This Week In Brooklin History


110 years ago this week
June 15, 1888
It’s a dog’s life

From the June 8, 1888 Whitby Chronicle:

BROOKLIN.

We were pleased to have Mr. A. E. Manning with us on Sunday and Monday.

Mr. John Dryden, M. P. P., accompanied by Mr. Robert Beith, of Bowmanville, sailed from New York on Saturday last for England. Mr. Dryden has gone for the purpose of purchasing Shropshire sheep and will be absent about four weeks.

Miss Fannie Brereton, cadet in the Salvation Army Army died on Saturday afternoon after a very short illness. On the Sunday previous she attended a funeral, that of Mr. Piper who was buried at Myrtle, and in returning to attend the evening meeting got overheated. She it apears was exposed to a sudden draft in the meeting and caught a severe cold resulting in inflammation.

From Tuesday she was gradully sinking and passed peacefully away at about four o’clock on Saturday afternoon at Mr. James Routley’s, where she had been taken down with the disease. Arrangements were made to convey her remains to Toronto for interment, but owing to her short illness and the warm weather it was thought advisable to bury her here on Sunday.

She had made many friends, in the Army and out of it, during her short stay in Brooklin and consequently a large number followed the remains to Groveside cemetery. A memorial service was held in the barracks in the evening and was ably conducted by Capt. Leonard, of Whitby.

The duties of a newspaper correspondent are as varied as they are laborious. He has to rejoice with those who rejoice and sigh with those who sigh. Your correspondent has had his seasons of sadness and his moments of mourning, as well as others of the craft but amidst them all he is buoyed up with the hope that the time is not far distant when fallen humanity will recognize his self-sacrificing devotion in its interest and reward him accordingly.

One of the saddest experiences he has been called upon to undergo in the discharge of his duties as salaried reporter of the first paper in the county was that associated with the inquiry into the causes, that produced the untimely death of poor “Carlo,” the faithful guardian of the “Times”, and whose achievements in the field of gore you were pleased to chronicle in one of your late issues.

No more will Carlo bay at the moon at midnight amid a shower of boot-jacks from the nearest attic window, or hum sweet lulabies to teething puppies beneath the kitchen range. No longer will the feline concerts be untimely closed by his unexpected entrance, or the Thomas cat perched on the gate post, listen with palpitating heart to the melody of his musical tones.

Never again will he parade our streets in the triumph of victory with his candal appendage decorated with last year’s oyster can. So accustomed had he become, poor fellow, to this sort of past-time that whenever or wherever he saw a small boy and a tin can, he immediately backed up to the same, and stood in meek expectancy of the honored decoration.

An inquest and past mortem by the dogs of the village revealed the fact that he had not received fair treatment in his late encounter. At the very moment when “Jumbo” had formed an attachment for the back of his neck, his owner, from whom he had reason to expect better things, seized him from behind and thus placed him entirely at the mercy of his antagonist.

This was the “most unkindest cut of all” and in the minds of the jury, was deserving of the severest censure. The jury returned a verdict that the deceased came to his death from heart disease and general debility arising from the want of proper nourishment, and aggravated by his late encounter with “Jumbo”. After the finding of the jury had been concurred in, the assembled canines performed the last sad rites over the remains of their champion to the tune of “Poor Dog Tray”.

With eyes dimmed, with tears and flashing reproachful glances at the proprietor of the Times, who stood afar off with conscience stricken mien, that late companions of Poor Carlo dropped a bone on his sunken bier and with drooped tails and pendent ears passed through a hole in the fence and left chief constable Wilson to stand alone as chief mourner. During the solemn ceremony a black flag hung at half mast in front of the Times office expressive of public grief at the fate of Carlo.

Mr. and Mrs. Wm. Holliday and family of Toronto are visiting ot Mr. D. Holliday’s


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