value of property every few years in order to collect rates. Assessment Books, available online, provide information about the occupants, building materials, number of rooms and value of properties.
11Colonial Observer, 22 February 1843.
12The Sydney Morning Herald, 5 April 1845 (application); 2 May 1845 (license granted).
13The Australian, 8 July 1844. Sydney Sportsman, 2 July 1905.
14Teetotaller & General Newspaper, 8 & 22 March 1843.
15The Sydney Morning Herald, 26 August 1846.
16City of Sydney Archives, Reports of Improvement Committee, 23/1/54.
17City of Sydney Archives, letters received, 1855, 26/20/1141. City of Sydney Archives, Letters Received, 1855, 26/20/1141.
18City of Sydney Archives, Report of the Lighting Committee for year ending 1 November 1846, 21/5/9.
19When the Assessment Book listed the building as having four storeys, this meant two storeys, a cellar and attics.
20Bell’s Life in Sydney & Sporting Review, 26 August 1848.
21The Australian, 27 September 1845.
22‘Sunday Grog Selling’, The Australian, 23 April 1844; The Sydney Morning Herald, 29 October 1856, 7 January & 15 May 1857.
23Fitzgerald, S. & Golder, H., Pyrmont & Ultimo under siege, Halstead Press, 2nd edition, Sydney, 2009, p. 35.
24The Sydney Morning Herald, 13 February 1854.
25The Sydney Morning Herald, 11 October 1848; 16 February 1850.
26The Sydney Morning Herald, 1 August 1851.
27Statuary declaration by James Pratt, 8 March 1899, LPI Primary Application 16695.
28Empire, 24 November 1863.
29This section has been based on the family history research of Jan Koperberg, great great-granddaughter of Mary Ann Elizabeth, youngest child of Peter and Elizabeth Brennan, and Paul Clayton Judd, whose ancestors are Charles Clayton and Elizabeth Clayton, later Brennan.
30Barrel is a generic term for containers made of wooden staves and metal hoops. The common keg holds 10 gallons. Both Joseph Clayton and Peter Brennan advertised that they made tierces, larger containers that held 42 gallons.
31The Sydney Monitor, 14 February 1834.
32The 1845 Assessment Book indicates they were in a better financial situation the previous year. It lists Peter Brennan at a cooperage in Redman Place, which was the land located on Goulburn and Sussex Streets.
33Citizen’s petition to the City Council, 27 August 1883, City of Sydney Archives, 26/192/1393.
34The Evening News, 28 November 1881. At this event, a viewing platform collapsed and a number of people were injured, including the eight-year-old daughter of Jessica and James Finch, the publican of the Coopers Arms Hotel, who broke her leg.
35For more details on this fairground, see S. Fitzgerald, Lord Wolseley Hotel: a social history of a very small pub, Lord Wolseley Hotel, Ultimo, 2016.
36The Daily Telegraph, 8 November 1884.
37The proposed new combined Pyrmont/Ultimo school to be built in 2018 will hold 800 children.
38State Records NSW Assisted Immigrant Passenger Lists, 1828–96, https://www.ancestry.com.au/family-tree/person/tree/38106556/person/120011127711/facts.Thanks to David Godfrey, accessed online 14 September 2017.
39‘An Old Balmain Pioneer’, The Sydney Morning Herald, 9 January 1912.
40Protestant Standard, 16 December 1871 & 13 July 1872.
41The Sydney Morning Herald, 24 October 1873; Empire, 25 December 1873.
42Empire, 5 August 1874.
43Town & Country Journal, 27 June 1874.
44Teetotaller & General Newspaper, 26 July 1843; Australian Band of Hope Review and Children’s Friend, 1 March 1856.
45The Sydney Morning Herald, 12 June 1875.
46The Sydney Morning Herald, 30 April, 4 July, 5 September 1874; 9 December 1975; 14 April 1876.
47Quoted in P. Jarratt, Liquor Merchants Association of Australia centenary history, 1997, p. 10.
48The Sydney Morning Herald, 10 December 1874.
