CRIME AND PUNISHMENT IN EARLY NIAGARA

[Welland Tribune, July 1984]

By Sheila Hird

A study room of the Niagara-on-the-lake library was once used to imprison criminals.

The room served as the solitary confinement cell of the first jail in the Niagara Peninsula.

Early document show that the most common crimes committed by the first settlers were assault and battery, uttering profanities in public, larceny, and participating in riots.

Punishments included banishment, the pillory, whipping and hard labor.  Punishment for keeping a disorderly house was three months in jail and one and half hours in the pillory. For stealing goods from a store, the penalty was two months in jail and two public whippings.

Many of the early punishments and laws were very unusual. For example, in 1819, Rev. Henry Ryan, the Methodist Superintendent for Upper Canada, was sentenced to 15 years banishment for marrying. Early records refer to a Stump law, which stated that any person arrested for drunkenness had to remove a certain number of stumps from public property.

Execution was a common punishment for crimes ranging from horse stealing to murder.

The earliest recorded execution in Niagara’s history was that of Mary Osborne London and Georges Nemiers on August 17, 1801.

This execution was the final stage of a love triangle that began when Barth London left a family and a homestead in Pennsylvania to become one of the first settlers in the Niagara region. He took in a 28-year-old widow as a housekeeper and, after getting the girl pregnant married her.

George Nemiers, a young farmhand, was hired by London and shortly afterwards a love triangle developed between the three inhabitants of the farm.

During one of many fights, Nemiers took a hammer and hit Barth over the head with a blow so hard that the doctor predicted that it would soon lead to Barth’s death.

George and Mary, impatient to get rid of Barth and have the farm to themselves, administered poison to Barth. When his potion proved too weak, they mixed arsenic and opium with Barth’s whiskey. This concoction did the trick and Barth soon died, leaving the farm in Mary’s name.

Unfortunately for Mary and George, the rest of the operation did not go smoothly. Within a week the couple were arrested and, after an eight-hour examination in which each tried to blame the other for Barth’s death, they were both found guilty and sentenced to death.

Niagara-on-the-Lake did not have its own resident hangman, so normally one was sent from Toronto. Early documents show that on the scheduled date of one execution, the hangman had an appointment elsewhere in Upper Canada and Alexander Hamilton had to perform the hangman’s duties for the day. In fear of messing up the execution, Hamilton ordered the construction of a special scaffold that would allow the prisoner to fall twice the usual height.

A prisoner was left hanging for about 25 minutes to ensure that he had met his end while the coffin lay nearby. The earliest executions were held in public and drew large crowds. Merchants also flocked to executions to sell wagonloads of cakes and gingerbread.

Another unusual early legal practice dealt with creditors and debtors. A creditor had the right to throw a debtor in jail until he paid in full the sum he owed. The catch was that the creditor was responsible for the debtor’s upkeep while he was in jail.

Records show that a debtor who had been in jail for many years was greatly relieved when his debtor finally died, until he learned that the creditor had included a clause in his will continuing his upkeep in prison. The executors of the will felt that this was a cold-hearted act, and they delayed the delivery of the upkeep fee so that that debtor was eventually released.

Court Assizes were held only once a year. Those who were arrested immediately after the assizes were concluded for that year had to wait in jail until the following year.

The jail and courthouse were burned to the ground during the Battle of Queenston Heights on October 13, 1812, A new jail and courthouse were erected in 1816.

An advertisement in the St. David Spectator of 1816 asked that stone, timber, brick, shingles and timber be delivered to Niagara between June 1 and July 13, 1816, for the purpose of rebuilding the jail and courthouse.

Two years after the new building was complete the renowned Gourley trail was held.

After being imprisoned for several months for his outspoken criticism of the government, Robert Gourley, known as the Banished Briton,-was tried and fined for sedition. This punishment was not enough to stop Gourley’s outspoken criticism and he soon found himself in exile for 15 years. Word reached Niagara that Gourley’s treatment was so harsh that he had temporarily lost his sanity.

Gourley was not the only one who suffered during this incident. The printer of the Niagara Spectator printed a letter of Gourley’s without the publisher’s knowledge. As a result, the printer was tried for sedition, sentenced to stand in the pillory and fined 50 pounds.

Thirty years after the building of the new jail and courthouse, controversy still flared over the site of the buildings. A group of the town’s inhabitants complained that not only were the jail and courthouse far from the town’s centre, they had been built in a swamp.

In 1847, the debate was silenced when a new courthouse and jail were erected on the main street. The building was used for this purpose for only 15 years. In 1862, St. Catharines became the county seat and a new jail and courthouse were erected on Niagara Street.

The mid-19th century witnessed the building of yet another jail and courthouse. Built in Welland

in 1855, when the town gained county seat status, the new jail housed 45 males and nine females and was enclosed by a 300-foot long, 21-foot high and two–foot thick wall.

The first execution in the Welland jail, and the first execution outside of the Niagara-on-the-Lake, took place on May 31, 1859.

On this date John Henry Byers met his end. Special stands and roof-top seating accommodated the crowd of about 4,500 who gathered at the jail to witness the execution.

After Tomas Arthur Laplante was hanged on January 17, 1958, the Welland jail became known as the place of the last execution in the Niagara Peninsula.

While the Welland and the St. Catharines jails were filled with prisoners, the old jail at Niagara-on-the-Lake was filled with orphans.

The jail and the courthouse lay vacant until Miss Maria Rye’s Western Home for Girls was established in 1869 to train young girls as domestics. Minor renovations were made including the conversion of the courthouse into a dormitory.

After Rye’s death, the buildings remained vacant until the First World War, when they were used by Polish troops as a hospital and barracks. After 1917 the jail and courthouse were again empty until purchased by Charles Currie who tore the buildings down using the materials in the construction of other buildings.

The Rye Cottage, located at the corner of King and Cottage Streets, still stands today as reminder of the colorful history of Niagara-on-the-Lake’s jail and courthouse.