Witness
The Fate Of Poor Latresse, Shot Down For Refusing To Surrender To
Lieut.
Andrel, R.N., on trying to make his escape from a tavern in St.
John's suburbs, where he had been attending a dancing party.
[92]
Singularly enough, sixty years ago, the leading Lower Town merchants
met in this old tenement of the former "Syndic des Marchands"
to establish the first Exchange. Of the resolutions passed at the
meeting thereat, held in 1816, and presided over by an eminent
merchant, John William Woolsey, Esq., subsequently President of the
Quebec Bank, we find a notice in the Quebec Gazette, of 12th
December, 1816. [93] They decided to establish a Merchant's Exchange
in the lower part of the "Neptune" Inn. Amongst those present, one
recognizes familiar names - John Jones, George Symes, James Heath,
Robert Melvin, Thomas Edward Brown, &c.
Why was the place called "Neptune" Inn? For the obvious reason that a
large statue of the god of the sea, bearing in one hand a formidable
iron trident, stood over the main entrance in a threatening attitude.
This conspicuous land-mark was known to every British ship-captain
frequenting our port. Right well can the writer of these lines
remember the truculent trident.
But if, even in the days of that excellent landlady, Mrs. Hammond, it
meant to the wearied mariner boundless cheer, the latest London
papers, pipes and soothing rum punch mixed by a comely and cheerful
bar-maid, to the unsophisticated Canadian peasant, attracted to the
Lower Town on market days, it was of evil portent.
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