49The Sydney Morning Herald, 20 January 1876; 4 May 1876; 29 July 1886.
50The Evening News, 8 July 1886; Balmain Observer and Western Suburbs Advertiser, 14 August 1886.
51Leader, Orange, NSW, January 1, 1912; The Sydney Morning Herald, 9 January 1912.
52The license passed from Hilton to Furley, The Sydney Morning Herald, 20 May 1876; Furley to Edgecombe, Evening News, 11 October 1876.
53The Sydney Morning Herald, 6 November 1876.
54The Sydney Morning Herald, 14 October and 6 December 1876.
55The Sydney Morning Herald, 17 March 1877.
56The Daily Telegraph, 3 February 1881. For more details on Elizabeth Stewart, see S. Fitzgerald, Lord Wolseley Hotel: a social history of a very small pub, Ultimo, 2016.
57The Sydney Morning Herald, 5 & 18 December 1879.
58The Sydney Morning Herald, 25 November 1879.
59Evening News, 29 November 1879.
60The Daily Telegraph, 8 November 1881.
61Evening News, 10 September 1880 & 17 January; The Sydney Morning Herald, 1 October 1881.
62City of Sydney Archives, Letters Received, 29 August 17 October 1882, 26.186/1409.
63The Sydney Morning Herald, 25 October 1881.
64Evening News, 11 November 1882.
65The Daily Telegraph, 28 October 1884; The Sydney Morning Herald, 31 October 1884.
66The Sydney Morning Herald, 20 February & 27 October 1885; The Daily Telegraph, 13 January 1886.
67The Sydney Morning Herald, 20 November 1889.
68‘Intoxicating Drinks Inquiry Commission’, Votes & Proceedings, NSW Legislative Assembly, 1887–8, Vol. 7.
69The first hundred years
: a brief history of the Kent brewery, 1835–1935, Tooth & Co., 1935.
70The Australian Star, 1 October 1890.
71The Liquor Act to remodel the law relating to publicans, 45 Vic No 11, 19/2/1881, came into force from 1882.
72The Sydney Morning Herald, 7 June 1893.
73The Sydney Morning Herald, 5, 6 & 28 September 1895.
74The case was referred to the full bench of the Supreme Court of NSW, which reheard the case on 29 July. There are several reports in different newspapers, with the most detailed being reported in The Sydney Morning Herald, 30 July 1896. This covers the previous history of the issue back to Johnston’s failure to renew the license.
75State Records NSW, AO Plan No. 62981.
76The Australian Star, 13 October 1896.
77Clarence & Richmond Examiner, 25 May 1897; Australian Star, 2 June 1894; Town & Country Journal, 31 June 1880; Sportsman, 23 October 1894.
78NSW Government Gazette, May 1897.
79The Sydney Morning Herald, 4 May 1998.
80The Daily Telegraph, 28 January 1899.
81Inflation prices are calculated using the Reserve Bank of Australia calculator available at www.rba.gov.au/calculator. At the time of writing, the latest year available was 2016.
82Stubbs, B. J., ‘City vs Country: The demise of the brewing industry in country NSW’, Australian Geographer, 31:1, pp. 55–73.
83The Australian Star, 6 June 1899.
84The Daily Telegraph, 8 December 1899.
85The Daily Telegraph, 8 June 1901.
86Evening News, 15 August 1899 & 3 February 1900.
87The National Advocate, 21 June 1902.
88The Australian Star, 22 October 1901.
89Julia Garling, conversations, 6 June–26 July 2017. Margaret Devereux, the publican’s wife, was Julia Garling’s grandmother’s sister.
90Sydney Harbour Trust, Annual Report, 1901, Appendix D. For details of the Trust’s work see S. Fitzgerald & H. Golder, Pyrmont & Ultimo under siege, 2nd edition, Halstead Press, Sydney, 2009.
91Truth, July 23, 1911. This is a lengthy article fulminating against perceived rapacious attitudes of CSR.
92Matthews, M. R., Pyrmont & Ultimo: a history, self-published, 1882, p. 33.
