THE SAINT and the SINNER (Part 1)

Old Jackson didn’t drink, gamble or swear: what kind of gold seeker was this?

David Williams Higgins is one of my favourite British Columbia historical writers.
As a journalist and politician he met all kinds in his 60 years in the province and it’s a great blessing that, in retirement, he set out to record some of them.
Several of his reminiscences first appeared in the Daily Colonist in 1904 then, with other chapters, in two books which have become highly collectible classics: The Mystic Spring and The Passing of a Race.
Some historians have disputed Higgins’ claims to the roles he personally played in some of his tales and fault him for his recreating dialogue half a century after the fact.
Who cares? I say!
Higgins really was there at the time of these events and his role as a newspaper reporter and editor gave him an insider’s view. He knew the people he writes about, can describe their appearance and mannerisms, something no modern-day historian can even hope to do.
How many of us have interviewed a convicted murderer within days of his going to the gallows?
It’s firsthand experiences such as these that make D.W.L Higgins’ writings unique. Even though they’re somewhat florid by today’s journalistic standards, they capture the atmosphere of those exciting days in B.C. in the 1860s-1890s.
That said, here’s another of Higgins’ classic tales: The Saint and the Sinner…

Pioneer Square, the final resting place of many of Victoria’s pioneers, little resembles the day when it was referred to as the Quadra Street Cemetery.

Because of the ravages of time, neglect and vandalism, and the fact that many graves were removed to Ross Bay Cemetery, many of the records of those interred here have been lost.

Among the forgotten and missing is the grave of a man known simply as ‘Old Jackson.’

Old Jackson wasn’t a resident of Victoria. Having made his pile in Yale, the American packer was on his way home to the United States when he called at Victoria in 1860, was suddenly taken ill, and was told by Dr. J.S. Helmcken that he was dying of consumption. Soon he lay on his deathbed in a room of the Hotel de France on lower Government Street.

At least he didn’t face the end alone. With him during his final hours were the two persons in the world whom he called friends: David W. Higgins, journalist, and fellow countryman Tom O’Neil. As it became apparent that the end was near, O’Neil became increasingly distraught.

Throughout his deathbed vigil he attended to Jackson’s every wish and did all he could to make his friend as comfortable as possible. O’Neil’s watch ended at dawn, Christmas morning, when Jackson turned his face to the wall and died.

The following day, he was interred in the Quadra Street Cemetery. This should have been the end of his tragic story. Indeed, it would have been but for the fact that, almost half a century after, Higgins recounted many of the colourful and outrageous characters whom he’d known during the gold rush days of Fort Yale and Victoria.

Among those whom he remembered were his friend Old Jackson and Tom O’Neil.

Although 45 years had passed since Jackson’s death, Higgins, who seems to have liked most of the men he’d met in his lifelong travels, didn’t hide his contempt for Tom O’Neil. The latter had been Jackson’s friend, not one of the journalist’s choosing.

The difference between Jackson and O’Neil had been so great that, at the time, Higgins had marvelled at the strange bond between them. Jackson, he’d admired as a good man and friend; O’Neil, he’d despised as a ruffian and would-be murderer. As far as Higgins was concerned, it was the classical case of the saint and the sinner.

“Surnames were seldom used or needed in the gold fields,” Higgins wrote. “Christian names abbreviated answered all purpose of identification, reference or receipt. If there were half a dozen fellows in the camp with the same prefix, then some striking characteristic or manner, gait or speech was tacked on to designate which man was meant.

“But this man Jackson was never called anything except ‘Old Jackson.’ If he had a baptismal name I never knew it, at least, not until I saw him sign his full cognomen under peculiar and painful circumstances.

“He was not old either—scarcely 30—but he had a grave, quiet, absorbed way with him.”

One thing Higgins did know: Jackson had been a man of courage and determination, having travelled all the way from California with his own packtrain of 30-odd mules. Montana badlands and hostile Indians hadn’t deterred him, not even when the latter killed two of his men and wounded two others.

Jackson ‘s reputation was forged by the manner in which he cared for the wounded, refusing to abandon them as the others wanted to do so as to make better time to the gold fields. He’d even abandoned the packs of two of his mules so that the wounded men could ride, although this slowed their daily journey by a third and allowed other packtrains to reach the Fraser River before them.

Jackson, who also won respect for his concern for his animals, swallowed his losses without complaint. Hence it was regarded with general satisfaction that, over the next two years, he more than recouped his early losses.

Higgins, also a temporary resident of Yale, found him to be “a very peculiar man. He was better educated than most of his vocation, and his was a silent, unobstrusive personality. Often he would sit for hours in a group around a bar-room stove when his mind seemed far away, and he never uttered a word or joined in the conversation until he was apealed to, when having replied in monosyllables, he quickly relapsed into silence.

What kind of man was this?
“He drank little, swore not even at a refractory mule, and gambled not at all, but he read a great deal. I do not know where or how I got the impression into my head, but I always looked upon Old Jackson as a man who, like most silent men, although slow to anger, would be a dangerous character if aroused…”
(To be continued)
–Excerpted from Capital Characers: A Celebration of Victorian Eccentrics by T.W. Paterson.