Clash at Longueuil 17 November 1837

At dawn on 17^th November 1837, constable Mâlo and a detachment of 18 volunteers of the Royal Montreal Cavalry arrived at the village of Saint-Jean.[1] Their orders were to arrest the notary Pierre Paul Demaray and doctor Joseph Davignon, both accused of having taken part several weeks earlier in the assembly at Saint-Charles. Caught in bed, the two men were bound hand and foot and carried on the floor of a wagon escorted by the cavalry along the road to Chambly en-route for Montreal. This was not the quickest route to Montreal and lengthened the journey by about fifteen miles.[2] Amédée Papineau commented that

Au lieu de se rendre tranquillement à Montréal par la route directe du chemin à lisse, afin de semer la terreur dans la campagne, ils résolurent de les conduire par Chambly & Longueuil, distance de 36 milles.[3]

Filteau supported this view suggesting that there was a clear intention ‘to sow terror’ by a military deployment in an area that was already disturbed. [4] This interpretation seems reasonable since on 7 November, shortly after the riots in Montreal and ten days before the arrests on 17 November, Colborne had written to Governor Gosford that he should send troops south of Montreal ‘to reassure the loyal subjects of this region and to dissuade the factions from taking part in new acts of violence.’[5] It appears that the detour by the cavalry was part of the strategy Colborne has planned ten days earlier and that the decision to make the arrests may have been a deliberately provocative act.

Despite the hour, the arrests did not pass unnoticed. As soon as Patriotes heard the news, they rushed to Verchères where Papineau was staying. Papineau told them to: ‘fire upon anyone found in the act of forcibly carrying off any of the radical party’, and they lost no time in following his advice. [6] The news spread through the areas close to the village and by around 6 am there were already about twenty men barring the road near Chambly.[7] However, when faced by the superior force of cavalry the men dispersed but had already sent a messenger to the Patriotes in Longueuil on the route of the convoy. A little later militia captain Joseph Vincent de Longueuil also learned of the arrests and decided to alert Bonaventure Viger de Boucherville[8], an influential militia captain who gathered together a force of 40 according to Filteau or 150 according to Greer to intercept the cavalry. [9] The armed Patriotes were not far from Longueuil on the Chambly road. Chambly itself had been reinforced by a detachment of the 32^nd Regiment sent by Colborne and the Attorney-General Richard Ogden who were conscious of the dangers facing the convoy in the Richelieu valley. [10]

Around 9 am, the cavalry was about two miles from Longueuil when it was ambushed by Viger and his men.[11] There is some disagreement about who fired first: Filteau said it was the cavalry while Greer said it was the Patriotes.[12] During the ambush, Viger was wounded in the shoulder and hand.[13] Among the loyalists, Ermatinger was hit by buckshot in his cheek and shoulder and two soldiers, Joshua Woodhouse and John P. Ashton were seriously wounded by shot.[14] John Molson narrowly avoided death when a ball passed close to his head and took off his cap. The cavalry was routed and dispersed across the fields. Viger and his men were then able to free the two prisoners. Mâlo hid in a local farm until he was able to make his escape but Ermatinger quickly returned to Montreal to submit his report of the incident.[15]

The following day, Colborne ordered lieutenant-colonel George Wetherall, accompanied by four companies of the 1^st Royal Scots and a troop of the Royal Montreal Cavalry to find and arrest the Patriotes involved in the action.[16] The Montreal Courier made the Loyalist position very clear: ‘Blood has been shed at last by rebels who now stand unmasked and fairly subject to the worst penalties of the laws they have insulted’. [17] The ambush at Longueuil marked the opening action in the armed confrontation between the Patriotes and the forces of the Crown in the autumn of 1837.

---

[1] Ibid, Senior, Elinor Kyte, Les habits rouges et les Patriotes, p. 84.

[2] Ibid, Filteau, Gérard, Histoire des Patriotes, p. 313.

[3] Ibid, Fortin, Réal, La guerre de Patriotes: Le Long du Richelieu, p. 30.

[4] Ibid, Filteau, Gérard, Histoire des Patriotes, p. 313.

