Real Hauntings 5-Book Bundle. Mark Leslie

to see her mistress burn. True or not, this rumour was enough for the king’s prosecutor to order the arrest of both Angélique and Thibault. Angélique was apprehended quickly in the garden of the Hôtel-Dieu and taken to jail. Thibault, on the other hand, was never found and is believed to have fled. He was never seen again in New France.

      Thus began the most spectacular trial of eighteenth-century Canada. Though trials in those days usually lasted only a couple of days, Angélique’s would go on for six weeks. Charged with arson, she faced possible punishments of death, torture, or banishment if convicted. It’s also important to keep in mind that in those days, the accused was presumed guilty and was expected to prove her own innocence. Lawyers were illegal. Twenty-nine-year-old Angélique had her work cut out for her.

      More than twenty witnesses were called to the stand to testify against Angélique. None of them claimed to have seen Angélique set the fire, but they were all convinced she was the culprit. Surprisingly, Angélique’s mistress Thérèse de Couagne was the only one to defend her, insisting her slave was innocent to the very end. But it was the testimony of a five-year-old girl that finally sealed Angélique’s fate. Little Amable Lemoine Monière, a merchant’s daughter, swore she had seen Angélique going up to the attic of the Francheville home with a shovel of live coals in her hand just before the fire started. It was all over.

      Angélique’s sentence was a horror in itself. Her hands would be cut off, and then she would be burned alive. Luckily (though is there really anything that can be deemed “lucky” in this story?) the sentence was appealed and lessened. Instead, Angélique was to be tortured, hanged, and her body burned. At this point, awaiting death in a Montreal prison, Angélique steadfastly maintained her innocence; not that it mattered. Torture was a commonplace punishment in this era, meant to illicit a confession. On June 21, 1734, Angélique was subjected to a method of torture called the Spanish boot, whereby the leg is crushed by planks of wood. Under this torture, Angélique eventually broke and admitted to setting the fire — though it should be noted that she never implicated Thibault.

      They dressed her in a white chemise, had her hold a burning torch to symbolize her crime, and took her to Notre-Dame Basilica in a garbage cart. It was there that they hanged Marie-Joseph Angélique, displayed her body on a gibbet for two hours, then burned the corpse on a pyre.

      Did Marie-Joseph Angélique set the fire that burned down Old Montreal in 1734? It’s impossible to know for sure. Certainly the deck was stacked against her. As a black person, a woman, and a slave, it’s unlikely she could ever have proven her innocence, no matter what she said or did. She was doomed from the moment of her arrest, there’s no question. But an unjust system doesn’t necessarily point to her innocence. Angélique certainly had an interest in arson. She hated her mistress. She yearned for her freedom. She very well might have set the fire.

      Perhaps the better question is: does it matter? Her story is so much bigger than this one detail. It brings to the forefront Canada’s participation in slavery, which is often overlooked. It’s the story of an angry woman who was defiant to the last. It’s the story of a love that was never betrayed. It’s the story of a fight for freedom.

      The square across from Montreal’s city hall was renamed Place Marie-Joseph Angélique in 2012. It will ensure that her story will never be forgotten.

      The Redpath Murders

      The Redpath Mansion, Downtown Montreal

      On June 13, 1901, two scandalous murders shook Montreal high society and a mystery that has yet to be solved was born. Two members of the Redpath family, one of Canada’s wealthiest families at the time, lay dead with gunshot wounds to the head. The investigation into the murders was brief, police involvement spotty, and descriptions of the victims — their health and their states of mind, both before and on the day of the tragedy — were contradictory and confusing. The bodies were buried swiftly and very soon the murders were hardly spoken of, almost as though they’d never happened at all.

      Questions surround this event: What happened in the Redpath Mansion on that fateful night? How could two such high-profile killings be left unsolved over a century later? And, most importantly, who shot Ada Maria Mills Redpath and Jocelyn Clifford Redpath, and why?

      The story of the Redpath family begins with John Redpath, who immigrated to Montreal from Scotland in 1816. Working initially as a stonemason, Redpath quickly opened his own construction business, which was involved in the construction of the Lachine Canal, the Rideau Canal, and the Notre-Dame Basilica. Most notably, he established Canada’s first sugar refinery, Canada Sugar Refining Company (now Redpath Sugar), in 1854. Though Redpath passed away in 1869, his extensive family (he had seventeen children) continued to enjoy the wealth amassed by his many successful business ventures, and by 1901 were firmly entrenched members of Montreal’s elite.

      John James Redpath was John Redpath’s tenth child. He would grow up to work in his father’s sugar refinery business, and in 1867 married Ada Maria Mills. He and Ada had five children: Amy, Peter, Reginald, Harold, and Jocelyn Clifford, known as “Cliff.” It’s here, in this branch of the Redpath family, that we find the major players in the Redpath mansion murders.

       Ada Maria Mills and four of her five children.

      Much of the minute-by-minute account of the murders on that day in the summer of 1901 can be found in the coroner’s inquest documents, which includes testimony by Ada’s son Peter. It is said that Cliff, aged twenty-four, returned home at about 6:00 p.m. on June 13 and went straight to his mother’s room. Seconds later his brother Peter heard shots ring out.

      After breaking down the door to the room, Peter found his mother and brother lying in pools of blood next to a revolver. According to a Montreal Daily Star article published the next day, Ada was already dying when Peter arrived but Cliff was rushed to Royal Victoria Hospital and died just before midnight.

      There were no witnesses to the murders other than the victims themselves, and so it’s impossible to know the most basic facts, such as who was shot first, who was holding the gun, what the two victims spoke about just before their deaths (if anything), and why one of them had a gun to begin with. Whether Ada or Cliff had a desire to die or to kill the other is also impossible to know, but we can speculate.

      Reliable information about Ada Maria Mills Redpath isn’t easy to come by. We know she was the daughter of John Easton Mills, who was elected mayor of Montreal in 1846 (and also shows up in the chapter “The Heroic Death of John Easton Mills”). We know that by 1901 she was the mother of five children and a widow (her husband, John James Redpath, died in 1884). We know that she was in poor health. And we know that she died after being shot in the head. Other details, even her exact age at the time of her death, are difficult to pin down. The Canadian Mysteries website states that Ada was born in 1842, which would make her fifty-nine at the time of her death. Other sources claim she was fifty-six, sixty-two, and forty-five, and one of those sources was her own child.

      The exact nature of the ailments that plagued her is also difficult to ascertain, mainly due to the limits of medical knowledge in 1901. One source reports that she suffered from “ulceration of the eyes, neuralgia of the jaw, painful joints (which involved the fitting of a brace), and melancholia.” After the murders, the New York Times stated that Ada “had been ill for some time, suffering greatly from insomnia.” The Globe reports that Ada suffered from “partial paralysis of one side,” though this isn’t corroborated by any other sources. Most reports agree that today Ada would likely have been diagnosed with depression, though how severe it was is unclear. Canadian Mysteries claims she regularly spent time in a sanatorium and by 1900 hardly ever left her room. At the time of her death, Ada was in such poor health that she relied on her children to care for her. Of the five children, Amy and Clifford tended to her the most.

      How sick and depressed was Ada? Depressed enough to take her own life? Reporters of the time seemed to think so. The Halifax Morning Herald reported in June 1901 that “while temporarily mentally deranged, Mrs.