Ginger beer bottles

1830s and 40s

Two salt-glazed stoneware ginger beer bottles were recovered by archaeologists from beneath the floors of the Hyde Park Barracks, both dating from the 1830s and 40s when convicts occupied the wards.

We don’t know for sure whether these bottles originally contained alcoholic or non-alcoholic ginger beer, but knowing how convicts enjoyed an alcoholic beverage, it’s more likely the ginger beer was the alcoholic variety.

Convicts were not allowed to bring liquor into the Barracks but historical accounts and this archaeological evidence confirm that Barracks convicts found a way to have a drink, both at the public houses around Sydney and in the Barracks wards.

One bottle is marked ‘FOSTER’, for publican William Foster, who sold his ginger beers and other alcoholic drinks at his public house called the Centaur on George Street in 1838. The other bottle, marked with the name ‘P. WHELAN’, was made for publican Philip Whelan, who took over the licence of the Centaur from Foster in April 1838 and continued to run pubs in Sydney throughout the 1840s. Whelan, a hawker by trade, was a convict who arrived on Lord Melville (2) in 1830. In 1835 he received his ticket of leave and in 1837 his Certificate of Freedom.

William Foster was no relation to the now famous Australian beer Foster’s Lager, which was established in Melbourne in 1886.

A traveller in Australia has observed that, to convicts ‘the great charm of life is to be as drunk as often as possible’.

W B Ullathorne, The Catholic Mission in Australasia, Rockliff & Duckworth, Liverpool, 1837, p29