93Kirkby, D. et al, The Australian pub, UNSW Press, 2010, pp. 96–7.
94The Sydney Morning Herald, 20 October 1902, September 1903; Evening News, 10 March 1906.
95People, 19 December 1903.
96People, 8 September 1906.
97People, 5 March 1910.
98The Sydney Morning Herald, 22 March 1910.
99The Sun, 16 March 1914.
100The Australian Star, 13 May 1909.
101The Sydney Morning Herald, 21 September 1909.
102The Daily Telegraph, 25 December 1903; Australian Star, 1 May 1907; Evening News, 3 July 1909, 20 February 1914.
103The Daily Telegraph, 22 August 1906.
104The Sun, 27 February 1914.
105The Sydney Morning Herald, 20 April 1916.
106Kirkby, D., Barmaids: a history of women’s work in pubs, Cambridge University Press, Melbourne, 1997, pp. 135–43. The formal name of the relevant union was the Federated Liquor and Allied Industries Employees Union of Australia.
107Official ‘Yellow Cards’ records of ‘tied’ hotels exist for both hotels in the Tooth & Co. archives from 1921. In this year the Terminus was supplied with 1560 dozen bottles, and the Royal Pacific with 336 dozen bottles.
108The Sun, 25 January 1913.
109The Sun, 11 September 1913.
110City of Sydney Council Archives, 34/1079/23.
111The upper floor is built of stretchers (bricks laid with the long side parallel to the face of the wall), while the ground floor is a variant of English bond, with one course of headers (short side of the bricks) to every three courses of stretchers. This does not prove anything, but the English bond was more common in the nineteenth century.
112Author’s discussion with heritage architect Peter Freeman.
113The Sydney Morning Herald, 27 March 1917.
114Colonial Sugar Refining Company records, Noel Butlin Archives, ANU, Canberra, N74/10.
115Collection of Bill Pirie, Greg Piper Photographer, reproduced in Laila Ellmoos & Nina Miall, 1917: the Great Strike, Carriageworks et al., 2017.
116The Sydney Morning Herald, 17 December; Licensing Court, 13 December 1917.
117Leonie Low, granddaughter of Agnes Woods and Tobias O’Toole, email communication, July 2017.
118The Worker’s Weekly, 5 January 1925.
119For example, ‘A Pyrmont Push with a Nine-Gallon Keg’, Sunday Times, 6 March 1924. Francis Kenny, leader of the Pyrmont Spider Gang, got 18 months gaol for an attempted hold-up, National Advocate (Bathurst), 8 March, 1930.
120The Sydney Morning Herald, 14 September 1923.
121No records were found for Piper at the Terminus apart from the transfer to Woods in December 1918. His time there would have been measured in months.
122Assessment report of the Terminus by Tooth’s architect Dalziel, 22 October 1924, Tooth & Co. papers, N60/2633.
123Keene to Dempsey, Tooth & Co. papers, N60/2633.
12413 August 1928; 5 December 1929, Tooth & Co. papers, N60/2633.
125Lionel Dempsey’s letter to the Tooth & Co. manager, 16 December 1929, Tooth & Co. papers, N60/2633.
126General Manager’s letter to Lionel Dempsey, 13 February 1930, Tooth & Co. papers, N60/2633; 15 April 15 1930 Tooth & Co. Papers, N60/7434.
127All quantities of liquor purchased are taken from Tooth & Co.’s ‘Yellow Cards’ held in the Tooth & Co. papers, Noel Butlin Archives, ANU, Canberra.
128Internal unsigned memo to General Manager, 12 August 1930, Tooth & Co. papers, N60/2633.
129Ibid.
130Distribution of primary products, 1934–7, Colonial Secretary, Special Bundle, State Records NSW, 9/2407.
131‘Hostel Boardroom dedicated,’ The Sydney Morning Herald, 19 June 1941.
132Solling, M., Grandeur and grit: a history of Glebe, Halstead Press, Sydney, 2007, pp. 207–9.
133The Sun, 20 June 1919; The Sydney Morning Herald, 21 August 1919.
