Whether a case was grave or trivial, the Bracebridge Magistrate’s Court in the 1890s generally served as a fast, convenient, and reliable arena of justice.
A prosecution begun on March 11, 1895, by Chief Constable Robert Armstrong against Elizabeth Weston for running a brothel was adjourned by Justice of the Peace Boyer so the chief could procure evidence, and when court resumed just two days later, the charge against her was “dismissed for want of evidence.” Constable Armstrong, having learned his lesson in court, subsequently stepped forward much better prepared to bring charges against “Queenie” Dufresne, calling a parade of witnesses who described the late-night comings and goings at her house of ill-fame, and got her convicted.
Muskoka Magistrate’s Court was the ever-ready venue to resolve conflicts between private parties and to enforce public laws. The former included fighting spouses, employees suing for unpaid wages, and owners seeking the recovery of stolen dogs and chickens. The latter ranged from municipal bylaw infractions detected by the town constable or the local hygiene inspector, to breaches of the statutes of the Province of Ontario and the Dominion of Canada dealing with licensing of vessels, prostitution, firearms, hunting, trapping, fishing, distilling liquor, and gambling.
The court was generally convened in the town hall on Dominion Street in Bracebridge. Prominent in the centre of the community, it sat adjacent to the Muskoka Herald building, whose stone-walled basement was rented out as a convenient lock-up for accused persons awaiting their appearance in court until the number of attempted breakouts did such damage to the structure that the newspaper proprietors cancelled the arrangement.
Bracebridge Town Hall on Dominion Street, where James Boyer was municipal clerk, also conveniently housed Magistrate’s Court, over which he presided. The Muskoka Herald building is to the left; its cellar was used as the town jail for a period until many attempted breakouts by prisoners did such damage the arrangement was cancelled.
Depending on the number of people attending court, sessions took place either in the council chamber, or the larger second-floor entertainment hall, a proscenium theatre otherwise alive with community plays, touring concerts, or library-sponsored readings by such popular visiting notables as First Nations poet Pauline Johnson. Although such arrangements may seem slightly improvised, they were formality itself compared to the series of makeshift courtrooms used by the Muskoka magistrate in the Orange Lodge hall and elsewhere around town prior to erection of the capacious town hall in 1881.
The tall, redbrick Bracebridge municipal hall was not only the most prominent building on the most prestigious street in town, but was also a highly convenient venue for James Boyer, because he could fulfill his duties as justice of the peace, attend to his functions as municipal clerk, conduct his conveyancing practice, and receive calligraphy orders for memorial addresses, all within the same precincts, or just next door at the adjacent Land Registry Office. Such convenience facilitated speedy justice, because court could be immediately convened whenever the need arose.
The adage “justice delayed is justice denied” was taken to heart. Justice of the Peace James Boyer was never off duty. His court was a continuously open stage for ready justice. He heard cases on Saturday. If it was after hours, aggrieved parties went to his modest wood-frame residence at the north end of the town’s main street. If he was home ill, as he once was when the town constable brought in boys he’d caught stealing chickens, James rose from his sick bed and dealt with such urgent matters anyway. Even on Christmas Day, justice in Bracebridge did not rest: he opened his door to deal with a constable who’d brought in a couple men intoxicated from celebrating the Christ child’s birth. For nighttime emergencies, he could reliably be reached at his home. If he was out of town on municipal business, it was “next man up”; the town had other JPs who could fill the breach.
In good weather the JPs sometimes were disposed to “balance the convenience of the parties” by taking themselves to other locales in Muskoka. Thus, James Boyer and John McDermott went to Port Carling to hear a case in mid-August 1897, a time of year when the inescapable necessity of a scenic boat trip down the river from Bracebridge and up Lake Muskoka to picturesque Port Carling happily served the ends of justice, although apparently no occasion presented itself requiring them to travel to Port Carling by sleigh in January. Another time, the court was held in the village of Uffington. These travelling courts were rare.
Magistrate’s Court in Bracebridge was, of course, just one stage in a larger theatre for the administration of justice. At the same time that James Boyer was presiding in it, higher courts were offering Muskokans more enthralling lessons about the harsher climes of civil litigation and criminal law.
One of the most dramatic civil cases arose from the burning of steamboat Flora Barnes. The “Flora Barnes trouble” began in 1883, when Bracebridge was still a village and James Boyer was already conducting Magistrate’s Court, but a decade before his cases reported in this book took place.
The Flora Barnes had been tied up for some time at the town wharf below the falls in Bracebridge Bay. Under instruction from town council to follow a strict line in collecting taxes, particularly for non-residents of the municipality, the town constable seized the steamer and offered her for sale to cover the owner’s unpaid taxes. The worst thing that could have happened then did: destruction of the craft by fire.
Following the fire, the ship’s owner, Thomas Barnes, filed suit claiming some $3,500 in damages from the village, alleging illegal seizure. On March 20, 1883, Bracebridge clerk James Boyer brought before council the fateful letter from Barnes’s Toronto lawyers, Malone & Malone, advising of the claim. In response, village council retained the services of a Barrie firm, Lount & Lount. When the case first came before the Barrie assizes it was adjourned. The day of reckoning would be postponed for as long as Samuel and George Lount could use legal delaying tactics.
A year and one week passed before the case came up again for hearing, on March 27, 1884. The trial at Barrie was a disaster for the village. The expense of providing witnesses mounted, as a parade of those giving evidence made their way to the stand day after day. In total, there were more than a dozen men (including James Boyer), a combination of Bracebridge officials or men with particular knowledge of the matter, as well as experts retained by the Lount firm. All this evidence, and the cost to adduce it, was to no avail. The village of Bracebridge was ordered to pay Thomas Barnes his claim for damages, and costs as well.
Still in a state of shock, Bracebridge councillors met in June, almost instinctively deciding not to let the matter rest. The village’s appeal would be taken by a different Barrie firm, Strathy & Ault. A month later, council met again to consider a letter received from the new barristers about Bracebridge’s dim prospects in the matter. Reeve Alfred Hunt was instructed by council to go to Barrie and consult with Strathy and Ault. The upshot was that on August 12, the village council solemnly decided to withdraw its appeal, pay Barnes $3,671, and relinquish its claim for $310 in unpaid taxes, with the village given ninety days to raise the money.
A bylaw was prepared by Clerk Boyer, approved by council, and submitted to Bracebridge ratepayers in a plebiscite that he conducted. A reluctant citizenry voted its approval to raise four thousand dollars by debenture to liquidate the debt to Barnes. A sum of six hundred dollars was paid, as well, to Lount & Lount for their services at trial.
The major setback cast a pale of doubt over the villagers and injury to their councillors’ confidence that endured well into the 1890s. The heavy financial burden weighed on the community for years as people’s taxes paid down the four thousand dollar debenture and its stubbornly accruing interest. It would be decades in Bracebridge before any mother again named her newborn daughter Flora.
The 1890s’ most memorable criminal case involved the charge that William J. Hammond had murdered his wife. After Hammond met a girl named Katie Tough in Gravenhurst, he married her across the U.S. border in Buffalo, then placed an insurance policy on her life. When she was found dead in a snowbank back in Gravenhurst, the coroner deduced she had been poisoned. Hammond’s trial opened at Muskoka court of assizes on February 15, 1897. After hearing the evidence, however,