Joe Beef

Charles McKiernan earned the sobriquet "Joe Beef" from his time as a Quartermaster with the 10th brigade in the British Army during the Crimean War.

Whenever his regiment was running low on food, McKiernan had a knack of somehow finding meat and provisions, hence the name "Joe Beef" [citation needed].

Beef had the following manifesto printed on handbills and advertisements: He cares not for Pope, Priest, Parson, or King William of the Boyne; all Joe wants is the Coin.

[4]Beef was known for keeping a menagerie of animals in his tavern, including four black bears, ten monkeys, three wild cats, a porcupine and an alligator.

One of his bears, Tom, had a daily consumption of twenty pints of beer and would sit on his hindquarters and hold a glass between his paws without spilling a drop.

Fifty labour organizations walked off the job while Joe Beef's casket was drawn through the city by an ornate four-horse hearse, in a procession several blocks long.

[1]He is buried in the Mount-Royal Cemetery and his funeral monument, on plot B 991e, bears a long epitaph which testifies to the gratitude of his family and friends, Despite a lack of formal education, McKiernan considered himself an intellectual and was an avid reader.

He entertained the crowds with poetry and humorous stories which lampooned the figures of authority in the workingman's life, such as the employer, the landlord, or the local church minister.