Sixteen new true-crime stories drawn from two hundred years of Nova Scotia history
Meet the larger-than-life characters from Nova Scotia’s past who broke the law as well as the mold. Jack Randell, skipper of a Lunenburg-based rumrunning schooner, sparked a diplomatic row in 1929 when he tried to outrun the United States Coast Guard. Henry More Smith was a nineteenth-century thief so brazen that he swiped law books from the office of a Halifax judge, then returned them to collect a reward. Samuel Herbert Dougal was a monster who preyed on women and likely murdered two of his wives while serving with the British Army in Halifax in the 1880s. And Irish-American terrorists hatched a fiendish plot to blow up a Royal Navy warship anchored in Halifax Harbour in 1883. Their target? Prince George of Wales, a midshipman on board who would one day ascend to the British throne as King George V
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“Nova Scotia has a rich history of crime and justice, so I had plenty of stories to choose from … each ONE had to be a great read and say something about what life was like at that time.” - READ MY INTERVIEW WITH THE MIRAMICHI READER
“A Confederate Raider’s Destructive Path to Halifax" – read the excerpt in Unravel Magazine
Madness, Mayhem & Murder, the sequel to 2020’s bestselling Daring, Devious & Deadly, is a collection of sixteen more true tales of crime and justice. The stories are drawn from almost two centuries of Nova Scotia’s history, from the province’s first murder case in 1749 to its last execution in 1937. The cast includes pirates and privateers, terrorists, shadowy Confederate agents, and a motley crew of smugglers, thieves, killers, duel-fighting gentlemen and a few people who were in the wrong place at the wrong time. These are stranger-than-fiction tales of crime and punishment, tragedy and redemption, and guilt and innocence, with a lot to say about the past – and the never-ending quest for justice.
“It was easy to dive into the stories and fun to learn little-known details about Nova Scotia’s crime and justice-filled past … a welcome distraction for those wanting an escape, however briefly, to a different time and place”– Atlantic Books Today
“Pick up a copy … it’s a great lens to look at the history of this place” – Jeff Douglas, CBC Radio’s Mainstreet
Contents
Part I: Stranger Than Fiction
Chapter 1 The Mysterious Mr. Smith
In the early 1800s Henry More Smith charmed, stole and burgled his way across Nova Scotia and New Brunswick before extending his operations into the United States. Thrown in jail, he escaped. Convicted, he cheated the hangman. The incredible story of a one-man crime wave.
Henry More Smith was a brazen nineteenth-century con man, horse thief, burglar, and escape artist. (Image: New Brunswick Museum)
Banner image above: The crew of the Lunenburg-based rumrunner I’m Alone in a New Orleans jail in 1929.
Chapter 2 For the Sake of Honour
On a July morning in 1819, a Halifax merchant and the son of Nova Scotia’s attorney general stood a dozen paces apart, raised their pistols and fired. The shocking duel and the murder prosecution that followed put the province’s justice system on trial.
Chapter 3 Royal Terror
Detective Nicholas Power was investigating a burglary in 1883 when he searched a Halifax hotel room and found suitcases packed with dynamite and mechanisms for making a time bomb. How a chance discovery foiled a plot to sink A British warship in Halifax Harbour and assassinate a teenaged midshipman on board – Prince George of Wales, the future George V.
Chapter 4 One Woman’s Fight to be Heard
Annabella Hubert was convinced someone had stolen her land but government officials refused to give her a hearing. When push came to shove at the doors of the Nova Scotia Legislature in 1902, the Cape Breton woman launched a precedent-setting legal battle that wound up before the Supreme Court of Canada.
Part II: Deadly Deeds
Chapter 5 A Devilish Murder
John Ruff’s death in 1842 on Moose Island in the Bay of Fundy was ruled an accident – until one of his sons accused his older siblings of murder. But Benjamin Ruff had other stories to tell, of seeing the devil lurking on their remote farm. The strange story of a murder trial that hinged on a child’s claims of satanic visitations.
Chapter 6 Faith in the Law
When railway labourer James Kennedy killed a co-worker at a boarding house near Windsor in 1857, sectarian tensions were at a boiling point in Nova Scotia. Kennedy was Catholic, his victim was Protestant, and religious hatred would invade the courtroom in the murder trial that followed.
Chapter 7 One of Their Own
A Syrian refugee was peddling wares in a rural community near Truro in 1897 when he was shot in the back. As the authorities gathered evidence and zeroed in on a suspect, residents had to confront the unthinkable – a local teenager might be a killer.
Chapter 8 The Predator
Samuel Herbert Dougal made headlines in 1903 when he was hanged in England for killing his lover, Camille Holland. A quarter-century earlier, when Dougal was a soldier stationed in Halifax, two of his wives had fallen ill and died within a four-month span. Were their deaths a tragic coincidence, or were they the first victims of a serial killer?
Part III: International Incidents
Chapter 9 King of the Privateers
Privateers were pirates on the right side of the law, armed with the legal authority during the American Revolution and the War of 1812 to seize enemy merchant ships and their cargoes. Meet Liverpool’s Joseph Barss, Jr. and other daring Nova Scotia seamen who fought for patriotism and for plunder.
Chapter 10 The Chesapeake Incident
The Confederate agents who commandeered the Union steamer Chesapeake in 1863 knew they could find refuge on Nova Scotia’s LaHave River. How an act of wartime piracy exposed an uncomfortable truth – during the Civil War, Canada’s East Coast was crawling with Rebel spies and sympathizers.
Chapter 11 The Last Cruise of a Confederate Raider
The Civil War was all but a lost cause for the South by the time the Confederate raider Tallahassee began preying on merchant ships off New England in 1864. When its swashbuckling captain, John Taylor Wood, dropped anchor in Halifax Harbour to escape the Union gunboats on his tail, he brought Britain and his Northern enemies to the brink of war.
Chapter 12 The Sinking of the I’m Alone
Jack Randell, skipper of the Lunenburg-based schooner I’m Alone, was one of the most notorious rumrunners of the Prohibition Era. He outwitted the U.S. Coast Guard to deliver booze to thirsty Americans until 1929, when a high-seas chase in the Gulf of Mexico ended in a hail of bullets – and sparked a diplomatic row.
Part IV: Capital Crimes
Ax-wielding pirate Edward Jordan attacking Capt. John Stairs, as depicted in The Annals of Crime and New Newgate Calendar 1834.