The late 1840s were surely the liveliest years in the history of Wellington.
Migrants came to this county in huge numbers, settling the last empty areas of the older townships and opening up the new ones, particularly Peel and Maryborough. Major public works, particularly roads and railways, occupied much attention. Politics never saw greater partisanship.
Among the new arrivals, largely as a consequence of the famine in the homeland, were a considerable number of Irish. Some brought with them the sectarian strife that gripped Ireland. A few sought to stir up trouble in Canada as part of the campaign for Irish independence. Older settlers, many holding anti-Catholic sentiments, fueled troubles here.
The burning of Dr. William Clarke’s flour mill in Guelph by a Catholic Irishman in 1847 brought fears to a head in this area.
Protestants expected further torchings, and Catholics were under constant threat of bodily violence. For several years there were frequent bar room skirmishes and physical attacks on both Protestants and Catholics.
A fire in Fergus in the early hours of June 15, 1848 further stirred up the sectarian animosity. About 3am, a mysterious fire broke out on the south side of St. Andrew Street, destroying in short order Glover’s General Store, the store of George Jardine, and the upstairs residence of Joseph Kerr, a tailor, who operated his business from there. Volunteers removed a portion of Jardine’s stock before the flames drove them back.
Kerr owned the building, and had it insured for $2,000 with the Wellington District Mutual Insurance Company.
Dozens of volunteers had attempted to battle the blaze, but they were untrained and had no equipment. Rumours that the fire had been set by an unknown person began to circulate immediately. Over the following week the stories, all unfounded, became more numerous and increasingly lurid.
Several of the Fergus magistrates became alarmed, and decided that a formal inquiry would bring all the known facts onto the table and into the public record, thereby calming the fears. They convened the session on June 22. Six magistrates, including William Reynolds of Elora, A.D. Fordyce, Alex Harvey, and A.D. Ferrier, all of Fergus, sat at the table to hear the testimony of 14 witnesses.
The inquiry produced nothing of a startling nature, and failed to shed any light on the cause of the fire. Today, 167 years later, the evidence is most interesting in that it provides a glimpse at everyday life, and at the way the public reacted to major disasters.
The first of the witnesses was Robert Edmond. He lived on St. Andrew Street, directly across from the fire, and was awakened about 3am by shouting from the street. He went to his door and noticed flames coming from the side wall of Glover’s store. He expressed the opinion that the fire was arson, as none of the stoves in the building had been lit that day. George Jardine told the inquiry that he lived above his store, and was awakened by his servant, who could smell smoke. He looked out the window, and saw flames reflected in the windows of Edmond’s building across the street. He went downstairs to his store, but could not open the door, and had to kick it down. He was convinced that the fire started in Glover’s side of the building. He admitted that he had a cook stove in use.
The witnesses often contradicted one another in the details of their evidence, but that is not surprising. All were roused from their beds at 3am, and there was no light other than the moon. That meant that people could not always identify others or see all that was going on.
For a retail property, there were a surprisingly large number of people sleeping in the building.
George Jardine lived in a small room above his store, and an employee also lived in the building. When he saw someone chopping at a wall to reveal flames within, Jardine began to remove some of the goods in his store.
Bill McCrory, one of Glover’s clerks, was asleep on a counter in the store, where he usually spent the night. He told the inquiry that he had gone to sleep about 10pm. He had used a candle to light the store, but insisted that he had extinguished it.
Another of Glover’s clerks, John Wilson, lived some distance away. He rushed to the store when he was awakened by the commotion, and removed the ledgers from the front counter. He had closed up the store about 8pm, and had checked to make sure all the doors were locked.
Joseph Kerr, the tailor who lived and worked upstairs, operated something of a flophouse. In addition to himself and his wife, he had a spare room that was home to two men: Sam Patmore and Tom Mair. That room was accessible only through the Kerr’s own bedroom. The Kerr’s had a servant girl, Agnes Logan, who slept most nights on a sofa. Altogether, nine people were asleep in the building on the night of the fire.
The lodgers stated they were awakened by Kerr yelling “fire.” Other than the stove used by George Jardine to cook his dinner, there had been no fires in the building’s stoves that day. The Kerrs used a stove in a small outbuilding at the rear, no doubt to keep the heat down during the summer in their cramped apartment.
Others witnesses stated that they had seen smoke and a red glow coming from the doomed building. Others saw little. Four men sharing a bedroom at Keleher’s Tavern nearby heard the commotion and noticed smoke issuing from the roof of the building.
Jim Walker, the baker, was working late that night, and a few minutes after 2am he went to see Alex Burnett, who was already up, preparing for an early start on a trip to Hamilton. Walker had some letters he wanted Burnett to take to Hamilton. Walker stated that he saw no one else on the street, and that there were no lights in any building. He had detected no sign of a fire. Walker had just dozed off for the night when his wife woke him and told him there was a fire. Gilbert Tod, a clerk in the store owned by James Webster, told the inquiry that Mrs. Kerr had come into his store a few minutes after he opened at 6am the morning after the fire. She told him she believed the fire had been deliberately set, but mentioned no suspect. Mrs. Tod gave similar evidence.
Mrs. Kerr’s calmness in the wake of losing her home and most of her possessions led some people to suspect that she knew much more than she said, and that the Kerrs set the fire themselves to collect the insurance money. But that made little sense: Kerr had two good tenants, and the fire also claimed the small shop where he earned his own living as a tailor.
Joseph Kerr said he was awakened by his wife, who smelled smoke. He said he stumbled in the dark as he made his way down the stairs, which were outside, at the rear of the building. In the process, he cut his foot badly, but managed to get his hands on a bucket. He found that a water barrel he kept beside the kitchen was almost empty. He tried two nearby wells. Both were dry. Eventually he retrieved some water from the river.
Kerr was convinced that the fire had started in Glover’s store. He said that he could smell burning tea when he woke up. Bill Piper, who lived nearby and was one of the first on the scene, said that the smoke and flames at first seemed to be coming from high up on the wall. He therefore believed that the blaze originated in the upper floor.
That concluded the evidence, which was fragmentary and at times contradictory.
The fire had spread in the space between the outer board-and-batten cladding and the interior plastered wall. There was no insulation in those days, so a fire could spread quickly with the draft created in the space, and it may have originated nowhere near where it first became visible on the outside.
The six magistrates took their time deliberating. Then, Squire Reynolds reconvened the session and spoke. He said there was no evidence to suggest that the fire was set deliberately, though there was still much mystery about its origin. No evidence was offered to show that anyone involved had an axe to grind over a religious or ethnic disagreement. Reynolds urged that the public “be orderly and peaceable, and rid themselves of any prejudice that heretofore might have existed in their minds.”
The magistrates had desired to get all the facts on the table. Not surprisingly, few were happy with their efforts, and some in Fergus were livid. They wanted to point a finger at someone. Rabble rousers called their own meeting soon after the inquiry adjourned. The noisy session produced several resolutions condemning the inquiry and its conclusions. The meeting resolved to establish a night watch by armed volunteers.
The night watchmen kept up their vigil for several weeks until their zeal and energy dissipated. For their part, the magistrates met again privately, and decided to send a copies of the minutes of the inquiry to newspapers in Guelph and Hamilton (there were none yet published in Fergus or Elora) to counteract the rumours that continued to circulate.
They continued to fear that ethnic differences could boil up into violence. In the end, though, the 1848 fire produced no further repercussions in Fergus.