W.C. Peacock & Co

W. C. Peacock & Co

(WCP Monogram)

Honolulu, H.I.

Wine & Liquor Merchants

Walter Chamberlain Peacock, Honolulu, Hawaii

Red Amber Fifth

Provenance: Ken Schwartz Collection

What an exciting bottle with a story to grace our Spirits Gallery. The paper label for this red-amber fifth would have most likely read, “Peacock & Co.’s Bourbon Whiskey.”

W. C. Peacock & Co. bottles are typically red amber, have an applied top, and are usually whittled like our museum example. Later examples have a tooled top with much less character. It is important to note that the embossed copy is vertical on the bottle face which is very uncommon. The bottles are not air vented at the shoulder and were probably German-made in the mid to late 1890s. Advertising in Hilo, Hawaii in 1898 specifically notes Peacock & Co.’s Bourbon Whiskey for sale. The bottles are very rare with most examples being found or dug in Hawaii.

One was unearthed off an island in British Columbia by a pig rooting in the ground.

John L. Thomas

The following information on W. C. Peacock has been abbreviated from an article from the FOHBC magazine Bottles and Extras. Read W. C. Peacock: The Whiskey Man Who Made Waikiki by Jack Sullivan, Bottles and Extras, September-October 2018. Jack is an esteemed historian and a FOHBC Hall of Fame member.

More than a century ago, a British-born Honolulu saloonkeeper and liquor dealer named Walter Chamberlain Peacock saw the promise in a barren strip of land along the Pacific Ocean. He built the Moana Hotel at Waikiki, still a landmark, and began a history of development that continues to this day.

Born in 1858 in Lancaster, England, Peacock arrived in the Territory of Hawaii from Australia about 1881, apparently accompanied by his mother, Margaret, and other family members.

Not long after arriving, Peacock can be found listed as a bookkeeper with F. T. Lenehan & Co. who were importers and commission merchants. By late 1884, he went into the wine and spirits business with a local named George D. Freeth. The company was called Freeth & Peacock and they were located at 23 Nuuanu Street in Honolulu. By 1888, Freeth had departed and the firm W. C. Peacock & Co. emerged. In addition to selling liquor both retail and wholesale, Peacock also ran a string of saloons in Honolulu. A trade token names three of them; Royal, Pacific, and Cosmopolitan.

For the Royal Saloon in 1890, Peacock designed and constructed a brick building at the corner of Merchant and Nuuanu Streets in Honolulu’s Chinatown. The building was relatively modest by current standards, featuring white stucco pilasters, a cornice and balustrade, and another spot of stucco over the bricks of the upper walls. Peacock gave it windows and door bays along the street creating a feeling of spaciousness. Still a Honolulu landmark, the Royal Building currently is occupied by an Irish pub. About 1896, Peacock opened and expanded his liquor house on Merchant street near Fort Street, shown here on a postal cover below.

Peacock’s liquor empire continued to expand although his customer base was confined to the islands. He packaged his wines and liquors in glass bottles, both amber, red-amber, and clear, and sold gin in the characteristic “case-gin” shape bottles. Examples are pictured further above. The owner’s nephew remembered working at the company filling those bottles and remarked:

Peacock sold three grades of gin increasing in price. Many bought the most expensive kind. However, in the back room all the gin came out of the same barrel.

W. C. Peacock nephew

For a short time, W. C. Peacock and a brother, Corbert, ventured into the farm implement business in Australia. Directories in Melbourne from 1899 to 1901 record the existence of the W. C. Peacock & Bro. making and selling rotary disc plows using a design that one of the brothers likely invented.

Peacock would spend much of his time in Australia and returned frequently to supervise his Honolulu businesses. He returned for good in 1901. Meanwhile, he was piling up riches from sales of liquor, both from his store and saloons.

As the 19th century drew to a close, Peacock noted that more and more steamships were docking at Honolulu and the influx of tourists was increasing rapidly. Moreover, there was a dearth of hotel accommodations at the beach. As a result, Peacock created a new company, capitalized at $100,000, later increased to $150,000. He called it the Moana Hotel Company Ltd. and planned a new hotel on oceanfront land not far from his home. Nothing else of this scale had yet been built on Waikiki. The hotel history states these words:

The Moana Hotel officially opened on March 11, 1901 ushering a new era of tourism for the islands. Designed in the old colonial style architecture of the period, it had 75 rooms and was the costliest, most elaborate hotel building in the Hawaiian Islands at the time. Each room on the three upper floors had a bathroom and a telephone – innovations for hotels of the times. The hotel also had its own ice plant and electric generators. The first floor had a billiard parlor, saloon, main parlor, library, office and reception. area.

Moana Hotel History

Patrons paid a hefty $1.50 per night for their rooms. Peacock took a strong interest in many aspects of the Moana. According to family lore, he personally is reputed to have planted the giant banyan tree that still spreads over the grounds.

Because of the remoteness of Hawaii in those pre-airplane days, the Moana may not have been the immediate profit center Peacock anticipated, or he may not have liked the hotel business. In any case, he sold the property in 1905 to Alexander Young, a prominent Honolulu businessman with other Hawaiian hotel interests.

Subsequently, the Moana, with several additions over the years, became known as the “Grand Queen” of Honolulu hostelries. It was also the pivotal building that led to the massive development of Waikiki. Peacock’s hotel remains a marvelous destination after more than a century.

In 1909, Peacock, still young at 50, died. He had been in bad health for several years and the cause of death was said to have been “disease of the liver.” After his death, other family members took over the management of the Peacock liquor interests. Their time would be limited by the 1915 passage of territory-wide Prohibition in Hawaii.

Although W. C. Peacock is gone from the Honolulu scene, this far-sighted entrepreneur is still celebrated for his pioneer work for the Hawaii tourism industry and the development of Waikiki.

Primary Image: W. C. Peacock & Co. fifth imaged on location by the FOHBC Virtual Museum midwest studio led by Alan DeMaison.

Support: Reference to W. C. Peacock: The Whiskey Man Who Made Waikiki by Jack Sullivan, FOHBC Bottles and Extras, September-October 2018

Support Images: Jeff Wichmann and American Bottle Auctions

Support: Reference to Whiskey Bottles of the Old West by John L. Thomas, 2002

Read: Bottle Collecting Hawaiian Style by Mike Polak, Bottles and Extras, May-June 2013

Join the FOHBC: The Virtual Museum is a project of the Federation of Historical Bottle Collectors (FOHBC). To become a member.