At Last!
A Jail A Young Town Can Be Proud Of
A Jail A Young Town Can Be Proud Of
In 1827, after 3 years of construction, the new, improved jail was opened, modelled on a Greek temple.
H
angings were popular events in the yard. School children were sometimes given a day off to watch a hanging. Although the town had a population of only about 2,500 in 1828, four times that number attended a double hanging.
This red brick edifice had walls 40 inches thick
and was surrounded by a 15-foot fence.
The Keeper of the jail and his family lived in the building.
It was built on King Street on the north-east corner
with Toronto Street.
Toronto's third jail was built in 1840, and the building pictured above became an insane asylum.
One of the most infamous hangings in the history of Upper Canada is pictured below. Two men named Lount and Matthews were publicly executed for their part in the Rebellion of 1837, when Reformers, led by William Lyon Mackenzie, took up arms briefly and unsuccessfully against the Family Compact.
The crowd seems to have dressed quite formally, everyone wearing a hat.
Today Mackenzie's original house is kept as a museum. Mackenzie House is located in downtown Toronto on Bond Street, just east of the Eaton Centre. (Various people working in Mackenzie House say they have seen a ghost there, making it one of Toronto's "officially" haunted houses.)
With Mackenzie as mayor, York changed its name again, reverting to Toronto.
Mackenzie's grandson,
William Lyon Mackenzie King, became
Prime Minister of Canada, leading the nation for a total of twenty-two years, through half the Depression and all of the Second World War.
Mackenzie, the first mayor of the City of Toronto, escaped to the United States after the failed Rebellion, returning several years later.
More stories about the history of Jarvis Collegiate, early Toronto and William and Samuel Jarvis.