1344 September 1930, Tooth & Co. papers, N60/2633; 11 September 1930, N60/7437.
135Memo to Mr. Bentley, 11 August, 1936, Tooth & Co. papers, N60/2633.
136Memo to City Manager, 22 July 1936, Tooth & Co. papers, N60/2633.
137All repair details and quotations for work are scattered through Tooth & Co. papers, N60/7437.
138Memo to Mr. Gibbons, 12 January, 1940, Tooth & Co. papers, N60/7434.
139Labor Daily, 1 April 1929, www.sydneyaldermen.com.au., accessed online 10 July 2017.
140Labor Daily, 5 March 1937.
141Note initialled K.B. (Bentley), 13 January 1939, Tooth & Co. papers N60/2633.
142Standard Plan: railway tunnel beneath John St – use as air raid shelter, 1941. City of Sydney Archives E373/17.
143‘“Air Raid’’ on Pyrmont,’ The Sydney Morning Herald, 25 November 1940.
144The Sydney Morning Herald, 19 June 1941.
145http://john.curtin.edu.au/ww2leaders/war.html
146Soutter, L., ‘Striking Rise in Beer Sales’, The Sun, 22 June 1941.
147Jarrett, P., Liquor Merchants Association of Australia centenary history, 1997, pp. 53–60.
148Interview with Ray Blissett quoted in Timothy Blum, ‘Profits over patriotism: black market crime in World War II Sydney’, BA Honours thesis, University of Sydney, 2011, p. 21.
149Kennedy, P., High stakes: the rise of the Waterhouse dynasty, Hachette Sydney, 2014: Tooheys Yellow Cards held in Tooth & Co. Papers.
150The Sydney Morning Herald, 27 November 1943.
151Handwritten note, 29 November 1943, Tooth & Co. papers, N60/2633.
152The Sydney Morning Herald, 14 February 1944; Will of Lionel Dempsey, NSW State Archives & Records Item No.4-290237 Tooth & Co. & Co. to solicitors, Smithers, Warren & Lyons, 22 August 1944, Tooth & Co. papers, N60/7434.
153Jennice Kersh, Redfern, conversation with author, 19 July 2017.
154The Sun, 20 October 1944.
155The Terminus lease dated 2 July 1946. Tooth & Co. papers, N60/2634.
156Numerous police notices filed at Tooth & Co. papers, N60/7434.
157Confidential report, V. O. Dempsey, 4 April 1949, Tooth & Co. papers, N60/2634.
158Annual report on the Terminus, 3 May 1949, Tooth & Co. papers, N60/2634.
159Bentley to Gibbins, 14 June, 1950, Tooth & Co. papers, N60/7434.
160Gibbins to the city manager, Bentley, 14 June 1950, Tooth & Co. papers, N60/7434.
161Memo to Mr. Bentley, 30 March 1950, Tooth & Co. papers, N60/2634.
162Vera Dempsey to the general manager, 29 March 1950, Tooth & Co. papers, N60/2634.
163Construction, 11 November 1953.
164Report to City Manager, 27 March 1952, Tooth & Co. papers, N60/2634.
165A Temprite refrigeration plant was installed: a compressor unit, two 3/tap and one 2/tap instantaneous beer coolers and panels. Extensive details and discussion from January to October 1952, Tooth & Co. papers, N60/2634,N60/ 7434.
166Billy Dillon, Willoughby, conversation with author, 19 July 2017. During this conversation Billy confessed that he never drank at the Terminus, but at the Royal Pacific because he preferred the taste of Tooheys.
167Jennice Kersh, conversation with author, Pyrmont, 21 July 2017.
168Note of phone conversation, Wyatt to the city manager, 12 July 1954, Tooth & Co. papers, N60/2634.
169State Records, probate packet 4-449201.
170Odlum to city manager, 16 July 1954, Tooth & Co. papers, N60/2634.
17117 May 1955 tender accepted for renewal of bearers, joists and defective flooring. Report on the Terminus Hotel, 22 April 1955, Tooth & Co. papers, N60/7434.
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