JB's Warehouse & Curio Emporium

Source: the Mail and Empire , March 11, 1922. Click on image for larger version. An odd one-shot cartoon found on the crime and southwestern Ontario news page of the Mail and Empire . It appeared above the daily rundown of the previous day's proceedings at Osgoode Hall, none of which involved hold-ups. The only story with a vague connection to this illustration concerned two mail robberies in Essex County. In the first case, five men pleaded guilty to charges of "conspiring to rob Herbert Jacobs of Government mail at Tecumseh on February 15th." Severn Laforet, a bank teller, confessed to plotting the dastardly deed in order to cover a $2,000 shortfall in his accounts. One of those involved in the heist was also charged with two other men in an attempted hold-up of a mail car in Amherstburg. The oddest story from the Mail and Empire 's crime blotter came from the Chatham area, under the headline " INJURED BY VICIOUS SOW ." Roy Beamish, a farm hand e...

One of the interesting things about the research I do for my historical pieces on other sites is the odd items that pop up as I scroll through rolls of microfilm. While looking for material for a piece on events in Toronto on New Year's Day 1909, I stumbled upon a lurid tale of murder in that day's edition of the Mail and Empire ...which took place in my hometown. "His life-blood gushing forth in a great stream." I'm finding that this colourful, illustrative, gruesome language was commonly employed by the Conservative-leaning Mail and Empire , which merged with the Globe in 1936 to form the Globe and Mail . By contrast, coverage in the Toronto World that day was muted and to the point: I read these stories to Mom, who couldn't place the names or recall hearing any legends about this incident pass down through the years. I keep forgetting to check the Windsor papers on file at the Toronto Reference Library to see what they had to say about the murd...