Practically Perfect

by Dale Brawn

  When he was ready to return home, Francis asked his brother and a friend to walk with him a while, in case Farrell tried to do something. The trio had gone but a short way when they met up with the Conway children. As they walked along the track they soon noticed Farrell running parallel to them, about a kilometre away. In no time at all Farrell reached the roadway to his house, but he ran on towards the Conway farm. As he drew closer, narrowing the gap that separated them, everyone could see a rifle in one of his hands. In a matter of minutes they met at a crossroad. Farrell was now walking, and when he was about a metre and a half away, he told Conway to go back. He repeated the command two more times. Conway agreed to leave. “I will go back, but allow me to say a few words.”[2] Then, with no warning whatsoever, Farrell raised the rifle to his shoulder and shot Conway in the head.

  Conway’s brother was standing fairly near Farrell, and when he heard the gun go off he rushed at the shooter and tried to grab his rifle. Farrell pulled it away and struck his adversary across the arm with the barrel. As he started to swing a second time he shouted, “God damn you, you will never hang me.”[3]

  With that the Conway brother took off running, Farrell in pursuit. “He followed me for about four acres; he stopped then, and I stopped, and he did something with the gun, I thought he was loading the gun; when he had it fixed he ran after me as hard as he could.”[4] By the time the surviving Conway reached the home of a man he knew, Farrell was nowhere to be seen. As soon as Conway calmed down, he and his friend returned to the murder scene in a wagon. They found Francis lying where he fell. They loaded his body into the wagon, and then made their way to the home of the patriarch of the Conway clan.

  While the Farrell-Conway confrontation was being played out, Reverend Father Leclaire, the parish priest, was visiting with the wife of Francis Conway. The two were talking when Michael McLaughlin came in. He was sent to advise Mrs. Conway that her husband had been killed, but when he got to the dead man’s home all he managed to get out was that Frank was badly hurt in a shooting accident. That message delivered, he asked Father Leclaire to follow him outside, where he told the priest the truth. Leclaire then returned to Mrs. Conway.

  I told the wife of the deceased that I would go over to him and give her news of him. She answered that she felt strong enough to go over herself and that with medical assistance from Quebec she would try and bring him to. We then went to the house of the deceased’s father. On entering the house Mrs. Conway saw the body of her husband and threw herself on the body almost frantic. I had the body removed from the floor where it was lying, and had his face washed, which was full of blood. It [Conway’s body] was then put on a bed. I was present when inquest took place the day after the murder.[5]

  About nine hours later Constable Paquet was on duty at Quebec City’s Central Station. Around 3:00 a.m. on the morning of August 26, Farrell knocked on the station door, and identified himself. When the officer asked if he was from Sainte Catherine, Farrell admitted he was, and wondered whether the officer heard about a shooting. “I answered, yes, that we had had some information about an hour before; I said it was a bad affair, to which he answered, yes; he said it was about a fence; he said he had come to give himself up; I put him in a cell.”[6]

  Well before Farrell’s trial got underway, someone, or some group, embarked on a campaign to build community resentment against him through a series of anonymous letters sent to area newspapers. Farrell’s lawyer later used the program of letter-writing to support an application to have the accused killer’s death sentence commuted to life imprisonment. Some “occult influence was at work” he said in the application, “in obtaining newspaper articles exciting prejudice against my client.”[7] And he argued the campaign extended to local politicians. According to the lawyer:

  a month after the death of Conway, the Municipal Council of the Parish of Sainte Catherine passed resolutions of condolence with Conway’s family; the publication of those resolutions was delayed purposely, I believe, and produced by the Chronicle [newspaper] a week only before the trial, with the view, I verily believe, of prejudicing the public mind against Farrell. [A] deranged inebriate whose name I desire to suppress by reason of his respectable connections has been regularly subsidized to write several small squibs in the local papers against any indulgence whatever to Farrell; I cannot but believe that the money of the Conways has had the desired effect. The newspaper articles and correspondence so published had so thoroughly embittered the public mind here against Farrell, that I deemed it my duty to address to the Court an application for a change of venue to the District of Arthabaska, the nearest District to Quebec; But the Court rejected my application on the grounds that the prejudice against my client was a prejudice which would follow him everywhere, the natural prejudice arising from the perpetuation of a cold­blooded murder.[8]

