Next month “George, the Nagre,” was up again for stealing two pieces of silk ribbon, the justices being John Dumas, Daniel Robertson and Isaac Todd. He was sentenced again to be flogged with a cat of nine tails on his march around at the carttail six times with ten stripes each.
At the sitting of the court for August 2, 1765, a French woman named Margaret Tourangeau was “Set for an hour in the stocks for stealing a piece of camblet.”
“It is remarkable,” quotes Borthwick (History and Gazetteer, page 17), “that in the records of courts of sessions for years after the conquest of the country as natural there are very few French names before the magistrates for those crimes for which punishment by whipping, the stocks or the pillory or branding on the hand was meted out. This shows how thoroughly they obeyed their curés to respect the laws and be faithful to their allegiance.”
In the Court of King’s Bench, September, 1781, is recorded the first murderer to be hanged in the history of this Province since the cession, William Blunt.
Being placed in the stocks with a paper label on the breast and “burning in the hand” were common forms of punishment during this period.
The latter punishment was thus inflicted: The prisoner was brought from the gaol into the courtroom, and made firm by an iron hand at the back of the dock, the palm part of his own hand being opened tightly. The red hot iron, sometimes ending either in a crown or some other device, was held ready by the common hangman, and the punishment was inflicted in the center of the palm. The instrument being ready, the prisoner is informed that the moment it touches his flesh he can repeat as fast as he can these words in French, “Vive le Roi” three times, and at the end of the third repetition, the punishment would cease, or the words “God Save the King” if he were an English prisoner.
Even in this short time the hot iron has hissed into the flesh, and made such a mark that all the waters of the St. Lawrence could not efface it. (Cf. Borthwick’s Gazetteer.)
The Montreal prisons of the past, especially before 1840, saw many sad men who were condemned to death for crimes not so punished today, as a glance at some of the principal events recorded in the Court of King’s and Queen’s Bench from 1812 to 1838 will show.
Cases of executions for (1) stealing, larceny, shop lifting, burglary, 20; (2) horsestealing, 10; (3) rape, 3; (4) highway robbery, 1; (5) sacrilege, 1; (6) forgery, 1.