The Cunard Line

The Aquitania leaves Liverpool on her maiden voyage circa 1914 courtesy http://www.liverpoolecho.co.uk/news/liverpool-news/reflecting-one-greatest-ocean-liners-7233961.

Samuel Cunard, raised in Halifax, was the son of a German Quaker and an Irish Roman Catholic who fled the United States during the American Revolution, part of a large group of United Empire Loyalists.  During the War of 1812, Cunard fought on the British side with the second battalion of the Halifax Regiment.  The young man was a highly successful entrepreneur who was one of 12 people to greatly influence the affairs of Halifax.

In 1830, Cunard founded the Halifax Steamboat Company which ran a steamship between Halifax and Quebec.  Seven years later, Cunard travelled to the United Kingdom where he made a successful bid to run a trans-Atlantic mail service.  The result was Cunard Steamships Limited.  In 1840, the company's first steamship, the Britannia, sailed from Liverpool to Halifax and then on to Boston.  Cunard's ships soon earned a reputation for speed and safety.  However, that reputation came with a hefty cost; Cunard fled creditors in Halifax by 1843, unable to pay his bills.  By the following year, however, the entrepreneur started to turn a profit.

The Cunard Line has owned several famous ships over the decades.  The Carpathia (1901) came to the rescue of the Titanic when it sank in 1912.  The Lusitania (1906) was torpedoed by German U-boats and sunk in 1915.  The Aquitania (1914) served in both World War I and World War II.  The Queen Mary (1936) transported royalty, movie stars and war brides across the Atlantic.

Britannia sails from Liverpool to Halifax circa 1840 courtesy http://postalhistorycorner.blogspot.ca/2014/02/canadian-letter-rates-to-united-kingdom.html.

Laura Secord: More Than Just a Chocolate

"For the growing good of the world is partly dependent on unhistoric acts; and that things are not so ill with you or me as they might have been is half owing to the number who lived faithfully a hidden life and rest in unvisited tombs." (George Eliot Middlemarch, 1871)

Most of us know about the chocolates with the cameo logo.  But how many know the story of the housewife turned heroine who, in 1813, made a dangerous 19 kilometre trek to warn the British that the Americans were coming, thereby helping the Redcoats regain control of the Niagara Peninsula?  

Laura Secord was an American whose father fought for the Thirteen Colonies in the American Revolution.  She married the son of a United Empire Loyalist and settled in Queenston, Ontario.  Her husband, called to serve in the War of 1812, was wounded at the Battle of Queenston Heights, along with General Isaac Brock.  Most housewives, when their husbands did not return from battle, would have waited to hear news.  But Laura acted:  "[She] picked her way through the red and blue uniformed figures on the ground until at last she found her husband."  Discovering that he had been wounded in the chest by a musket ball, she torn a strip of cloth from her petticoat and applied pressure to his wound.  For months, she nursed him back to health.

In the meantime, Laura was forced to billet American soldiers in her home, generals who plotted their next move.  Laura overheard their strategy and formed a plan of her own.  Dressed in a brown house dress and cotton sunbonnet, the 38 year old housewife set out on foot, saying she was going to visit her brother and his wife in nearby St. David.  However, it would be the start of a 19-kilometre trek over the Black Swamp, across Ten Mile Creek and up the Niagara Escarpment, to warn the British that the Americans were coming.  After an eighteen hour journey, Laura came by chance upon a group of Native Indians from Brantford, who directed her towards Lieutenant Fitzgibbons' camp.

With their preparedness, the British were able to mount a good counterattack at Beaver Dams, even though they were outnumbered 542 to 150.  The Iroquois regiment, which fought alongside the British, marched back and forth, back and forth, all the while shouting war cries, giving the illusion of more men.  Within  three hours, the Americans withdrew.  The British regained a foothold in the Niagara Peninsula, helping them to secure a victory in the War of 1812.

Years later, the Brock monument was erected at Queenston Heights honouring the British general who fought in the war.  Laura Secord, struggling to make ends meet as a widow, offered to be a tour guide at the new monument.  However, in a political move, she failed to get the job.  She would go down in history as an unsung hero.  For more information, read http://alinefromlinda.blogspot.ca/2015/09/laura-secord-housewife-turned-heroine.html.

