Last week’s column outlined the trial and acquittal of Mount Forest’s Dr. Samuel Dunbar on a charge of homicide in 1868.
A second man died in Mount Forest at the hands of another in 1868. That incident took place on Oct. 21 on the evening of the monthly fair and cattle market day.
The Fair Day that month had been wet and chilly. By mid afternoon all of Mount Forest’s bar rooms were packed with men attempting to shake the chill out of their bodies while talking and arguing. There were 10 hotels there at that time, a splendid total and the largest number in the county except for the 21 in Guelph, which then had roughly 10 times the population of Mount Forest.
At Ross’s Hotel, the afternoon crowd spilled onto the covered verandah across the front of the building. Among group of farmers and loafers, several know-it-alls held forth on a range of subjects.
At one point, the conversation moved to the subject of oxen and the best means of driving them. For some reason the topic was a controversial one. Several participants emphasized their points with their fists. One man, a fellow named Anderson, boasted to Ed Cosgrove that “I can drive oxen better than any man in Mount Forest.”
Cosgrove replied, “You are not sober,” and shoved Anderson aside.
Some jostling and shoving among the crowd followed. A bystander named McKechnie was at the end of the porch, with a folded umbrella under his arm. He raised it, thrust its pointed end at someone in the melee, then turned around, put on his cap, and walked down the street.
It took a few seconds for all the people to realize that Ed Cosgrove was injured. He had been wounded in the front temple, and was bleeding profusely. Several members of the crowd picked him up and took him inside, where Mrs. Ross, wife of the proprietor, directed them to an empty room.
It being fair day, there was much bustle and confusion in the town, with hundreds of people socializing and shopping. Eventually, after hearing evidence from several observers, a magistrate issued a warrant for the arrest of McKechnie, and assigned Constable Sheppard to find him. The constable suspected that he was in one of the hotels. At the fourth one he visited, he was informed that McKechnie had left town with a wagon, in company with a man named Nicol McIntyre.
Sheppard set out on their trail, and found them about four miles from town with McIntyre walking and leading the team. An umbrella with a pointed tip was in the wagon. Sheppard placed McKechnie under arrest and escorted him back to Mount Forest. At that point Cosgrove was still alive. That led McIntyre to believe that the charge would not be a serious one.
Next morning, when news of Cosgrove’s passing spread through town, the charge was changed to one of murder. The constable arranged for the transfer of the prisoner to the Guelph jail.
The case was listed for the Fall Assizes in Guelph the following week, but Crown Attorney Henry Peterson told the judge that he required more time to prepare his case. The judge, with a heavy schedule before the court for that session, readily agreed.
McKechnie’s case came up at the spring 1869 session on April 14. Peterson was not present to prosecute. A man named Duggan was the substitute. Defending McKechnie was a Guelph lawyer named Freeman, assisted by his law student, Duncan McMillan.
After McKechnie entered his plea of “Not Guilty,” Duggan opened his case by explaining the reasons for a charge of manslaughter rather than murder, and then called his first witness, Alexander Wilson.
Wilson testified that he was across the street from Ross’s Hotel on the afternoon of Fair Day, and that he saw the accused lunge into the crowd with his umbrella, and then pull on his cap and walk down the street with the umbrella under his arm. Out of curiosity he crossed the road, and saw Cosgrove lying on the ground.
Alex Hunter, the next witness, stated that he was passing the scene on horseback. He recalled seeing a man thrusting an umbrella, and then walking down the street after pulling his cap on his head. Under cross-examination he admitted that the man with the umbrella looked like the accused, but he could not make a positive identification.
Cornelius Connor testified that he saw a bald-headed man pressing an umbrella toward the crowd, and then walking away at an ordinary gait. He identified that man as the prisoner, and in response to defence questions, asserted that he had no doubts about it.
Tom Phelan, the next witness, had been closer to the action. He stated that the man with the umbrella struck another man before stabbing Cosgrove, but he could not positively identify the prisoner as the man with the umbrella.
Dr. Samuel Dunbar, the accused man in the homicide trial the previous year, was the next witness. He stated that he and the accused had been inside the hotel when the altercation began. They had gone out together when they heard the disturbance. The doctor stated that he had spent his time trying to calm down one of the participants in the fight, and did not see the stabbing or the victim fall. He had known the accused four years, and considered him a man of good character.
Dr. H.P. Yeomans told the court that he had examined Cosgrove about 9pm that night, and considered his case hopeless. The next morning, after Cosgrove died, he conducted the post mortem examination, with the three other Mount Forest doctors present. Obviously, the authorities did not want to give the defence a chance to claim the examination was bungled, as they had done in the Dunbar case the previous year.
Dr. Yeomans described the wound: a fracture of the skull and considerable laceration of the brain. There were ruptured arteries, which had flooded the brain with blood, causing a fatal coma.
John Sheppard, the Mount Forest auctioneer and part time constable, testified that he had arrested McKechnie about four miles from Mount Forest.
The defence called a list of nine witnesses. Some attested to the sterling character of the accused. Others, who stated that they were present at the incident, insisted that McKechnie as definitely not the man who brandished the umbrella that day. One stated that the man who did the stabbing had a red beard and full head of hair. McKechnie was bald-headed and clean shaven.
After hearing all the evidence, the court adjourned for the day. The next morning defence lawyer Freeman led off with a summation of the case, followed by Duggan for the prosecution. The judge summarized the evidence for the jury, and sent them to their deliberations in late morning. They returned about 3:30, and reported a verdict of “Not Guilty.”
The verdict produced as much surprise, if not more, than the Dunbar case tried the previous November. Wags noted that Mount Forest juries were disinclined to convict anyone of a capital crime, and that Mount Forest was the place to dispatch someone and avoid all risk of conviction.