1892 Victoria Directory

Occupations
This dynamic list of over 850 occupations was generated from the database of the
1892 Victoria Directory. Some of the occupation titles have been consolidated
in order to create a list that is concise and consistent. For example, both
"brickmaker" (one word) and "brick maker" (two words) were listed in the directory.
Here, we've used a single term, brickmaker. But the diversity and character
of the late 19th century workforce has been retained in the list, which includes
bellboys, fruiterers, hackdrivers, motorneers, scowmen and typewriters.
Employers
The 1892 Victoria Directory lists over 500 different businesses. The directory
publishers, however, were rather cavalier and erratic when it came to listing many
of the firms. For example, a major furniture manufacturer was listed variously as
Sehl's, Hastie & Erskine's, and Hastie's. We've tried to establish accurate
and consistent names for business enterprises here. So in this example, the furniture
manufacturer is identified by its formal corporate title —
Sehl, Hastie & Erskine.
Firms like Sehl, Hastie & Erskine, with premises at 66 - 68 Government street, employed dozens of workers. You can use the employers feature in the viHistory site to identify employees of businesses listed in the directory, and to identify crew members of many vessels based in Victoria. [The names of ships appear in quotation marks — e. g. "Islander."] Simply click on the name of the vessel or the employer on the dynamic list to display a list of crew members or employers.
Description of Victoria
From the pages of Williams' Illustrated British Columbia Directory,
this description of Victoria
provides a very flattering picture of the city in 1891 — one that
extols Victoria's climate, economic prospects and tourist attractions.
Street Index
We've scanned the pages of the 1892 Victoria street directory. Pages from the street
directory are presented as JPG images and are organized alphabetically on the
street index page.
The street directory is also available as a
searchable
Portable Document Format (PDF) file; you need the free
Adobe
Reader
software to
view this file. It is a large file (13 megabytes).
You can use the Reader search to look for names and other text; the matches
will be highlighted on the images of the pages.