THE RESPECTABLE METHODIST

We saw in Chapter 3 that the Deerness Valley grew with the coal-trade. In 1851 the valley was a rural area with a population of 500–600 people. By 1901 the population was 9,100 in these four villages alone. Emigration from and immigration to the villages followed fluctuations in the coal-trade. Rapid growth and changes in a population drawn from a wide area, hard working conditions, and an initial lack of housing and cultural facilities suggest that this early period was likely to have been a period of some social dislocation. We might expect to find conditions similar to those traditionally associated with frontier towns – the relative prosperity and lack of facilities encouraging the rise of drinking and gambling, in turn a cause for violence among a population with many different regional and religious loyalties.

This was the case in the valley in the late nineteenth century. ‘Vérité sans peur’ writing to the D.C. on 22 March 1872, said that Quebec was a blackguard's drunken village, mainly populated by Roman Catholics. A reply on the 29th pointed out that while there was poor housing and no sanitation there were two Sunday schools, an evening school and proposals to establish a reading room and cricket club. Furthermore only 32 out of 125 homes were occupied by Catholics. Fining the Quebec innkeeper for allowing drunkenness, the magistrate said in 1873 that ‘Quebec was the most demoralising village in the neighbourhood’ (sic).