The Colonist, then a Tory organ, during the panic of 1857, startled the political world with a sensational article, headed “Whither Are We Drifting?” and laid the blame of the distressing condition of the country on the awful extravagance and culpable incapacity of the Government. As I remember, though only a youth of immature years, the paper was financially in a hole, and John Sheridan Hogan, a brilliant young Irishman, who supported the Conservative party, was its editor. The Colonist’s sensational article brought immediate financial relief, for the Reformers swarmed to its assistance by increasing its advertising patronage and its circulation. Hogan was elected as a Liberal to the Local Legislature for one of the Greys, and was shortly afterwards murdered one night while crossing the Don bridge by the notorious Brooks Bush gang, which camped near the scene of the tragedy, and made the locality a veritable hell on earth.
The Markham Gang.
Before I was born or even thought of, the equally notorious Markham gang operated for years on a very large scale, but I used to hear a great deal of their evil doings. The members of this gang were horse-thieves, counterfeiters, desperadoes, and even murder was committed by its members. While apparently well-to-do, respectable people—farmers, millers, tavern-keepers, etc.—they rivalled the scum of the earth in the darkness of their infamous crimes. Their organization was perfect, an iron-bound oath binding them together, and they adroitly scattered their bogus money broadcast, and drove scores upon scores of horses to Detroit and other places on the American frontier, which was crossed without the formality of a visit to the customs house.
Toronto naturally was the scene of many of their operations, being a fairly good distance from Markham. Some years after I accompanied my old friend, Col. J. E. Farewell, of Whitby, on a visit to Dawn township in Lambton county, to inspect a property he had acquired there. It was located in the middle of a good-sized swamp, and to his great surprise he found the cellars of a big house and large stables and other buildings and large apple trees—the headquarters of that part of the gang which operated throughout Western Canada. Here the stock rested and was fixed up so as to be unrecognizable by the rightful owners should they happen to come across the animals.
To the East the gang operated as far as the Bay of Quinte, and even had big establishments in Stafford and Dunham townships in Lower Canada, where the “phoney” money was made. Murders were committed by these lawless desperadoes. After some years, through the exertions of Mr. George Gurnett, police magistrate of Toronto, and Mr. Higgins, high constable of York, and others, several of the leaders of the gang were arrested and punished either by death or imprisonment. The gang was dispersed, and while it is now but a misty memory—it terrorized the country in those primitive days.
Comic and Other Papers.
There were comic papers as well as serious ones in my early days. The Grumbler was one. It was owned by Erastus Wiman, who afterwards led in the unrestricted reciprocity movement, and the chief writer was Bill Rattray, who later on wrote the heavy religious articles, combating German agnosticism, in the Mail. Another was the Poker, conducted by Robert A. Harrison, who rose to the position of Chief Justice of Ontario. Then came Grip, published by my old school-fellow, Johnny Bengough; it succeeded splendidly, until Johnny’s two fads—single tax and prohibition, then ahead of the age—lost it the needed patronage. Johnny was a bright cartoonist and an able writer and is credited with the authorship of that celebrated poem, “On-tay-rio, On-tay-rio, the tyrant’s hand is on thy throat,” which raised a great ruction in Quebec, and which had been attributed to the late Hon. James D. Edgar.
The Mail first appeared in 1872 with T. C. Patteson, the father, along with Harry Good, of the sporting page in the Canadian newspaper. The Globe would not go in for horse racing, so the Mail made a specialty of this sport and ultimately the older paper had to come in. The Mail was to have been started on April 1; but the foreman printer drew attention to the danger involved in the selection of that date for the first number. So the paper came out a day earlier than was intended. Yet the Mail did not escape the sort of humor appropriate to the first of April. It had the city laughing soon after it was founded by reason of some curious typographical errors incident to the haste of production.
One of these arose out of a St. George’s Society service at St. James Cathedral. It appears that a boy in the composing room had been entertaining himself by setting up sections of a dime novel relating the adventures of “Cut Throat Dick, the Bold Roamer of the Western Plains,” or of some other celebrity of that type. When the report of the St. George’s sermon was being placed in the form preparatory to printing the paper, the “make-up” man used instead of the second half of the sermon a selection from the story of “Cut Throat Dick” with the result that the preacher, Rev. Alexander Williams, was represented as using language that was quite unsuited to the pulpit.
In the same paper somebody played a practical joke at the expense of Mr. M. Homer Dixon, the Consul-General for the Netherlands. Mr. Dixon always appeared at state functions wearing the diplomatic uniform of blue cloth and gold lace. A letter appeared in the Mail offering a vigorous defence of this practice and was signed apparently by Mr. Dixon himself. The missive, which was a forgery, set everybody laughing.