1892 Victoria Directory

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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.

PDF The street directory is also available as a searchable Portable Document Format (PDF) file; you need the free Adobe Reader external 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.