‘Disgusting and beastly state’

Bourke's Hotel, also known as the La Trobe Inn at one stage, on the east-bound entrance to Pakenham. Fraser's Hotel was opposite, on the western side of Toomuc Creek.

Casey Cardinia Library Corporation’s local history librarian HEATHER ARNOLD delves into the story of Fraser’s Hotel in Pakenham. Heather gave an address at Evergreen Retirement Village late last month and mentioned that the Pakenham Hotel in Main Street used to be Fraser’s and was corrected by a number of history buffs. Heather now sets the record straight.

I had done some research into hotels at Pakenham and mistakenly assumed that the Pakenham Hotel, near the railway station, had originally been Fraser’s Hotel.
This is incorrect and I am grateful to the people who pointed this out to me.
The hotel near the railway station was built sometime between 1877, the year the railway arrived, and 1880. I have seen various dates listed in various books.
This hotel was built by Daniel Bourke and at one time was called the Gembrook Hotel.
For land administration purposes, Victoria is divided into counties.
Pakenham is in the County of Mornington and each county is divided into parishes and Pakenham is divided between the Parish of Nar Nar Goon and the Parish of Gembrook and I believe that the hotel was named after the parish.
The existing building opened in 1929.
The Bourke family had also built another hotel in Pakenham. This had been erected in 1849 by Michael and Catherine Bourke on the east side of the Toomuc Creek.
It was known as the Latrobe Inn or Bourke’s Hotel. After Michael’s death in 1877, Catherine continued to operate the hotel until she died in 1910. There is still a hotel on the site, the Highway Hotel, and it is currently being renovated.
Back to Fraser’s Hotel. This hotel, built around 1869, was originally called Kelly’s Hotel after the owner Michael Kelly, and was on the west side of the Toomuc Creek, around where the Mr Furniture shop is now located, according Pakenham legend Graham Treloar.
It was operated by Eliza and Alexander Fraser from 1881.
We can find out something about the Frasers from a licence renewal hearing that took place in January 1883 at the Berwick Court and was reported in the South Bourke and Mornington Journal on 10 January 1883.
Mrs Fraser had applied for the renewal of her licence for her “hotel and billiard table”.
This was opposed by the police on the grounds that she kept a “disorderly house”.
Police Sergeant McWilliams said that he had seen drunken men lying about the grounds and that the buildings were in a dilapidated condition, in fact in a “most disgusting and beastly state”.
McWilliams also made comments about her husband, Alexander. He said that Eliza had complained to him that at one time her husband had tried to kill her and she had to take out a summons against him, binding her husband to keep the peace.
On another occasion, McWiliams reported, “there was a drunken man lying outside the hotel covered with blood, apparently having been in a fight. Mrs Fraser interfered, when Mr Fraser kicked her and gave her a blow in the face”.
Mrs Fraser’s counsel, Mr Gillott, then presented her defence and addressed all the issues raised by McWilliams and said that the “only tenable one was her unsatisfactory marital relations with her husband which was not misconduct on her part but her misfortune for which she should not be deprived of her only source of livelihood and thrown upon the world with only a few sticks of furniture to sell to enable her to commence life afresh”.
He added that “Mrs Fraser was dependent on the profits of the hotel for the support of herself and three children”.
She had held a publican’s licence for 13 years – 11 years in Melbourne at the Inverness, Royal George, and Kirks Bazaar hotels.
There were 12 rooms in the Pakenham Hotel and Michael Kelly, the owner of the hotel, stated that if the licence was granted he was prepared to put the hotel in proper order.
The court heard the house had been continually licensed for the last 14 years. The present applicant had been in it since 15 September 1881.
The court allowed her to keep the hotel licence, although for some reason not the licence for the billiard table.
Eliza Fraser (nee Mulcahy) died on 31 July 1890 at the age of 43. Her will shows that she owned the “hotel known as Fraser’s Pakenham Hotel”, which was on an acre of land.
She also owned a quarter of an acre near the Pakenham Railway Station, so she must have purchased the freehold of the hotel from Michael Kelly.
The land was left to her three sons from her first marriage to Arthur Ward – John, Arthur and Alexander. Her executors were her son, John, Patrick Kennedy and John Dwyer.
John Dwyer took over as licensee of the hotel after Eliza’s death. I don’t know what happened to her husband, Alexander.