On November 26, 1859, the remains of Samuel Lount and Peter Matthews were removed from their original burial place and reinterred. “David Gibson and I dug up their bodies from the old Potters’ field [sic], near Bloor Street,” said Thomas Anderson, as quoted by John Ross Robertson in his Landmarks of Toronto. “William Lyon Mackenzie came up just as we were lifting the bodies into the waggon, and the three of us rode in the waggon to the Necropolis, where we buried these murdered men, for I call it murder, in one grave.”
Lount and Matthews had been members of a group of radical Reformers led by the firebrand Mackenzie, newspaperman and first mayor of Toronto after the incorporation of the city (formerly the town of York) in 1834. The Reformers mounted a rebellion in December 1837 against the conservative government of what was then Upper Canada, now Ontario. The uprising was an abysmal failure. Mackenzie fled to the United States; he was eventually pardoned and returned to Canada 12 years later.
Many of his fellow rebels, however, were not so fortunate, being either killed or captured.
Lount and Matthews were singled out to pay the ultimate penalty. They were tried for high treason, and, on April 12, 1838, despite public outcry, they were hanged side by side in the yard of the Toronto jail, located on the corner of what is now King Street East and Toronto Street.
Emanuel Hahn’s memorial to Samuel Lount at Mackenzie House (Yoho2001/Wikimedia); Portrait of Peter Matthews. (Special Collections Toronto Public Library)
With the authorities fearing a backlash in the wake of these controversial executions, the bodies of the two men were quietly, if not furtively, buried in the non-sectarian Toronto (formerly York) General Burying Ground, better known as Potter’s Field, which had been established in 1826 well north of the town of York.
Potter’s Field was closed in 1855, falling victim to the development of the flourishing village of Yorkville and the rapid northward expansion of the city of Toronto.
The non-sectarian cemetery established in its stead was the Toronto Necropolis (Greek for “city of the dead”), which opened on Winchester Street in Cabbagetown in 1850.
Between 1850 and 1899, 22,307 people were buried at the Necropolis. Weathered grave stones scattered higgledy-piggledy throughout the cemetery’s 18.25 acres bear mute testimony to battles and disease, heartbreak and loss, and lives cut short. A number of the monuments are achingly anonymous: the name of an infant who died in 1859, aged three days, for example, simply reads “Baby Alcock.”
Necropolis Cemetery, 1952. (James V. Salmon/Baldwin Collection of Canadiana)
However, many famous — and infamous — individuals whose stories fuelled the headlines in the second half of the 19th century found their resting place in this serene, landscaped tract on the east side of Toronto.
One of the early movers and shakers buried there is John Ewart, who was born in Scotland and emigrated to York in 1818. He is known as a prominent architect and long-standing trustee of the Toronto General Burying Ground. Alone or in partnership with other architects, Ewart designed some of the most important buildings in Upper Canada. A couple of examples: the York General Hospital on King Street West, completed in 1820 but now long gone, and the original two-and-a-half-storey Osgoode Hall on Queen Street West, named for William Osgoode, the first chief justice of Upper Canada. In 1856, Ewart died in Toronto of gangrene brought on by arteriosclerosis.
Rebel chief William Lyon Mackenzie did not long survive the reinterment in 1859 of his former lieutenants Lount and Matthews. He had retired from public life by then, and, in spite of the generosity of his political friends, he was constantly on the brink of penury.
Ultimately, as the Globe newspaper explained in a lengthy obituary on August 29, 1861, “a gradual decay of his natural powers took place during the last few months, and a few weeks ago he sank into a state of immobility which yesterday evening ended in death.”
Mackenzie, William Lyon, gravestone, Necropolis cemetery, 1922, James & Son. (Baldwin Collection of Canadiana); Mackenzie, William Lyon, gravestone, Necropolis cemetery, 1910, unknown. (Baldwin Collection of Canadiana)
Opinion is still split over whether the hotheaded newspaper publisher and politician was a positive or negative force in city and provincial affairs. But his headstone, a handsome Celtic cross shared with his wife and other members of his family, makes no mention of the roiling controversies that dogged the Scottish-born Mackenzie during the years he spent in his adoptive country. It merely records in upper-case letters: “William Lyon Mackenzie Born 12th March 1795 Died 28th August 1861.”
Another prominent figure who passed away in the second decade of the Necropolis’s existence was Joseph Bloor (sometimes spelled Bloore), who died in 1862. Bloor was born in Staffordshire and emigrated to Canada with his wife and children in 1819. He ran the Farmer’s Arms Inn on King Street, where St Lawrence Hall is now located, and built a brewery near Sherbourne Street in 1830. In addition, he became an enormously successful land speculator and one of the founders of the village of Yorkville.
Photo of Joseph Bloor, ca. 1850 (Baldwin Collection of Canadiana); Bloor Brewery, 1908, author unknown. (Baldwin Collection of Canadiana)
As to the cause of Bloor’s death, a 105-by-30-centimetre memorial tablet (originally installed in the now defunct Bloor Street Methodist Church, but latterly in storage) notes, in lieu of any concrete details, that “he calmly fell asleep in Jesus, on Sabbath evening, August 31st 1862.” It adds that “the righteous shall be in everlasting remembrance.”
Joseph Bloor was evidently a righteous man: the boundary between Yorkville and Toronto was named Bloor Street in his honour,
The life and death of James Brown, the last person to be publicly hanged in Toronto, were embroiled in controversy. Brown was allegedly the leader of the notorious Brook’s Bush Gang, which terrorized residents in the Leslieville area east of the city in the 1850s. He was tried and sentenced to death for the murder in 1859 of local politician and newspaper editor John Sheridan Hogan, whose body had been found floating in the Don River.