[5] Ibid, Senior, Elinor Kyte, Les habits rouges et les Patriotes, p. 78.

[6] Cit, Senior, Elinor Kyte, Les habits rouges et les Patriotes, p. p. 54.

[7] Ibid, Filteau, Gérard, Histoire des Patriotes, p. 313.

[8] ‘Bonaventure Viger’, DCB, Vol. 10, p. 694.

[9] Ibid, Filteau, Gérard, Histoire des Patriotes, p. 314; ibid, Greer, Allan, The patriots and the people, p. 269.

[10] Ibid, Senior, Elinor Kyte, Les habits rouges et les Patriotes, p. 73.

[11] Ibid, Fauteux, Aegidius, Les patriotes de 1837-1838, p. 38.

[12] Ibid, Filteau, Gérard, Histoire des Patriotes, p. 314; ibid, Greer, Allan, The patriots and the people, p. 269.

[13] Ibid, Filteau, Gérard, Histoire des Patriotes, p. 314.

[14] Ibid, Senior, Elinor Kyte, Les habits rouges et les Patriotes, p. 84.

[15] Ibid, Filteau, Gérard, Histoire des Patriotes, p. 315.

[16] Ibid, Senior, Elinor Kyte, Les habits rouges et les Patriotes, p. 93.

[17] The Courier, 18 November 1837.

Prison reformers: John Howard

Individual reformers had criticised the system of criminal punishment based on capital punishment and transportation since the 1770s. They had two motives. Prisons were cruel and unfair. Many of the reformers were Evangelicals who pointed out that convicts were God’s creatures too. People’s lives were being wasted, languishing in gaols when they could change their ways and become decent citizens. Goals were inefficient. Over half of the prisoners were either debtors or had served their sentence but could not afford to pay the gaoler the release fee. At Newgate Prison in 1729, the release fee was 34p. Sir William Eden[1] published the influential Principles of Penal Law in 1771 and John Howard The State of the Prisons in England and Wales in 1777. In spite of the enthusiastic reception given to the work of Howard, much influenced by the writings of Cesare Beccaria[2] and the boost given to reformers, change remained slow and continued to depend on the zeal and initiative of private individuals rather than on any government direction. Howard, Sir George Paul, Elizabeth Fry and Jeremy Bentham were the most influential.

John Howard (1726-1790) was an English philanthropist and reformer in the fields of penology and public health. [3] On his father’s death in 1742, Howard inherited considerable wealth and travelled widely in Europe. He then became High Sheriff in Bedfordshire in 1773. As part of his duties, he inspected Bedford Gaol and was appalled by the unsanitary conditions there. He was also shocked to learn that the jailers were not salaried officers but depended on fees from prisoners. He also found that some prisoners had been acquitted by the courts but were kept in prison because they had not paid their release fees. In 1774, Howard persuaded the House of Commons to pass two acts that stipulated first that discharged persons should be set at liberty in open court and that discharge fees should be abolished and secondly, that justices should be required to see to the health of prisoners. Years afterward, however, Howard complained that the acts had not been ‘strictly obeyed.’ Howard continued to travel widely, touring Scotland, Ireland, France and the Netherlands, Germany, and Switzerland, often-visiting local prisons. He was influential in legislation in 1779 that authorised the building of two penitentiary houses where, by means of solitary confinement, supervised labour and religious instruction, the reform of prisoners might be attempted. The Penitentiary Act was an ambitious piece of legislation, designed to impose a national scheme for the punishment of offenders that could serve as an acceptable substitute for the temporary suspension of transportation occasioned by the American revolutionary war .[4] This act, however, like those of 1774, was never effectively enforced. He spent the last years of his life studying means of preventing plague and limiting the spread of contagious diseases. Travelling in Russia in 1790 and visiting the principal military hospitals that lay en route, he reached Kherson in Ukraine. In attending a case of camp fever that was raging there, he contracted the disease and died.