  It turned out there was substance to these claims. A Quebec City justice of the peace swore that he was present when a man admitted that he had written a letter that appeared in the Quebec Morning Chronicle, signed “A friend of the deceased.” The letter was little more than a tirade of abuse directed against Farrell, and for writing it the author received $2.50. But this campaign of intimidation did not end with letter-writing. Farrell’s lawyer noted that after his application for a change of venue was refused, “I noticed the two brothers of the late Francis Conway, and an uncle and other relations of the late David Meagher mixing with the Jurors, who afterwards tried the accused; and I suspected that the Jurors were being tampered with to the prejudice of my client.”[9]

  The murder trial of Michael Farrell got underway in the Quebec City on November 2, 1878. Farrell’s lawyer argued that the murder of Conway resulted from the victim’s attempt to deliberately provoke Farrell. The murder would never have occurred, he suggested, had not the victim provoked his killer by twice confronting him on the Gosford right-of-way. And, he argued, the confrontation was anything but accidental. Conway, his brother, and their friend all carried weapons when they confronted the hot-tempered Farrell. In the case of the murdered man, the weapon was a loaded revolver; in the case of the other men, it was a supply of stones, which they intended throwing at Farrell to goad him into some kind of retaliatory response. Farrell’s counsel argued that the Conway group easily could have avoided running into Farrell by not walking down the pathway that cut through his land, or at the very least, stopping when they saw Farrell pursuing them. Conway clearly saw Farrell when they were almost a kilometre away from the spot where the deadly meeting took place, and even pointed Farrell out to his companions. As Farrell drew nearer, but well before the confrontation was unavoidable, everyone knew who the man running towards them was, and saw that he held a gun in his hand.

  Farrell’s lawyer later swore that he had available:

  a witness who had a conversation with the deceased, before he returned up the Gosford Railway track, and who had advised the deceased not to go back by the Gosford Railway track, but that the deceased rejected that warning and declared his determination to return, with his friends by the track; It is a well-known fact that the Meaghers and the Conways form a very wealthy, extensive, and turbulent connection, whose anger is not safe to incur.[10]

  The problem for Farrell’s lawyer was that the judge presiding over the murder trial was early on convinced of the guilt of the accused, and he was not inclined to admit into evidence any suggestion to the contrary.

  Mr. Justice Samuel Cornwallis Monk made his position clear in the first few sentences of his charge to the jury. “The prisoner,” he said, “stands charged with murder and there is no doubt of it being murder as it is a very clear case. All the witnesses concurred with each other in the evidence, the prisoner himself admitted having shot the deceased and merely that the deceased had brought it on himself.”[11] Monk said that since there was no doubt Farrell was guilty of killing Conway, all that was left was for the jury to determine was whether the murder was premeditated. What he made clear was that it was his opinion tha
t any suggestion that Farrell had not planned what he was going to do when he met Conway was pure poppycock. The jury agreed, and after deliberating for about an hour, returned with a verdict of guilty.

  When the decision was announced the court clerk asked each juror in turn if he was in agreement with the verdict, and in every case the response was the same — an affirmative nod of a head. While the jury was being polled there was for a few moments of near absolute silence in the courtroom. Then, with startling suddenness, a loud sobbing broke out, growing as if someone was in great distress. Indeed, that proved to be the case. Mary Farrell somehow slipped unnoticed into the room, and sat in the back, hidden behind the men seated in front of her. Throughout the four day trial she managed to keep her emotions in check, though she feared the worse, and when the clerk began polling the jurors she could no longer contain her feelings. Her last faint hope that her life would return to normal was gone. In a moment, so too was she. By the time the polling was finished, Mrs. Farrell was nowhere to be seen.

