Accession Number

2011.018.001

Description

A paper banker's cheque drawn on the Bank of British Columbia, numbered F98820, and dated 12 May 1884, in the amount of $9,527.45, and payable to Mr. W.N. Diggle. The cheque is signed “R. Dunsmuir” (Robert Dunsmuir).

Narrative

This cheque was payable to Wadham Neston Diggle, a retired Royal Navy Captain who was one of the original 1871 investors in Robert Dunsmuir's Wellington Colliery, a few kilometres north of Nanaimo, B.C.

The appearance of the handwriting suggests that Robert Dunsmuir wrote the cheque himself. Curiously, the cheque is dated 12 May 1884 and bears the bank's stamp dated 12 May, 1888.

History of Use

This is one of three cheques that the donor said were among other documents found scattered on the ground near the roundhouse on the E&N Railway’s Russell Street (Victoria West) yards by a young man in 1991 or 1992. The young man, whose name the donor could not remember, told him that there was evidence that other similar documents had been destroyed at the same location. The donor acquired these cheques and several other documents from that young man. 

The R. Dunsmuir & Sons office on Victoria's Store Street, also functioned as the Esquimalt & Nanaimo Railway office. James Dunsmuir sold the railway in 1905 to the Canadian Pacific Railway (CPR) but retained ownership of his collieries until 1910. There is nothing on this cheque to indicate whether it is directly related to the E & N Railway. James Dunsmuir may have forgotten to take the cheque from the office after selling the E & N Railway to the CPR.

Dunsmuir solicitor Maurice Hills was a witness in the Hopper vs. Dunsmuir will case in 1903. He testifed that while he worked in the Esquimalt & Nanaimo Railway office in the 1890's, he observed that James Dunsmuir was “very careless about his documents”.¹  A 1904 photograph of the E & N office (taken during Dunsmuir ownership) appears to corroborate Hill's observation. See:  http://search-bcarchives.royalbcmuseum.bc.ca/interior-of-esquimalt-and-nanaimo-railway-office-victoria

It is surmised that this cheque and other Dunsmuir-era papers were taken by CPR staff to the railway's Russell Street yards in Victoria West early in the 20th Century where they were partially destroyed in about 1991. 

 

1. British Columbia Archives. GR-2731 Hopper vs. Dunsmuir case file 12/92 Transcript from Victoria (Hon. Justice Drake) Victoria, December 3, 1903. p2919

Date

May 12 1884

Dimensions

8 x 18.3 cm

Material

Paper

Serial Number

F98820

Country of Origin

Canada