Big Dan Courtney

Daniel “Big Dan” Courtney was the proprietor of the Little Bay Hotel. He came to Little Bay from Halifax and first appears in my sources in May of 1885.

Innkeepers of the time were big men. They had to be. Big Dan was the exception. He wasn’t a large man yet his nickname was said without irony. He was tough. He and his wife ran the Little Bay Hotel together. It consisted of a bar, a saloon, and the guest's rooms. The Courtneys ran a tight ship and kept the beds clean. Their business had a good reputation and was counted among the best of Newfoundland's hotels. The Little Bay Hotel hosted a slew of visiting dignitaries, military officers, and capitalists.

The front door took you to the saloon where it was expected you'd arrive cleaned up and well dressed. The back door took you to the bar where patrons weren't suggested to linger long. It was seedier back there. You had your drink and after you'd drank it you left. If you were presentable and not too intoxicated you'd most likely go from the bar to the saloon around front. The saloon was often packed with young men smoking and discussing the issues of the day. Little Bay's Brass Band was known to practice there providing an atmosphere of live music.

Innkeeping was not an easy job. The miners would sometimes get rowdy and out of hand. One of the more violent examples happened in December of 1885. Big Dan refused to serve any more liquor to a labourer named Michael Cleary. Cleary didn’t take it well. He smashed the innkeeper in the head with a large water jug. The injury was serious resulting in a sizeable scalp wound and several pieces of water jug imbedded in Big Dan’s head. Fortunately Mr. C. S. McCarthy, the town’s druggist, was on hand to tend to the bleeding. Constable Meany arrested Mr. Cleary for the assault and he was charged two months hard labour and imprisonment. The judge felt he deserved more for what was deemed a cowardly act.

Little Bay's police were often called to the hotel. However, Constable Patrick Meany wasn't on Big Dan Courtney's side. Constable Meany had a lot of enemies eventually even including his own Sergeant. He was arresting the drunks on one hand and drinking with them on the other. The drinkers didn't like the threat he represented and the upstanding citizens didn't appreciate a drunken policeman fraternizing with criminals. Big Dan Courtney and Constable Meany had something of an ongoing feud which seems to have stemmed from one incident. In August of 1885 Patrick Meany was on a drunk. He was out with the tailor, Thomas Cain, and another man by the name of John Crane. Mr. Crane was on the outs with Mrs. Courtney so he asked Constable Meany to accompany him back to the hotel to collect his jacket. They took a valuable water proof rubber coat from the hotel and stashed it at Cain’s Taylor Shop. There was one problem - the jacket did not belong to Mr. Crane. Big Dan pressed charges. Now, while there wasn’t enough evidence to prove theft the case nevertheless saw Constable Meany called as a witness. This was a problem. The Constable was already on thin ice with his boss, police Sergeant Thomas Wells, and being involved in a court case as a result of being drunk didn’t help at all. Sergeant Wells made request to have Constable Meany removed from the town after that. I think Meany blamed Courtney. The Constable started hindering the Innkeep. In July 1886 Meany charged Dan for a breach of the Licence Act. A tiny, red-tape violation as he didn’t have his sign board in accordance. Patrons of the hotel also started getting arrested. In August 1886 Thomas Sullivan was arrested for drunken disorderly there and in December Meany arrested Stephen Mullowney and Samuel Colbourne for the same.

Big Dan was going to lose the fight to sell liquor but I'd like to think he won his final round against the troublesome Constable. For you see, there was a grand New Years robbery in the year of 1887. A heist, no less, and an awfully suspicious one at that. Little Bay's Temperance Movement had been gaining ground for awhile now and they were set for victory over licensed liquor sales. The licensed establishments wouldn’t be officially closed down until February but everyone could see the signs that it was coming. Big Dan Courtney was no fool but he had a problem. He'd ordered rum before this shift in Little Bay politics was obvious. Now he had received a puncheon of rum for Christmas but he wasn't going to be able to sell it. It was being held. The product had been seized and was being detained at the Company Store on the wharf. The newspaper suspected it was under the orders of Magistrate Blandford himself, a longtime proponent of the town's Temperance movement. I suspect the reporters were right. I think the plan was to withhold Courtney's product until after the law was passed making its sale impossible before finally making it illegal. The rum went missing before that. That's the thing about laws - they only work if you follow them. Little Bay's Innkeeper, Daniel "Big Dan" Courtney reported the crime to Constable Patrick Meany. The heist went down as follows. Some clever thieves had cut their way into the Company Store from under the wharf and then proceeded to drill a hole into the puncheon of rum from the bottom. The store was unopened and the puncheon unmoved but inside it was dry. They had managed to steal the entirety of the rum without anyone the wiser. I’d like to believe this was an inside job and that Big Dan simply found his own way to keep his product. And I'd like to believe that his choice to report it to Patrick Meany himself was a final act of gloating. If so Big Dan won the battle but lost the war. The Temperance movement in Little Bay was successful that February and a hefty ten dollar reward for evidence of liquor sales made it impossible for Big Dan to sell the rum anyway, assuming it was him.

Big Dan Courtney died in June of 1887. He was 33. I can find no reference to a cause of death. His wife stayed on in town, at least for awhile, volunteering with the Catholic Church under Father O’Flynn. The Little Bay Hotel would outlive Big Dan Courtney. Charlie Wells took over the business at least until the great fire. The Little Bay Hotel was eventually reduced to ashes, along with the rest of the town, in the summer of 1904, 17 years after the death of its first proprietor, the reputable Big Dan Courtney, it followed him into history.

References for this piece come largely from the newspapers and the policeman's journals. The Courtneys had no children making it unlikely that pictures will surface. I do have another Courtney in town though, a man named John, perhaps it was his brother. Big Dan is buried in the old RC cemetery on the hill in Little Bay. And that's the story of Little Bay's first innkeeper. I hope you liked it. Thanks for reading!

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My companion piece on Little Bay's other licensed establishment, the Skittle Alley, can be found here.