Note:  My Dad told me an interesting fact.  Laura Secord Chocolates, which originated in 1912 on the centennial of the War of 1812, are sold in the United States, but under a different name.  

Laura Secord Canadian stamp courtesy http://www.biographi.ca/en/bio/ingersoll_laura_9E.html.

How Could You, Mrs. Dick?

http://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/hamilton/news/murderer-evelyn-dick-inspires-hamilton-merchandise-line-1.2739951

The lineup outside the Hamilton Courthouse, five abreast, snaked its way around the United Empire Loyalist statue and spilled onto the sidewalk.  Everyone was trying to get a view of the person on trial.  She had bright red lipstick, perfectly coiffed hair, a fur coat and a pillbox hat.  She looked like she could have floated off the cover of Vogue magazine.  Her name?  Evelyn Dick.  Her crime? Murder.

Hamilton in the 1940's was a small city known for its steel factories and hardworking citizens.  In 1946, scandal rocked the city when a group of five schoolchildren found a bullet-ridden torso on the Escarpment by Albion Falls.  Hamilton Street Railway car driver John Dick had gone missing.  It was believed to be his torso.

Schoolchildren who discovered the torso on the escarpment courtesy http://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/hamilton/talk/paul-wilson-saved-from-the-gallows-evelyn-dick-lives-on-1.1370508.

Evelyn Dick, who had been known to hold lavish parties at the Royal Connaught Hotel, and who had been known to sleep around, was called in for questioning.  Police had discovered that she borrowed a Packard from a fellow Hamiltonian which was later returned, the interior covered in blood.  What was the newlywed's immediate response to her husband's death?  "Don't look at me.  I don't know who did it."

Evelyn's father, Donald MacLean, also worked for the Hamilton Street Railway.  When she was younger, Evelyn had been known to make frequent shopping trips, with handfuls of nickels, the fee for a ride on the HSR.  People were suspicious that her father was dipping into the coffers of the HSR.

Hamilton Street Railway circa 1947 courtesy transit.toronto.on.ca. 

Mrs. Dick hired lawyer J. J. Sullivan to defend her during the 1946 trial.  Hamiltonians lined up outside the courthouse to get a glimpse of the villainess.  At one point during the trail, the prosecutor asked Evelyn how many men she had slept with.  "Was it 400?  300?"  "150 was her response.  And his son was one of them," she added, pointing to the judge.  After a short trail, Evelyn Dick was convicted of murder and sentenced to hang.

However, Mrs. Dick hired then unknown lawyer J. J. Robinette to launch an appeal.  Once again, Hamiltonians lined up outside the courtroom hoping to get a seat inside.  It was the talk of the town. J. J. Robinette was able to get an acquittal as a result of a technicality.  Her father, Mr. Maclean, did serve five years for his role as an accomplice, however.  It was suspected that he sawed the limbs from the body in his basement.

J. J. Robinette courtesy www.duhaime.org.  

Just when Evelyn thought she would walk free, however, police made a gruesome discovery in her Carrick Avenue home:  a baby encased in cement inside a suitcase.  Once again, Mrs. Dick was on trial.  This time, the conviction stuck.  The villainess went to jail for the murder of her child.  While she was supposed to serve a significant sentence, she was released after only 11 years in the Kingston Prison for Women.  Her whereabouts since her release remain a mystery.

Evelyn Dick courtesy murderpedia.org.

Note:  My great aunt Phyllis was one of the woman in line at the Hamilton Courthouse in 1946.  She stood out in the crowd since she was wearing a suit just like Evelyn Dick's.

For more information:

1.  Read Torso (Brian Vallee).
2.  Watch "Torso:  The Evelyn Dick Story" (TV movie).
3.  Watch a production of the play "How Could you Mrs. Dick?"
4.  Listen to the Forgotten Rebels song "Evelyn Dick" at https://www.youtube.com/watch?     v=OAkxFSM_rNs.