  Before formally pronouncing sentence, Monk asked the convicted murderer if there was any reason why the law should not take its course. Farrell did not have much to say, but he took what time he was allowed to lay the blame for the murder squarely on the victim.

  That man had liberty as well as any other to Pass by that “road, as long as he fastened up the gag [gate in the fence] after him.” I met him on that day and told him to put it up, but he would not do it. If he had put up the fence after him he would “have been alive today.” He told me that day, when I spoke to him about it, that “he would throw it into the ditch and me along with it.” I can prove that he challenged me first to fight, and was willing to accept his challenge if he got two strange men with us, but he always had a crowd with him to back him.[12]

  When Farrell concluded his remarks Justice Monk picked up the black, three-cornered hat worn by judges imposing a sentence of death, and spoke directly to the condemned man:

  The case against you, prisoner, is sustained by evidence which leaves no alternative for a Court, but to perform the painful duty which the law requires of it. I cannot imagine how a man of your position and intelligence could possibly have conceived and carried out so terrible a crime. [If] there existed any provocation not disclosed by the evidence you cannot now advance it here, before this tribunal, but if the SEARCHER of all HEARTS, who, alone, can penetrate all secrets, can see anything in your crime unknown to the Court and the Jury, if there are any extenuating circumstances in the eyes of God in this “dark crime” you will profit from such, not here but hereafter. I would merely remind you that this sanguinary drama has been crowded by your own admission and that in the verdict of the Jury the court entirely concurs. You precipitated one, (we cannot call him your friend, but) your neighbor, to eternity, without a moment’s notice. There is but one duty for this court to perform and that is to pronounce the sentence of the Law. It is right to say that you cannot expect the slightest mercy. On earth you can look on no mitigation of your sentence. You must prepare for your doom, for there is no hope for you on this side of the grave. You should avail yourself of all the means of repentance at your disposal, for there is no doubt that true contrition may always be awarded with salvation. The process may at first be difficult but spiritual assistance will be given you. Nothing now remains but for the Court to pronounce sentence upon you, which is, “That you” Michael Farrell, be taken from hence to the “common goal,” and there, within its precincts on Friday, the 10th of January next, you be hanged according to the Provisions of the law, by the neck, until you are dead, and may the God Almighty have mercy upon your soul![13]

  The death sentence imposed on her husband seemed to galvanize Mary Farrell, and she quickly launched a multi-pronged campaign for clemency. She personally appeared before federal authorities in Ottawa, and when that failed to produce a commutation, she appealed to her friends and neighbours. One of the first to come onside was her municipal councillor, and through his efforts, the entire council announced its support for clemency. A petition was started, but the federal cabinet refused to commute the sentence, so she appealed to the wife of Canada’s Governor General, who, according to tradition, had the final say in the matter of clemency.

  December 27, 1878

  May it please your Royal Highness.

  Mary Farrell, humbly begs leave to approach Your Royal Highness, to lay at your feet, her Petition for mercy to her husband Michael Farrell, now under sentence of death in the Jail of Quebec. In her anguish she throws herself at the feet of Your Royal Highness, and tearfully implores Your Gracious Intercession, with the Most Noble The Marquis of Lorne, for his favorable consideration of the Petition, for His Executive Clemency, now before Him.

  She prays Your Royal Highness, to forgive the boldness, begotten of her deep distress, which prompts her to approach Your Gracious Person, under the present circumstances, and she hopefully addresses her present supplication, and that of her helpless little children to Your Royal Highness; as to one upon whose kindly ear, the cry of the poor and the distressed, has never yet fallen in vain.

