Episode 420: On the night of March 1st, 1895, in the paymaster’s office of the Montreal Cotton Company in Valleyfield, Quebec, a twenty-year-old Irish immigrant named Francis Valentine Cuthbert Shortis shot three men — killing two of them and leaving the third for dead in the darkness of the mill floor. What followed was the longest murder trial in Canadian history, a psychiatric battle that divided the country’s leading medical minds, and a political crisis that reached the cabinet of Prime Minister Mackenzie Bowell and the desk of the Governor General himself. The victims were John Loy, twenty-four years old, and night watchman Maxime Leboeuf, who left behind a widow and five children. The survivor was Hugh Wilson, who carried the consequences for the rest of his life.
Sources:
Valentine Shortis Case | thecanadianencyclopedia.ca
The Queen vs. F.V.C. Shortis (microform)| Internet Archive
The Case of Valentine Shortis — University of Toronto Press / Amazon.ca
Valentine Shortis Case — The Canadian Encyclopedia
The Canadian Trial of the Century: The Story of ‘Cracked Shortis’ — History Ireland
The Case of Valentine Shortis — Yesterday and Today — PubMed
Forensic Psychiatry in Canada — Journal of the American Academy of Psychiatry and the Law
Montreal Gazette Trial Coverage, October 25, 1895 — Newspapers.com
Profile: Author-Professor Martin Friedland — Bill Gladstone Genealogy
Montreal Cotton Company — History of the Mill at Valleyfield — MUSO Virtual Museum
Manitoba Schools Question — Dictionary of Canadian Biography
Montreal Cotton Company Mills — Library and Archives Canada
Sir Donald Macmaster, Crown Prosecutor — Wikipedia
J.N. Greenshields, Lead Defence Counsel — Americana Aristocracy
Henri St. Pierre, Defence Counsel — 76th New York State Volunteers
Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices