For all his foibles, 100 canoes escorted Jimmy’s casket to the island where he was buried beside his darling Jenny.
We see them almost daily: men, women, children some of them, whose appearance IDs them as being on the street, probably homeless.
It’s easy for us to think—if we choose to think about them at all—as losers, addicted to drugs or drink, as makers of their own misfortune and unworthy of our sympathy or help. Misfits who don’t belong in a respectable society.
We think: What’s the matter with them? Why don’t they get jobs, the lazy bums!?
But we each must walk our own road, we each must carry our own load.
Years ago, I told you about Victoria’s legendary Jimmy and Jenny Chickens. I have since placed that story on my website and it recently drew the most generous and compassionate letter that I’ve ever received in response to any of my writings.
But, first, a recap of my story on Mr. and Mrs. Chickens who lived on what is today Mary Tod Island, off Oak Bay. That is, when Jimmy wasn’t in the city or the provincial jail.
His crime? Jimmy was a drinker of colossal proportions. He wasn’t really a problem drinker, and certainly not a criminal; as often as not, police arrested him to protect him from the elements by providing a warm and dry cell and food.
Because Jenny drank, too, the couple could often be seen, staggering arm in arm down a city street until whisked from sensitive eyes by a man in blue, followed by a quick courtroom appearance and another term behind bars.
And so it went, for years, until Jenny died. Then Jimmy was alone and in his grief, to quote a not unsympathetic Colonist reporter, even “the effervescing firewater had no pleasures for him”. But, with time, the old habits returned and Jimmy, always friendly to everyone he met, could be seen making his weary way toward Oak Bay. If forced to remain in town by heavy weather or a heavy load, he’d just shrug and curl up under a board sidewalk.
Ever a favourite of police and gaolers, he was a model prisoner who worked hard, his eternal grin a ray of sunshine in the dreary cellblocks. Always trustworthy, he was often released to run errands, to return at the appointed hour. Even the magistrates liked him, often having to suppress a chuckle when he offered one of his legal arguments.
Having once been heavily fined for having a quart of whiskey, when subsequently caught with a pint of the same, Jimmy argued, shouldn’t he pay but half the fine for half the whiskey?
Between sentences, Jimmy returned to his island shack, fished for salmon and dug clams until he could again afford to visit his bootlegger—and again find himself in the prisoner’s dock.
He almost came to a premature end in 1899 when, overcome by loneliness, he slipped into the Songhees village and away with a young “bride.” Four angry relatives caught up with him just before he reached his island, rescuing the girl then ramming and sinking his canoe and leaving Jimmy to swim for his life.
This ended his romantic adventures. Two years later, he died alone in his shack and Victorians mourned the loss of one of their most colourful characters.
Once a court official had taken the trouble to tally up Jimmy’s remarkable record.
He estimated “after careful study…that it has taken more than three gallons of ink and four boxes of steel pins [nibs] for the city’s clerk to register the entries in which the classic name of Jimmy Chickens appears, while the liquor that Jimmy and his wife have punished so far in their lifetime would fill the Esquimalt [dry]dock three times, floating two such boats as the Westmore [a large steamship], or keeping 18 dudes of ordinary capacity, drunk for a decade.”
For all his foibles, Jimmy had been loved by all; 100 canoes escorted his casket to the island where he was buried beside his darling Jenny.
So there you have it, the story of Jimmy and Jenny Chickens—drunks. Is there anything more to be said about them? Well, Brian Holt had this to say on my website last week:
“Funny, but I read a story like this and I can’t help but smile. To know that there were folks such as this who by today’s standards would be considered losers and not worthy of a second glance, but this couple for all their downfalls in life were actually the salt of the earth who over their period of time in this world garnered the respect and friendship of so many people in the small city of Victoria.
“For all his faults Jimmy Chicken was still an honest and trust worthy human being who could not be faulted other than he could not stay away from drink. What a lovely story and what makes it even greater is the fact that he was escorted by those who respected and admired this man to his long lost wife Jenny so they could once again be together.”
Jimmy Chickens is one of my favourite historical characters. Thank you, Brian Holt.
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