The power of Howard’s representation of prisons and prison life in The State of the Prisons in England and Wales published in 1777 has led to a one-dimensional view of Hanoverian prisons grounded in their filth, petty corruption and insecurity and as places of contagious moral degeneration.[5] It neglected the attempts by early-eighteenth century legislators and some magistrates to introduce a measure of penal reform. Legislation in 1700 and 1720 allowed magistrates to levy county rates to meet the cost of building new gaols and, before Howard’s intervention there was a sporadic prison rebuilding programme. Howard’s influence consisted less in the novelty of his ideas as in the powerfully made case for reform that contributed to an existing debate on prison conditions. Elizabeth Fry, for example, was critical of his failure to address the issue of rehabilitation. Success was ultimately the result of the work of others especially Dr John Coakley Lettsom and James Neild, both of them Quakers.[6] It also galvanised widespread if embryonic local reform initiatives like those in Gloucestershire.

Howard commented favourably on local prison building in Hertfordshire where local magistrates used their power to raise county rates to build a new prison that was opened in 1779 and on the work of Lancashire magistrates in the 1770s that resulted in the reconstruction of Lancaster gaol.[7] The late-eighteenth century saw a vigorous local movement for reform led by local magistrates that resulted in improvements in both the management and fabric of local gaols funded by ratepayers.[8]

---

[1] Draper, Anthony J., ‘William Eden and leniency in punishment’, History of Political Thought, Vol. 22, (2001), pp. 106-130 and Bolton, G.C., ‘William Eden and the convicts, 1771-1787’, Australian Journal of Politics & History, Vol. 26, (1980), pp. 30-44.

[2] On Beccaria see Bellamy, Richard, (ed.), On Crimes and Punishments and Other Writings, (Cambridge University Press), 1995. Bellamy’s introduction provides a brief biographical study as well as examining the significance of Beccaria’s writings.

[3] Brown, James Baldwin, Memoirs of the public and private life of John Howard, the philanthropist, (T. and G. Underwood), 1818, 2^nd ed., 1823 and Field, John, The life of John Howard: with comments on his character and philanthropic labours, (Longman, Brown, Green, and Longmans), 1850 remain useful sources. See also, Howard, D.L., John Howard: prison reformer, (C. Johnson), 1958, Gibson, John, John Howard and Elizabeth Fry, (Methuen), 1971, Ireland, Richard W., ‘Howard and the paparazzi: painting penal reform in the eighteenth century’, Art, Antiquity and Law, Vol. 4, (1999), pp. 55-62, Porter, Roy, ‘Howard’s beginning: prisons, disease, hygiene’, in Creese, Richard, Bynum, William F., and Bearn, J., (eds.), The health of prisoners: historical essays, (Rodopi), 1995, pp. 5-26 and Morgan, Rod, ‘Divine philanthropy: John Howard reconsidered’, History, Vol. 62, (1977), pp. 388-410.

[4] Throness, Laurie, A Protestant Purgatory: Theological Origins of the Penitentiary Act, 1779, (Ashgate), 2008 and Devereaux, Simon, ‘The making of the Penitentiary Act, 1775-1779’, Historical Journal, Vol. 42, (2), (1999), pp. 405-433.

[5] England, R.W., ‘Who Wrote John Howard’s Text: The State of the Prisons as a Dissenting Enterprise’, British Journal of Criminology, Vol. 33, (1993), pp. 203-215 suggests that Howard played little role in writing his book but that the three (or possibly more) men who gave Howard extensive editorial help was not acknowledged since they were active Dissenters against the Church of England.

[6] See Neild, F.G., ‘James Neild (1744-1814) and prison reform’, Journal of the Society of Medicine, Vol. 74, (1981), pp. 834-840.

[7] DeLacey, Margaret, Prison Reform in Lancashire, 1700-1850: a study in local administration, (Stanford University Press), 1986, pp. 70-152

[8] This was not without opposition, see Brown, Susan E., ‘Policing and Privilege: The Resistance to Penal Reform in Eighteenth-Century London’, in Goldgar, Anne and Frost, Robert I., (eds.), Institutional Culture in Early Modern Society, (Brill), 2004, pp. 103-132.