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History Post-confederation (1867-)

Walk Towards the Gallows

The Tragedy of Hilda Blake, Hanged 1899

by (author) Tom Mitchell & Reinhold Kramer

Publisher
University of Toronto Press
Initial publish date
Feb 2004
Category
Post-Confederation (1867-), Native American
  • Paperback / softback

    ISBN
    9780195416862
    Publish Date
    Aug 2001
    List Price
    $26.95
  • Paperback / softback

    ISBN
    9780802095428
    Publish Date
    Apr 2007
    List Price
    $47.95
  • eBook

    ISBN
    9781442692145
    Publish Date
    Feb 2004
    List Price
    $29.95
  • eBook

    ISBN
    9781442685581
    Publish Date
    Feb 2015
    List Price
    $45.00

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Description

On 5 July 1899 Hilda Blake, a 21-year-old maidservant in Brandon, Manitoba, who had come to Canada from England ten years earlier as an orphan immigrant, shot and killed her mistress. Two days after Christmas she was hanged, one of the few women in Canadian history to die for her crime.

Blake unintentionally left a remarkable documentary record, ranging from Poorhouse records, courts dockets of custody and criminal cases in which she was the central figure, popular, journalistic, and professional assessments of her character, and a poem, 'My Downfall', that she penned in Brandon Gaol while awaiting execution. To explain why Hilda bought a gun and why she fired it, Kramer and Mitchell employee both historical and literary techniques. The result is a richly textured story of late Victorian social, cultural, and political life.

This remarkable book - part mystery, part historical detective story - uncovers Hilda Blake's life, from her origins in Norfolk, England, to her tragic death. It also examines the lives of other principals in the story: successful Brandon businessman Robert Lane and his wife Mary, the murdered woman; Lane's business partner, Alexander McIlvride; Police Chief James Kircaldy; A.P. Stewart and his wife, Letitia Singer Stewart, the family for whom the 12-year-old orphaned Hilda first worked as a domestic servant; Rev. C.C. McLaurin, the Baptist minister who knew Hilda and counselled the condemned woman in her final days; social purity activist Dr Amelia Yeomans, who petitioned for clemency; Governor-General Minto, who urged the Laurier government to stay the execution, even Clifford Sifton, the MP from Brandon, federal minister of Immigration, and the most powerful western Liberal in the Laurier cabinet, for whom the case was a potential minefield.

As the authors write, 'We tell a story because only a story can expose the real workings of a culture, and only a story can express our protest against time.'

About the authors

Tom Mitchell is a university archivist at Brandon University.

Tom Mitchell's profile page

Reinhold Kramer is professor of English at Brandon University and the award-winning author, with Tom Mitchell, of Walk Towards the Gallows: The Tragedy of Hilda Blake, Hanged 1899 and Scatology and Civility in the English-Canadian Novel.

Reinhold Kramer's profile page