In his early career, Macdonald drank heavily, as evidenced in letters, literature, and period cartoons such as this 1885 Is This Spree Going to Last? cartoon. How then, might we interpret his liquor bill for £67 worth of alcohol, the equivalent of around $12,200 CAD today? It would seem to suggest prodigious personal consumption.  Yet, a man of his times, Macdonald was by no means alone in his habits. Excessive drinking was well-documented and came to be regarded as a social ill, giving rise to temperance movements in the early 20th century. Known as what we today would call a binge-drinker, the rigours and stresses of his political life, together with personal tragedy, may have intensified his bouts of drunkenness. In 1848, Macdonald lost his first born son, John Alexander Macdonald Jr.; he was just 13 months old. Nine years later, in 1857, he lost his first wife, Isabella Clark, who succumbed to a chronic illness. The only child of Macdonald and his second wife was born in 1869 with hydrocephalus, fluid on the brain. Mary, affectionately nicknamed “Baboo” by her father, was confined to a chair for her entire life.