1869: Nicholas Melady, the last public hanging in Canada

ExecutedToday.com ^ | December 7, 2011 | John Melady

[CheshireTheCat]

I was standing with my father, looking at the ruins of an old house. I thought what remained of the brickwork was interesting, until Dad said, rather offhandedly: “And this is where the murder happened.” I was rather shocked, and asked what he meant.

His answer led me to write Double Trap, the story of the last public hanging in Canada.

Briefly, the tale goes something like this.

A man named Nicholas Melady Senior, my great-grandfather’s half brother, amassed substantial landholdings in Huron County, Ontario Canada, prior to 1868. In the years just before that, he played various family members off against each other, and depending on his whim, one or other of them would be promised his inheritance. His son Nicholas Junior was used worst of all. He worked without pay for his father, was promised all or at least some of the lands, but then was told he would get nothing — several times.

One night, Nicholas Senior, who was commonly called The Old Man, was in bed with his new wife, when Nicholas Junior and two of his friends, all of whom were drunk, broke into the Old Man’s house. A terrible fight ensued, and it included a hand gun and an axe, but at the end of the thing, the Old Man and his bride were dead.

After some very shoddy detective work, Nicholas Junior and his two friends were rounded up and lodged in a basement cell of an old house in nearby Seaforth, Ontario. (The local magistrate owned the place.) Part of that cell still exists, including the barred window the culprits would have looked through — at the rest of the cellar. It is rather creepy to visit, and while I researched Double Trap, I did not want to be there for long.....

[sanjuanbob]

Who inherited the ol mans monet?
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oIAkRVBS-0U

[Ruy Dias de Bivar]

Last public hanging? I take it that Louis Riel was hanged in private in 1885?

[Vigilanteman]

Riel was hanged at the Northwest Police Barracks (forerunners of the famed RCMP) in Regina. Under any reasonable interpretation of the law at the time, he certainly deserved it.

By that time, attendance to hangings was by invitation only.Reil was honored on a postage stamp in 1970 and since transformed into some sort of folk hero.

[CheshireTheCat]

When the traitors to our country are hanged, I hope the executions are semi-public and large amounts of their victims and families are invited.

I think totally public executions would be a security nightmare.

[Vigilanteman]

The last totally public execution took place in Kentucky in the 1930s. The last one in my neck of the woods was in the 1890s. Ending for precisely the reason that you mentioned.