by Dan McCaffery for the Sarnia Observer
He was our first crusader against immorality.
Robert Sinclair Gurd, Sarnia’s eighth Mayor, took over as Head of Council at a time when prostitution and public drunkenness were rife on the streets of what was still a very young community.
The lawlessness apparently stemmed from the rapid growth Sarnia was undergoing in the late 1860s. According to a story in The Observer written shortly after Gurd took office, “At no time in the past 75 years has there been so much stir in the way of building, as there is in our Town this year”.
The newspaper railed against immorality, declaring downtown tavern owners were routinely breaking the law by selling liquor on Sundays. And the editor added, there was more than one local house of prostitution.
In the summer of 1868 there were several tales of drunken brawls in the central business district, including one in which a tavern owner and a prostitute were caught fighting on Front Street.
Under the headline ‘Breaches of Public Morality’, The Observer decried the Town’s declining moral standards. “Only two or three Sundays ago a scene of drunken carousal took place in one of our hotels which would have been disgraceful in any well-regulated Inn on any week day, but was certainly far more so on the Sabbath”, the newspaper declared. “It is no secret that some left that house on the day in question in such a state of intoxication that they were unable to go to their homes without assistance”.
The situation came to a head when a local man was shot in the face during an altercation in a house of ill repute.
Gurd, a lawyer who had been acclaimed Mayor at the beginning of 1868, ordered police to vigorously enforce the ban on Sunday liquor sales.
Minutes of Council meetings show he also left the chair to push through a bylaw to “prohibit the sale of the National Police Gazette and other immoral publications, within the Town limits”.