The hotel at 115-127 Russell Street – on the corner of Russell and Little Collins – has stood for more than 150 years.
From the 1870s it has been known as Oriental Hotel, Brown’s Family Hotel, Hickens Hotel, Holmes Hotel, South African Club Hotel, Isabella’s Hotel, The Kings Hotel, the Occidental Hotel and later – and for many years – the Portland Hotel.
The hotel has had a colorful – sometimes wild – history, and boasts a famous British and Australian boxing champion as its one-time landlord and manager Ebenezer “Abe” Hicken.
Twenty years before Hicken took over the hotel, the building had been registered by James Graham as a wooden house on 20 January 1853.
The building began operating as a hotel in 1866 as Oriental Hotel under the proprietorship of Oriel Lee. In 1866 an advertisement appeared in The Argus that the Oriental Hotel was “now open” and offering a choice of “ales, wines and spirits”.
In the 1870s the renowned boxer Abe Hicken took over and named it Hickens Hotel. Hicken would stage fights at the hotel, attracting large, enthusiastic crowds.
Hicken was, according to newspaper reports, “for five years the 10-stone champion boxer of England and for six years he was champion of Australia”. Abe would hold boxing matches in the pub for which he sometimes attracted the attention of the law.
In the early 1870s a newspaper reported on a court case involving the apparently illegal staging of a boxing bout. “Ebenezer Hicken, better known in the sporting world as Abe Hicken, was summoned to the City Police Court yesterday charged on the information of Inspector Sadleir with having on the 15th permitted a portion of his licenced house ‘Hickens Hotel’ in Russell street, to be used as a place of common resort to which persons were admitted by ticket…” In other words he charged punters to watch a boxing match.
The citation revealed that the detective “saw Hicken and told him it had been asserted that there was an advertisement in the paper to the effect that a prize fight was to take place in his house that night. Hicken replied that no such thing was intended.”
The court heard that a search of the newspaper revealed that a “glove fight” was to take place in the house that night. The officer “cautioned Hicken that if there was a fight with ‘skin gloves’ or for money, his licence would be endangered.
“Witnesses saw a glove fight in the house between Brew and Newton that night.”
It’s clear Hicken did hold fights in the hotel, and for money. But sometimes the proceeds went to help others. The fights at the hotel received coverage in the newspapers which gives us a remarkable insight into the recreational activities of Melburnians of the time.
Abe Hicken would set up an upstairs room “roped off and sawdusted for the combatants”, a “tidy place with a square ring” which he called “Abe’s Athletic Hall”.
On 9 July 1873 The Herald reported on “Abe Hicken’s Soiree”. “In remembrance of a wonderful night,” it said. “It is about three years since there has been a high-class exhibition of sparring in Melbourne… Yet when [Abe] announced a bit of a show last night [upstairs] at his new hotel in Russell Street there was a downright rush of the upper crust at five bob [a head]. Old Day, who was on duty on the door, actually had to turn away hundreds who were attracted by the cuffing heard through the open windows and the applause which followed every palpable bit.”
The newspaper noted that 150 people were “rammed, jammed and crammed” between the ropes and the walls “in a truly miraculous manner”.
The fights attracted the who’s who of Melbourne society of the time, as the newspaper noted: “The audience included the elite of Melbourne society in the way of squatters, merchants, barristers, doctors and literary men”.
The legendary boxer and publican died in 1910. The Chronicle newspaper of Adelaide carried a report of Abe’s death. “Ebenezer (Abe) Hicken, at one time a most popular and one of the cleverest and gamest pugilists who ever entered a ring in Australia, died on Monday in the Melbourne Hospital at the age of 69. Hicken was an Englishman and in the days of bare-knuckle fighting, though only a lightweight, one of the most formidable men in ‘the game’. Most of his battles were fought against great odds in height and weight and few he lost.”
From 1909 the hotel, under the ownership of Mrs Lizzie Marks, was known as King’s Hotel, named for The King’s Theatre nearby. It was known as The Kings Hotel until the 1970s.
The new owners were the Markillie family – “one of Melbourne’s best-known hotel-owning groups” a report said – who bought the King’s Hotel, paying 70,000 pounds in a private sale.
Reclaiming its name in later years, the Portland Hotel’s later incarnations included hosting the Santa Fe strip club. But it became better known for being the home to the famous James Squire Brewhouse, the only working microbrewery in Melbourne’s CBD.
Today, nodding back to it’s extraordinary history it stands once again as Hickens Hotel, a modern interpretation and a celebration of sporting culture.