One spring day in 1864, a young domestic servant named Sarah, who worked for a Quebec baker, came here with Minnie, a three-year-old child, to see the hanging of John Meehan. Six thousand others had come too. Spectators climbed on windowsills and rooftops and perched in the Presbyterian trees until the branches broke.

Before he died, Meehan gave a passionate speech in English and French saying he hadn’t meant to kill Patrick Pearl, only to give him a few good punches. “And don’t anyone think of taking revenge for my death,” he added.

This was dramatic live entertainment – before TikTok or YouTube – and also a literary event. Grosperrin, Quebec’s raucous street poet, had composed Complainte du Condamné for the occasion and was selling copies to the crowds. As Meehan dropped through the trap, the crowd fell to its knees to pray for his soul. But Grosperrin burst into song:

John Meehan, to atone for your crime,

It’s a rope around yer neck and up you go!*

The gales of laughter soon died away. The executioners had tied the knot badly and it took Meehan ten noisy minutes to die. The crowd turned and fled.

Three years later the prison closed. The library of the Literary and Historical Society moved in, and now offers murder mysteries as entertainment instead. Sarah was fired for taking the child, who became my great-grandmother, on such a macabre outing. But in our family we still relish the story. And now you’re guilty too.

* Louis Fréchette, Originaux et détraqués, translated by Louisa Blair, Éditions Beauchemin, [1892] 1942.

Artifact’s photo credit: Patrick Matte