The words “riot” and “Victoria” do not go together today, but exactly 100 years ago, it was a different story. On May 8 and 9, 1915, downtown Victoria was wracked by rioting, looting, destruction of property, xenophobia and general mayhem.
Why? Because of the sinking of the British ocean liner Lusitania off the Irish south coast by a German U-boat on May 7, 1915. More than 1,100 passengers, many of them women and children, drowned in the frigid Atlantic waters. Some of the dead were American neutrals and Canadians. There was a Victoria connection too: Lt. James (Boy) Dunsmuir, of the prominent Victoria family, was one of the dead.
In 1915, Victoria, Canada and the rest of the British Empire were at war with Germany. The war was proving to be a costly, long and terrible slog, and Victorians were dying in the Flanders mud and mire. Victoria was a recruiting and training centre, and home to three army units, encamped in Esquimalt and at the Willows exhibition grounds in Oak Bay. “Boy” Dunsmuir was a member of one of them.
“Murder Most Foul” was the title of the Daily Colonist’s lurid editorial on the sinking. Not to be outdone, the Victoria Daily Times denounced the German action as “a crime against humanity,” and in racist terms, compared the “bestial” German regime to African cannibals and “the aborigines of America.”
These editorials, and the rumour that members of Victoria’s tiny German community were “celebrating” the Lusitania’s sinking, had a tragic effect. On the evening of Saturday, May 8, a rowdy and drunken crowd of off-duty soldiers marched from their Willows camp to Victoria, spoiling for a fight. Their target: businesses of Victoria’s small German community.
The riot had two epicentres: the Hotel Blanshard at Blanshard and Johnson, and the German Club at Government and Courtenay. At the hotel, originally named the Kaiserhof and built in 1912 by Max Leiser, a prominent liquor merchant, the soldiers destroyed the bar and its German-themed decor. All the noise attracted the Saturday night crowd, curious to see what all the fuss was about.
Then someone yelled: “To the German Club!” Here, the mob swelled to a couple of hundred and cheered as the soldiers and others wrecked the vacant club, breaking windows and hurling furniture and other items out. Then they cheered as portraits of King George V and King Edward VIII were displayed.
The crowd, which had grown to 3,000, then headed back to the hotel. They ransacked it. The police and on-duty soldiers stood by. Even the fire department, which was asked to hose down the mob, did nothing, for fear of provoking the rioters’ ire upon themselves.
The out of-control mob looted other German-Victorian owned establishments as well, such as those of Carl Lowenberg and Moses Lenz. Some rioters even brought wheelbarrows to cart loot away. It was only when the rioters tried to attack Government House, on the grounds that the lieutenant-governor’s wife, being of German ancestry, just had to be a German sympathizer, that another detachment of soldiers from the Willows settled everything down. Twenty arrests were made.
Despite preventive measures, such as banning liquor sales and revoking soldiers’ leave privileges, a crowd gathered again in downtown Victoria on Sunday, May 9. This time, the 2,000-strong mob stormed the Phoenix brewery, which had been founded by German-Victorians. Before they had finished, 3,158 litres of beer valued at about $237.59 (in 1915 prices) was lost or stolen. Mayor Alexander Stewart read the crowd the Riot Act and they dispersed.
After the riot, the Victoria press declared Leiser a loyal British citizen and scolded the rioters for having a “Prussian,” as opposed to a British, spirit. Yet the riot led to the exodus of people of German heritage from Victoria.
Why was Victoria the only North American city where a riot occurred over the Lusitania tragedy? The power of alcohol, rumour and the Britishness of Victoria were all factors. Racist newspaper editorials did not help matters, either. There was also the loss of “Boy” Dunsmuir, and the recent use of poison gas by the Germans.
A hundred years on, the riot serves as a reminder of how fragile civilized behaviour is, and how easily it can descend into a mob mentality. May the circumstances that brought on the riot never be repeated, and if they are, may we have the courage to deal with them.
Chandar S. Sundaram is a Victoria-based military historian and educator. This piece is a condensed version of a lecture he gave in his “Little-known Perspectives of World War I” course at the University of Victoria recently.