Item from the October 9, 1861, edition of the Globe; portion of an article from the March 10, 1862, edition of the Globe.
Despite conflicting evidence at Brown’s trial and vociferous public objections, the doomed man was hanged on March 10, 1862, in front of the Court House on Adelaide Street. He protested his innocence to the end, saying that he was guilty of many bad acts, but not this one. After a brief ceremony, his body was loaded into a hearse for burial at the Necropolis.
In contrast, the funeral of James Brown’s namesake George Brown on May 12, 1880, was a sombre, reverential affair. Flags throughout the city flew at half-mast, trains brought in passengers from all parts of Canada, and thousands of spectators in sober garb silently lined the route to the cemetery.
Brown was a towering figure in the social and political life of Canada — a Father of Confederation, the founder and publisher of the Globe, and a powerful force in the Liberal Party.
Portrait of George Brown, ca. 1880. (Hunter & Co./Library and Archives Canada/C-009553); George Brown memorial, 1927 (Toronto Star Photograph Archive)
On the afternoon of March 25, 1880, he was confronted in his office at the Globe by George Bennett, a disgruntled former employee. Bennett produced a gun, and, in the ensuing scuffle, Brown was shot in the thigh.
Initially regarded as a minor flesh wound, the injury developed into “blood poisoning” — more precisely, a lethal infection that took Brown’s life on May 9. He was 61 years old.
A brass plaque at his tomb states, in part: “Both as a journalist and as a politician he spoke out for responsible government and freedom of the individual.”
Beside Brown’s grave in the cemetery stands a red granite obelisk. This marks the burial site of Brown’s fellow activists Thornton and Lucie Blackburn, who died in 1890 and 1895, respectively. The Black couple escaped from slavery in Kentucky and settled in Toronto, where they achieved fame as abolitionists and community benefactors.
Breaking Chains: Thornton and Lucie Blackburn's Journey from Enslavement to Freedom
Thornton was an extremely successful entrepreneur, founding the first cab company in Toronto. His horse-drawn cab was painted red and yellow, colours that were subsequently adopted by the Toronto Transit Commission.
Other notables buried during the last decade of the 19th century included two former Toronto mayors, William H. Howland in 1893 and James Beaty in 1899.
There was also Joseph Workman, who died in 1894. He was a physician, merchant, politician, teacher, mental-health pioneer, and the former superintendent of the Provincial Lunatic Asylum, situated at 999 Queen Street West, Toronto.
Philanthropist Catherine Seaton Skirving was laid to rest in 1897. Scottish-born Skirving was the daughter-in-law of John Ewart, that well-known Toronto architect buried in the Necropolis in the 1850s.
But the most poignant ceremony at the Necropolis in the 1890s was not a burial; rather, it was the unveiling and dedication on June 28, 1893, of a monument to the memory of Samuel Lount and Peter Matthews. The 300-strong crowd included many dignitaries of the day. It was presided over by Thomas Anderson, who had reinterred the remains of the two men in 1859.
Lount and Matthews monument, Necropolis cemetery, 1910, unknown. (Baldwin Collection of Canadiana); Lount and Matthews monument in the present day. (Lorna Poplak)
In an in-depth article, the Globe described “the handsome memorial shaft” that was built of “polished grey granite and consists of a massive square plinth, some ten feet high, from which rises a circular broken column of about the same height.” The broken shaft was a design element, signifying that the lives of the two men had been cut short.
The proceedings began with a prayer. In the speeches that followed, federal politician James (later Sir James) David Edgar referred to “the sham of an elected legislature” in Upper Canada in 1837, “little more than a complicated form of despotism, administered in the personal interest of a pampered oligarchy, known to our history as ‘The family compact.’” Small wonder, then, that individuals resented “the odious tyranny under which they groaned.”
To cheers from the assembly, Member of Provincial Parliament Joseph Tait acknowledged the rebel leaders as “true, good, self-sacrificing, loyal men, devoted to the true interests of their country, and a noble example to all who followed them.”
What irony the passage of time has wrought! The two men were hanged as traitors in 1838, reinterred as “murdered men” in 1859, and celebrated as martyrs and patriots in 1893. And today, there is an on-site plaque honouring the two men, “who, without praise or glory died for political freedom and a system of responsible government.”
Sources: Barkin, Risa and Ian Gentles, “Death in Victorian Toronto, 1850-1899,” Urban HistoryReview, Vol 19, No. 1/2, June 1990/October 1990; Cabbagetown People Committee, Cabbagetown People: The Social History of a Canadian Inner City Neighbourhood: Necropolis; Gerard, Warren, “Chronicling a City’s Past,” Imperial Oil Review, Number 2, 2004, Volume 88, Number 450; the Globe editions of November 28, 1850, August 29, 1861, March 11, 1862, December 8, 1864, May 13, 1880, June 23, 1880, June 29, 1893, December 13, 1893, May 12, 1897; Noakes, Taylor C. “Joseph Bloor,” the Canadian Encyclopedia; and Robertson, J. Ross (John Ross), Landmarks of Toronto; a Collection of Historical Sketches of the Old Town of York from 1792 until 1833, and of Toronto from 1834 to 1893 Volume 1. Toronto: J. Ross Robertson, 1894. Published from the Toronto Evening Telegram.
Donate