Wednesday Talk: November 12, 10am-12pm – hybrid. Please note: This event will be held upstairs at the Faculty Club and not the ground floor.

Ian Radforth, History, U of T

Title: “Deadly Swindle: An 1890 Murder in Backwoods Ontario That Gripped the World”

Introducer: Linda Hutcheon

Abstract: This lecture will offer a journey into life and law in late nineteenth-century Canada, beginning with the murder of Frederick Cornwallis Benwell, whose body was discovered in the woods a dozen miles west of Woodstock, Ontario, in February 1890. From there it will move back to the history of how Benwell, John Reginald Birchall, and Douglas Raymond Pelly, well-connected young Englishmen from wealthy families, emigrated to Canada in search of fortune. Benwell and Pelly were lured overseas by Birchall, who dangled the prospect of investing in a horse farm. The horse farm did not exist, Birchall was a swindler, and the resulting disputes ended with him killing Benwell. Birchall was convicted and executed, with Pelly the chief witness for the prosecution. The theme of the operation of the criminal justice system in this period is paralleled by a theme of how one localised story was taken up by the press and made into a provincial, then national, then international story. In part the widespread interest in the case was the result of Birchall’s fascinating personality – attractive, charming, charismatic and self-confident. He had many admirers despite the fact that he was also a cold-blooded murderer. The lecture will offer an illustration of ‘legal archeology,’ using a close study of a particular case to show not just the operation of the criminal justice system but also how the intricacies of many other aspects of law, society and politics affected how the law operated.

Bio: Ian Radforth is professor emeritus in the Department of History, University of Toronto. Originally trained as a Canadian labour historian, Radforth’s early work was firmly in the field of ‘the new social history’ with its agenda of doing history from the bottom up and deploying the analytical categories of class, race/ethnicity, and gender. His research focused on the everyday lives and work experiences of the men who lived in bush camps and who worked in northern Ontario ’s forest industry.  It dealt with issues relating to transiency, male bonding, technological change, ethnic radicalism, and class conflict. His Bushworkers and Bosses: Logging in Northern Ontario (1987) covers 20th-century developments, and ‘The Shantymen’, in the collection Labouring Lives (1995) deals with the 19th century. Radforth taught labour and immigration history and co-edited Canadian Working-Class History (2006). A second interest (evident in his co-edited collection Colonial Leviathan [1992]) has been state formation: evolving forms of governmentality and citizenship, particularly in Victorian Canada. More recently Radforth has taken up ‘the new cultural history’ with its emphasis on representation, ritual, and performance. Royal Spectacle (2004) examines the ceremonies and popular demonstrations got up for the first royal visit to Canada and the United States in 1860. Popular royalism – an aspect of the Victorian ‘British World’ – is examined in its various guises: as an Aboriginal strategy, as an outlet for Orange/Green conflict, as a gendered script, etc. He is  also the author of three books published since his retirement: Jeannie’s Demise: Abortion on Trial in Victorian Toronto, Expressive Acts: Celebrations and Demonstrations in the Streets of Victorian Toronto, and Deadly Swindle: An 1890 Murder in Backwoods Ontario That Gripped the World. He is currently writing a book on murders for life insurance in 1890s Ontario.

The link to register is https://forms.office.com/r/LVdV75HtrE

The deadline to register is the Monday before the event at noon.  The Zoom link will be sent to registrants only.