The next time you’re driving down Pitts Memorial Drive in St. John’s and feeling the frustration of bumper-to-bumper cars, spare a thought for James S. Pitts, the man it was named after.
He had his own traffic woes — and they might have been worse than yours.
J. & W. Pitts
Evening Telegram, May 7, 1894, MUN DAI
James S. Pitts and his father, William were the owners of J.& W. Pitts, a successful business enterprise running on the St. John’s waterfront at the turn of the 20th century. They traded mainly in cattle and agricultural products that they shipped to Newfoundland from Prince Edward Island.
Their ships would dock at the rear of the Pitts Building, which sat on Water Street approximately where the Scotia Centre office tower rises today.
Not far away from their building, was the Bowring Brothers store.
Bowring Bros.
Bowring Bros. Ltd., 265-281 Water Street,St. John's, NL (ca. 1892), Public Domain, Wikimedia Commons
Bowring Brothers was an institution in St. John’s, long before J. & W. Pitts began operation. It had been running since early in the 1800s and by the early 1900s, they operated a popular dry goods store on Water Street. Their business flourished and, eventually spread across North America as a chain of gift shops. Naturally, they attracted a wide range of customers, but none so strange as they received one Wednesday at their Water Street location.
An Unexpected Customer
It was September 11, 1912 and J. & W. Pitts had just had a shipment of animals. Often they had cattle auctions right there, on their wharf. Once sold, the cattle were delivered to the buyer — sometimes via a mini-cattle drive up water street.
Now, as you can imagine, parading cattle through downtown St. John’s comes with its challenges. Even in the early 1900s —when the city was still no stranger to horse traffic — driving cattle was a daunting prospect. Keeping a small herd together and all accounted for was no easy task, amid the bustle of the downtown.
On at least one occasion, it took a bizarre turn.
At about 2pm that day, Mr. Williams, a manager at Bowring Bros, was busy pouring over accounts in the Hardware Department. He was engrossed in his work, checking his facts and figures, and didn’t know anything was amiss — until a shaggy head leaned across his shoulder.
It was a bullock, and it was right behind him. It had wandered off as it was being moved from Pitts Premises and, somehow, had come right into the Bowring Bros. hardware store.
Williams was, as the newspapers put it, “not a little surprised and somewhat scared.”
I’m not sure what the appropriate response is in such a circumstance but I think, at least in my case, ‘somewhat scared’ would probably be a bit of an understatement. If I were doing paperwork at my desk and suddenly a large animal — an animal I had no idea was near the place — peered over my shoulder, I would leapfrog right over ‘somewhat scared’ and land somewhere in the neighbourhood of ‘frightened out of my wits.’
Perhaps, they were cut from different cloth in those days.
In any case, Williams rose to the occasion. He, and the employees of the store, managed to secure the animal before it caused any problems. They escorted it from the shop and ‘not a cent’s worth of damage was done.”
So while it may be true that a bull in a china shop is bad news, a bullock in the building supplies it turns out, is not such a big deal.
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A Bovine Visitor, Evening Telegram, September 12, 1911
Hon. James S. Pitts, Newfoundland Quarterly, Spring 1992
Will of James Steward Pitts, Newfoundland’s Grand Banks
Early History of Bowring Brothers, Bowring Park
