A pub crawl through our history

AUTHOR: Laraine Sole (left) with barmaid Samantha Martin at the Grand Hotel. PICTURE / PAUL BROOKS

Social historian and published author Laraine Sole has embarked on a pub crawl, literarily speaking.
Her new book The Early Hotels of Wanganui covers Whanganui's hotels from the town's beginnings until 1920, with a small exception made for the Grand Hotel, which didn't appear on the scene until a little later.
"Kevin Luff started the research because he wanted to write a book about hotels," says Laraine. It could have something to do with his vast collection of bottles, many of which are in the Whanganui Regional Museum. "Years ago I helped him write a book - Early Wanganui Bottles."
Despite completing a lot of research, Kevin found the hotel book too hard to handle, so he passed the baton to Laraine.
"His research was the building block for me because I would not have had a clue where to start."
Kevin had discovered a lot of the early names for well-known Whanganui hotels. With some changing names several times and the same name appearing more than once in different locations, Laraine was pleased that Kevin had sorted so much of it out. "It was so confusing," she says.
That was two years ago, and now Laraine has almost completed the task.
"There were 26 hotels," she says, using as geographical boundary a triangle formed by the Red Lion, Aramoho and Castlecliff. "Some of the stories are just amazing. It's been fascinating."
She has also discovered and corrected mistakes in previous histories. A couple of the hotels also had brief lives as temperance hotels, serving coffee and non-alcoholic beverages. It wasn't long before their owners, tee-totallers or not, obtained liquor licences and business improved.
Laraine's research was assisted by the ever-helpful on-line resource, Papers Past, as well as the Whanganui Regional Museum, Kyle Dalton, Lynn Teki, Geoff Potts, Graeme Prince, the Alexander Heritage and Research Library, Ancestry.com and family members of some of the names she unearthed.
Dates and places feature a lot, but what brings the book to life is the stories of the people, their lives, the scandals - the bits that make it human. There are families in Whanganui who will be able to connect with their ancestors through this book.
"I want these people's names to keep being spoken about," says Laraine. "I want to keep them alive and I think that's what history can do. It can stop these people from dying permanently.
"I love telling their stories and trying to work out what kind of people they were and just trying to make them real human beings."
There are tales of good fortune and tragedy, happiness and sorrow, stories of lives lived.
"The chap who owned the Imperial Hotel was a famous highland dancer," says Laraine. "He competed all over the world."
There used to be a hotel at Virginia Lake. It failed to get a licence, mysteriously burned down and was never rebuilt.
Fred Whitlock of sauce fame had a stint as a publican at both the Red Lion and the Rutland hotels.
In the 1880s, when the Temperance movement was strong, members managed to get themselves on to licensing boards and, by refusing licences, effectively shut pubs down.
"The Prince of Wales went, the Empire lost its licence, the St Johns lost its licence application, and they tried to take away the licence of what became the Federal, but his lawyer was smart and stopped it happening," says Laraine. The de-licensed premises became worthless and people's lives were ruined. The Prince of Wales became a boarding house and eventually burned down and the St Johns became the St Johns Workingmen's Club.
If anyone has any photos of people in the hotels, or photos of the hotels themselves, particularly the Masonic Hotel, please contact Laraine Sole. There is still time. You can reach her through her Facebook page.