  Mary Farrell[14]

  While the petition of Mary Farrell was being considered, the condemned man’s lawyer launched his own application for clemency. In an affidavit filed in support of it, he advanced two arguments not pursued at trial. The first was that when the murder occurred, Farrell was defending himself against a carefully constructed plot to kill him during a fight on the right-of-way. The lawyer said it was his belief “that, if the accused be reprieved for two months, I shall be able to establish that the deceased had a loaded pistol on his person, and that the two Conways and Landers had made up their minds, at the risk of losing of life by one of them, to take the life of Farrell.”[15]

  The lawyer’s second argument was that when the murder occurred, Farrell was insane. In support of this suggestion, he filed an affidavit signed by a friend of Farrell’s brother John, who died in a Quebec mental institution, and another sworn by neighbours of Farrell’s mother. The friend of John Farrell swore that he knew John to be insane, and quick to resort to violence. It was his belief that Michael, “his brother now under sentence, when excited, or in passion, [was] subject to insanity.”[16] In a similar vein, the neighbours swore that they were familiar with both Michael and John Farrell, and there was no doubt whatsoever that the late John Farrell had been insane for years before he was institutionalized. “We were sent for on many occasions to aid in preventing him from committing acts of violence on members of the family, on one occasion we found him quite naked chasing his mother round the stove, she having a piece of rope in her hand, endeavoring to beat him off. He had to be tied on one occasion to prevent him of committing an act of violence on the family.”[17] Insanity, they suggested, ran in the Farrell family.

  During the first eight of the nine weeks he spent waiting to be executed, the condemned man was convinced that his sentence would be commuted. Only in the last three days before his date with the hangman did Farrell show signs of weakness. The day before he was to hang a telegram from the federal minister of justice ended his hope for a reprieve:

  Department of Justice Ottawa, January 9th 1879 Time 4:40, Quebec: Governor General received your telegram asking for commutation of sentence of Farrell which he handed to me and commanded me to say that “His Excellency has not thought fit to change decision of Judge, Jury and Privy Council as reported to His Excellency by me.”

  John A. Macdonald, Minister of Justice.[18]

  The morning of his last day Farrell rose early, and admitted to inmates in cells nearby that he was nervous of what was to come. Shortly after daylight he was transferred to the cell reserved for those about to be executed. He realized all too well the significance of his new accommodations. To one of his guards he admitted, “I’m afraid this removal is a sure sign of my end.”

  When news of the telegram from Ottawa reached her, Mary Farrell rushed to her husband’s cell. An observer described the meeting as a
pitiful sight.

  Farrell had just sat at a table in his ward to partake of a cup of tea, when his wife rushed frantically to his side, and throwing her arms around his neck, clung to him. Her children wept, and in this state, they were assisted away after a great deal of heart-rendering scenes. Farrell bore up to the parting with great courage, but on seeing his wife and children take leave of him never again to meet on this earth, he broke down and sobbed bitterly.[19]

  On Thursday, January 10, 1879, Farrell awoke after only a few hours of sleep. His two spiritual advisers were waiting, and the three men soon knelt in prayer. Farrell was nervous, although perhaps a little less anxious than he had been in the preceding two or three days. The black flag, a visible symbol of what was to come, was raised over the prison at 7:00 a.m., and the sheriff ordered spectators wandering the corridor in front of Farrell’s cell out of the jail. When the time came for the condemned man to begin his last walk, the only non-officials allowed in the prison were his priests. At 8:00 a.m. the man who was to hang Farrell entered the prisoner’s cell. At almost exactly the same time a Solemn Requiem Mass began in each of Quebec City’s Roman Catholic churches. Although most cathedrals were thronged with celebrants, the silence was deafening. The least affected person in the city appeared to be the executioner. He was a short, thin man, and wore a long coat and a false beard and moustache. A local newspaper later told its readers that all that could be said of him was “that he showed signs of being a hardened wretch.” Whether the executioner was hardened was pure speculation; that he was incompetent was a fact.