Ward Eight

History

Named after Ward Eight, a voting district of Boston notorious for political corruption. A 1951 Holiday Magazine article, attributes creation of the Ward Eight cocktail to a bartender named Tom Hussion, in November 1898, at Boston's fine-dining restaurant Locke-Ober Café, in honour of Martin Lomasney, who was running for election in Ward Eight. Lomasney, a teetotaller, may not have been at the dinner organised by members of the Hendricks Club of socialites but, while it's possible they toasted him in his absence, contrary to Holiday Magazine the drinks surely weren't mixed by Hussion as he apparently didn't start working at Locke-Ober until 1900.

Another Locke-Ober's bartender, named Billy Kane, may have mixed the first round of Ward Eights for Hendricks Club that night. However, not according to a bartender named Charlie Carter who, in a 1934 letter to G. Selmer Fougner published in his New York Sun "Along the Wine Trail" column, claims he created the Ward Eight to celebrate a 1903 Lomasney election victory.

I have not yet succeeded in verifying the 1951 Holiday Magazine article or the 1934 New York Sun column so I am only repeating what others have written. Frustratingly, I've also not yet been able to access a widely quoted 1907 column in the Boston Herald that claims the cocktail as "the most talked-of drink in Boston."

The cocktail features in the 1913 revised edition of The Cocktail Book - A Sideboard Manual for Gentlemen and, more notably, in Robert Vermeire's 1922 Cocktails: How to Mix Them.

Ward Eight.
(Use Goblet.)
One teaspoon fine sugar; juice of half lemon; one tablespoonful Grenadine syrup; one portion rye whiskey, one lump ice. Fill glass with siphon, stir well, ornament with fruit, and serve.

The Cocktail Book - A Sideboard Manual for Gentlemen, 1913

Ward Eight Cocktail
This cocktail must be well shaken. It is composed of:
1 teaspoonful of Grenadine.
1/8 gill of Orange Juice.
1/8 gill of Lemon Juice.
1/4 gill of Rye Whisky.
This cocktail originates from Boston (U.S.A.), a city divided into eight wards.

Robert Vermeire, 1922