"plaster" six or twelve months after. During the "melting" process—i.e., the spending—almost every person entering the bar was invited to join in the " drinkings," but loafers or spongers were comparatively few in those times. Gooseberry cham (sham)- pagne was uncorked by the half-dozen, rum taps flowed, and beer-bottles popped—beer-engines had not yet made their appearance. The " counter lunch " of the period was (if the analysts are to be trusted) quite sui generis. None of your wafer-like sandwiches, or bread and pulverized cheese, or a biscuit and diminutive sheep's tongue, but a plentiful cask of raw salt herrings placed glistening before you, of which you might eat till you were tired, and without stint; no fear of being pulled up by a stingy landlord or pert-tongued, forehead-fringed barmaid. The more was devoured the more was drunk, and as drink was then one shilling all round, the herrings were by no means a bad bait wherewith to hook the thirsty flatheads. It was setting a sprat to catch a mackerel with a vengeance. THE
" DEAD
HOUSE."
Another usage grew up with the old hotels, sicfabula loquitur, which the latter day ones might well retain, i.e., the attaching of a littered room or dead-house—not the dreary-looking ghostly morgue, where suicides or accidentally made corpses are laid in state, but a secure, unwindowed, comfortablystrawed exterior apartment, into which the bodies of those who got dead drunk by day or night were stowed away, and suffered to rest in peace and sleep off the debauch. The "dead-house" was kept tidy and comfortable, and freshly strawed every morning. It is a mistake into which some of the old chroniclers have fallen to suppose that this " morgue" was the resting-place of any of the country customers of the hotel, for it was nothing of the kind. Every tavern then had its special connection, and the " Plaster-men" got to take to particular • houses, and invariably patronized them when " ran-tanning." This class of benefactors the publicans took good care not to offend, and accordingly, when a man's "plaster" was nearly exhausted, he received the balance as travelling money, got a free breakfast, and cheerfully departed with a light heart and a still lighter pocket. The " dead-house" in reality was a humane institution for the accommodation of "casuals" helplessly intoxicated, who, instead of being tumbled out of doors, were " bedded down " for the night. Even if all this mortuary rubbish were correct, there would have been nothing colonially original in such a course, for it was only reviving a custom that prevailed in " Merrie England" in the beginning of the eighteenth century, when gin was the rage in London instead of beer; and Smollett declares that painted boards were put up, inviting people to get drunk for a penny, and dead drunk for twopence. The London gin-houses provided the accommodation of cellars laid down with straw, into which those who got helpless on the new favourite tipple might retire until consciousness was restored. If a m a n gets over-intoxicated now in a low class hotel he is hustled to the door, and, with a hand or foot, precipitated into the streets. A policeman may find him in the channel and take him either to the lock-up or the hospital, and cases have occurred in Melbourne where people have died from the exposure or injuries so received. Though the moderns may laugh at the old system, there was a dash of humanity in it, which might well be followed in more recent times. N o w with respect to the trio of fanciful yarns here reproduced, one only of them has a partial semblance of truth, i.e., the "Plasterers," with the modifications given. As to the countered barrel of raw salt herrings, I may say that I have never seen one exhibited. The "dead-house," or littered morgue, I believe to be just as apocryphal as the salt herring. I never saw either the inside or outside of an hotel "dead-house " and I do not believe such institutions ever had an existence in connection with the ancient public-houses. I have recently conferred on this subject with Mr. Thomas Halfpenny, of Studley Park w h o was a licensed victualler in Melbourne from 1837 to 1847, a n d I have his concurrence in the statement I now make. It is not without some hesitation that I shatter the spicy little fictions, so readable and laughable, only they are not facts; but magna est Veritas is m y motto in these C H R O N I C L E S , and the delusions in question must be annihilated. " JOHN BARLEYCORN."
Usquebaugh, (Anglice " Whisky") was not only undrunk, but unknown for years in the early taverns of Melbourne. R u m , gin, brandy (dark, there was no pale) and beer were the commodities retailed. The LL 2
