When someone mentions economic depression, most people at once think of the 1930s.
That was, by a wide margin, the major one of the 20th century, but there were others. Before governments took a significant role in regulating banking, stock markets, and the money supply, depressions could come on very quickly. Sometimes conditions would recover almost as quickly, and sometimes not.
A short, but severe depression gripped North America beginning in the fall of 1907. Within weeks there were massive layoffs in factories all over the continent. Recovery took slightly more than a year, but during the summer of 1908 there were thousands of unemployed men riding freight trains and tramping along country roads, searching for work.
Some of those men, at a time when there was no unemployment insurance or much of an economic safety net of any kind, were desperate, and not above stealing or other criminal acts. As well, many had acquired socialistic political ideas from union leaders, leading to a public perception that they were dangerous radicals. And there was a generous sprinkling of foreign-born men among the unemployed, sufficient to arouse xenophobic fears among large segments of the public.
In July of 1908, there was a violent assault near Mount Forest that threw the area into a panic, and resulted in one of the most intense police investigations in Wellington up to that time.
Henry Harper, with his wife and the help of Thomas Tee, a hired man, farmed on Lot 9, on the west side of the Owen Sound Road, not far south of Mount Forest. On the morning of July 13, Henry went into town, intending to take a special Grand Trunk train to Listowel for a big Orange Order celebration there that day.
Before the train departed a neighbour rushed into town and found Henry, informing him that there was an emergency back at the farm involving an attack on his wife. Henry rounded up a doctor and Police Chief Cringle, of Mount Forest, and rushed home.
Though groggy and bleeding badly from cuts to her head, Mrs. Harper was able to relate the story. She had gone to the barn to feed a flock of turkeys, and noticed that a couple had strayed into a root cellar under the barn. When she went to chase them out, a stranger had confronted her. He struck her on the head with a club. A robust woman, she fought back, and received more blows, eventually eight or nine in total.
Tee, the hired man, working in a nearby field, heard her screams, and rushed to investigate. When he reached Mrs. Harper she was stumbling, with blood pouring from wounds to her head. The assailant had climbed into the barn, jumped from an upstairs door, and fled into the bush. Tee took off in pursuit, while the two Harper children helped their mother into the house. One of the children ran to the neighbours for help, and several men joined in the pursuit of the assailant, who they were convinced was one of the unemployed tramps roaming the area.
Tee claimed he caught up to the suspect, but was unable to detain him. The posse of neighbours, along with Chief Cringle, were unable to catch up with him again. The story spread like wildfire through the area during the day. Chief Cringle wired for the help of County Constable Merriwether, of Guelph, and he arrived that evening on the train.
By late that night, Cringle and Merriwether had two men in the Mount Forest lockup. The policemen believed that they knew the identity of the suspect. After lengthy questioning they were able to supply no information, and Cringle reluctantly let them go two days later.
Mrs. Harper’s injuries initially looked severe, but after he cleaned up the wounds the doctor concluded that they were not serious. There was no skull fracture. By evening, she was completely lucid, though with some painful cuts, egg-sized bruises, and a splitting headache. She did not remember getting a good look at he assailant, but was able to describe him as a man about five feet seven inches in height, middle aged with a round face and a stubble of whiskers, wearing dark clothes, and “rather Jewish in appearance.”
Antisemitic sentiments were common in Wellington County a century ago, and were particularly strong in 1908, due to the depressed economy and an influx of Russian Jews following the war between Russia and Japan. Some local people welcomed the new arrivals, but many were intensely suspicious of them.
Over the next couple of days, papers across the province picked up the story, citing it as yet another example of the crimes being perpetrated by the wandering hordes of unemployed men. Few of the culprits had been caught. The Toronto Globe urged the formation of a provincial police force of at least 200 men to clamp down on the tramps and “protect life and property.”
Merriwether and Cringle eventually caught up with a man named Fred Arthur, who had, on the morning of the assault, been at the adjoining farm where he was given breakfast. They arrested him, released him, then arrested him a second time, taking him to jail in Guelph. On July 27, two weeks after the assault, Chief Cringle went to Guelph and brought him back to Mount Forest. There he appeared before Magistrate Macgregor, who released him at once because there was not a shred of evidence linking him to the case.
Authorities in Palmerston arrested two tramps who they believed might be suspects. Constable Cringle, accompanied by Tee, the hired man, went to interview the pair. Tee thought that one, a fellow named Sam Watson and originally from Montreal, was the man they sought. Cringle had him photographed, and sent the picture and other information to police there, assuming that he had a police record. Montreal police had no records of him, and Watson was released after nine days in jail.
Constable Merriwether spent the best part of a week in Mount Forest and area, an expenditure of time seldom made for any crime, even a homicide case. Various neighbours of the Harpers assisted the police. At the end of the week, Merriwether called in Detective Rebern, of the provincial Attorney General’s office. He spent five days on the case, but turned up no new leads or evidence.
An unusual development during the last week of July was the dismissal by Henry Harper of Thomas Tee, his hired man. He gave no reasons, but it would seem he thought Tee was somehow implicated in the case.
On Aug. 11, Merriwether returned to Mount Forest. Someone had discovered part of a flail in the hollow of a tree on the Harper farm. It was covered with blood. Merriwether concluded it was the assault weapon. He spent another week in the Mount Forest area, trying to turn up new leads.
Without giving any details, he told the press on Aug. 18 that “The tramp theory is exploded.” He also had spent some time investigating reports of an assault on the wife of Reeve Dickson of Maryborough. That tale was causing considerable excitement and fear in north Wellington. As it turned out, the Dicksons had surprised a tramp, who was then attacked by their dog.
The tramp made all sorts of threats to the Dicksons as he tried to fight off Bowser. Constable Merriwether assured the public that the tramps wandering the area posed little threat of any kind.
There were no further developments in the case, though the fear of tramps lingered into the fall and winter. A week after the assault Mrs. Harper had recovered completely except for some small scars, which had vanished by the end of August.
The case is fascinating in the amount of police investigation conducted to find the culprit. It was probably the most intense investigation into a crime of any kind up to that time in north Wellington. Altogether, five men spent time in jail, ranging from a few nights to more than two weeks, although none had any connection with the crime.
The ranks of the wandering unemployed diminished during the winter of 1908-1909 as the economy recovered and factories resumed full schedules of production. The fear of unemployed tramps lingered much longer in areas where they had been linked with serious crime.