Bradwell Hotel: Two-Storey Outhouse and All

The Bradwell Hotel, c. 1910.  Ben and Sarah Cook on right.  Western Development Museum photo, 6-E-4

In 1907, the colourful Ben Cook built the hotel in Bradwell – complete with a two-storey outhouse. The four-holer (two up, two down) was attached to the building by a catwalk. Cook likely built this unusual structure out of respect for his wife and the hotel guests who occupied the rooms on the second floor.  It saved them the inconvenience and possible embarrassment of going downstairs and walking through the saloon. The male patrons of the bar used the lower level of the two-storey outhouse.

The Bradwell Hotel's two-storey outhouse was likely similar to this one ("Big John") still attached to the Nevada City Hotel in Montana. Image source

Contrary to jokes about two-storey outhouses, the user of the lower level had nothing to fear if the upper level was in use at the same time. The upstairs facilities were offset from the ones below, situated a little further back so that the waste fell behind a false wall on the first floor. 

This unique structure proved popular with more than just the patrons of the Bradwell Hotel. For example, Sig Olson owned the general store next to the hotel. This store did not have an outhouse, so the clerks and others used Ben Cook’s two-storey facility. According to Bradwell’s local history book, Ben was not happy about this arrangement. He said that too many users would fill up the pits under the outhouse at a faster rate. “One day, young Dean Cook [Ben’s son] and a friend were playing in the men's side, when a clerk came into the ladies' side and the young boys made a noise as they were peeking,” Bill Martyn recalls in the town’s history book. “The female panicked, ran out with clothes in disarray hollering and trying to arrange them. I understand it was rather funny for the onlookers.” It wasn’t long before Sig Olson built an outhouse behind his store.

The Bradwell Hotel’s remarkable outhouse was demolished around 1950 by Wendelyn Heisler. He and his wife Theresa owned the hotel from 1948 until 1956.  As their son, Arnie observes in the Bradwell local history book (1986), his father destroyed a piece of history in the process of demolishing the outhouse. It might have become a tourist attraction like the one in Gays, Illinois (see video) or like “Big John” still attached to the Nevada City Hotel – now considered to be the most photographed building in Montana (shown above).

The Ben Cook Family

Ben Cook was born in Ontario in 1861, married Sarah Slack in 1897, and settled in Bradwell in 1906. They had an adopted son, Wilbur. During the Prohibition years (1915 to 1924), Ben made a nightly trip to meet the evening train where he paid the express charge on a brown package, no matter to whom it was addressed.  It was his way of beating Prohibition and having some liquor on hand for his hotel guests.

Ben and Sarah Cook on right, c. 1910. Detail from Western Development Museum photo, 6-E-4

In 1918, Sarah was called to the home of her brother, John Slack in Vanguard, to assist with the care of his family who were ill with the Spanish Flu. Despite her efforts, John and three of his children died. Sarah returned to Bradwell where she became ill, passing away in a Saskatoon hospital in 1919. Two years later, Ben married Beatrice Slack, John’s widow. She and her two surviving children Doris and Harry came to live in Bradwell.  In 1921, a son, Dean, was born to Ben and Beatrice. Dean was killed in a plane crash near Vanscoy in 1942 while training as a pilot for the war. Ben died in 1948.

The Bradwell Hotel in 2008. Joan Champ photo

© Joan Champ 2011

 

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Day-to-Day Hotel Operations

Ben and Sarah Cook on right, with Bradwell hotel staff, c. 1910.

Western Development Museum Library, 6-E-4

Running a small-town Saskatchewan hotel back in the early 1900s was hard work. The hotel staff usually consisted of at least two chambermaids and a cook who worked from morning ‘til night, cleaning the guest rooms, doing the laundry, and washing dishes. The maid's work day at the Herbert Hotel started at 6:00 a.m. and ended at 9:00 p.m. for which she was paid $10 per month, plus room and board. Charles Pratt, the porter at the Griffin Hotel, not only assisted hotel guests with their luggage; he also washed dishes, milked the two cows that supplied the milk for the hotel and did all the odd jobs. The Griffin Hotel’s upstairs maid also polished the silver and glassware and kept everything shining. 

Staff in the kitchen of the Frances Hotel at Midale, c. 1910. 

From Plowshares to Pumpjacks: R.M. of Cymri: Macoun, Midale, Halbrite (1984)

All members of the hotel owner’s family had to share in the work of running the hotel. Leo Buhler, whose parents owned the hotel in Fairlight, recalls, “One of the duties of the kids was to help with the housekeeping and at noon you had to take your turn at washing the dishes before going back to school. My sister, Irma, served as a waitress in the dining room when she was barely taller than the table tops.”  Henry, son of the owner of the Herbert Hotel, had jobs, too, “such as carrying wood and water to the hotel when needed, and carrying out ashes.  On Mondays he always had to skip school to turn the handle on the washing machine. … Henry also earned an extra dollar by teaching the Chinese cook how to speak English. ” 

The Ferrie family ran the hotel at Invermay for 28 years.  The four Ferrie boys worked shifts hauling great loads of wood to keep the hotel’s furnace running 24 hours a day during the winter months. As Ben Ferrie recalls in the Invermay local history book:  “The years in the Hotel were busy ones for all of the family. It was the boys’ job to fire the wood-burning furnace. This meant rising about three a.m. and again at six to stoke the furnace. … We were responsible for bringing in blocks of ice and snow to melt for the daily wash. … We hauled our drinking water from the town well… A familiar sight around town was our Scotch collie, Don, pulling the sleigh loaded with cans of water.”

Cutting ice on a river.  From Wikimedia Commons

Packing ice in the winter was quite an experience.  It was necessary to put up about 30 tons of ice to provide year-round cold storage for the hotel kitchen.  Hotel owners would often hire a farmer to cut the ice and haul it in with teams and a sleigh, which would take several days.   

Mrs. Rehaume, owner of the Pleasantdale Hotel,

did all the washing for the hotel using a washtub and scrub board. 

From Memories of the Past: History of Pleasantdale (1981)

Wash days – usually Mondays – were an ordeal, especially in winter. Washing bedding and clothes was often a two-day proposition. Water had to be hauled and then heated in tubs the night before. Start-up time was set for five or six a.m. and the laundry process quite often ran into the afternoon. The next day, one of the maids would run the clothes and sheets through a mangle, a machine used to wring water out of wet laundry.  Most hotels did not get running water until the 1940s or 1950s, so water had to be hauled from a well in the summer.  In the winter, hotels used melted ice and snow, or water that had been collected in rain barrels during the previous summer.

© Joan Champ, 2011