111 cockfight fans nabbed in Montreal police raid

Friday, 19 March 2010 05:00

One hundred years ago, clippings from the newspapers of March 19, 1910.

Montreal Star. A squad of more than 30 police raided the stables of horse carter Daniel Donnelly Sunday morning where a cockfight was underway.

“Every man in this place is under arrest, and it is no use for any of you to try to get away,” shouted Inspector Lamouche. “Someone in the crowd threw a piece of plank that just grazed Inspector Lamouche’s head, and a wild rush was made by those inside to get out of the building.”

The spectators sought to escape by rushing doors, jumping from windows, hiding in the hayloft, under barrels and in wagons. It is thought that six might have escaped, but on Monday morning 111 appeared in court before Mr. Recorder Poirier. Donnelly pleaded guilty to keeping a cockpit, and was fined $50 or three months. One man was fined $10 or one month for resisting arrest. Joseph Letourneau was fined $5. “He took it as a good joke” and was fined an additional $5. The others were all fined $5 each, and each had their names and addresses published in the Star.

Sin crusade
Peterborough Examiner. “Every night this week except Saturday,” four evangelists will conduct “a special crusade against sin in Peterborough,” in the Gospel Hall. They “hope to have the prayers of every child of God in the city.” The sin fighters will include Peterborough’s W.P. Douglas, together with visiting evangelists from Trenton, Bancroft, and Massachusetts.

Sheltered Children
Peterborough Examiner.There are 322 boys and 111 girls sheltered in Ontario’s four Industrial Schools, J.J. Kelso, Superintendent of Neglected and Dependent Children states in his second annual report. “The children are only retained long enough to give them a good start in right doing and right thinking,” the Examiner states. The “average length of stay is less than two years… the principle prevailing that the children are better off under conditions of ordinary life when this can be managed.” The schools are administered by a benevolent association, with financial support of $3 per day per child from the provincial and municipal governments.

Suffragette freaks
Belleville Intelligencer. Another case of male chauvinism is on display in a dispatch from London, England. Seven of what the Intelligencer calls “freaks of the suffragettes,” dressed in firemen’s uniforms, raced a fire engine through London’s busy Westend streets. “The familiar note of the fire gong caused traffic to follow the custom of drawing aside to let the engine pass, and the cars of the police, being equally deceived, the constables assisted in clearing the way until the fraud was discovered.”

More suffragette news
London Times. Sir Edward Clarke tells the Men’s League for Opposing Women Suffrage that their cause has been aided by the suffragettes themselves. Their demonstrations, he said, “had established in the minds of a majority of the voters the conviction that the women who might possibly be fitted for the franchise did not want it, and the women who said they wanted it were undeniably unfitted to have it.” Lady Frances Balfour, meanwhile, tells the London Society for Women’s Suffrage, that the recent general election provides “an immense advantage” for their cause. “For the first time visible in every constituency” large numbers of voters petitioned Parliament to grant the franchise to women.

Coal famine
London Free Press. “Many smaller towns in Alberta are now on the verge of a coal famine,” caused by 500 striking miners at Lethbridge. “The Northwest Mounted Police have been placed in control of the town, and martial law prevails.” One hundred coal miners continue to work under police protection.