William Thomas’s plans for the splendid new jail that would incorporate progressive penal reform principles and architectural innovations were presented to the city council’s Committee on Police and Prisons in July 1857, and work on fencing, grading, and levelling began early the following year.
However, the months dragged on, and it became increasingly clear that the project was in serious trouble.
In December 1858, a select committee appointed to investigate matters relating to the jail and industrial farm, and, more specifically, ongoing problems with the fencing and grading work, presented a report to the city council. The select committee was blunt: as reported in the Globe, aldermen overseeing the project had been derelict in their duties. “There can be no doubt that serious irregularities have taken place.… It has been customary to issue the most important instructions, relative to the gaol works, without first submitting them to a regular meeting of the [standing] Committee [on Police and Prisons].” Costly modifications, like changing the direction of the jail fence, were undertaken without any records being kept, and no tenders were received for the “work of grading and leveling the ground from the fence on the southern boundary of the Farm, which has proved to be of considerable magnitude.”
Others, too, were censured. Workmen were accused of incompetence and worse. For example, a subcontractor, Peter Croly, was caught out in the “malconstruction” of the brick drain and was forced to admit “that he had committed the fraud solely for his own benefit.”
The role of Thomas Young, superintendent of the works and in theory William Thomas’s right-hand man, was also closely examined. British-born Young was an artist, teacher, and politician as well as an architect. He had had some experience in designing jails in the Province of Canada in the 1840s, notably the Huron County Gaol in Goderich and the Simcoe District Gaol in Barrie. Young proved difficult to work with, however, since he was both quarrelsome and litigious, defects compounded by what a newspaper described in his obituary as the “seductive but destroying influence of liquor.” William Thomas was also known for his tempestuous interpersonal relationships. Thomas was furious when he learned of Young’s appointment. He believed that he should have been consulted but wasn’t. The two clashed from the beginning, especially since Thomas believed that Young’s job performance was exceptionally poor. The superintendent was accused by one alderman of being absent from the site on occasion, and another remarked unflatteringly that he was “a person unsteady in his habits.” So Thomas found himself in the invidious position of having to supervise the troublesome supervisor. The select committee tactfully noted “that without doubting Mr. Young’s ability as an architect, Mr. Thomas does not hesitate to declare that if the appointment was left to him, he ‘would employ a more practical mechanic.’” However, other than suffering some withering comments about his salary and transaction-recording skills, Young was generally exonerated from blame.
The highest-profile individuals criticized by the committee were the chief architect and his two sons, William Tutin and Cyrus Pole, who together made up the firm of William Thomas & Sons. “With reference to the architects of the building, and the manner in which they have conducted the business entrusted to them, it is the painful duty of this Committee to express its strong disapproval.” Take the fence, for example. The design was flawed, the plans badly worded, the dimensions of the posts insufficient, and the quality of the lumber not specified at all. And “as a natural consequence the contractors … availed themselves of this omission to work in material of a very inferior character.”
In their biography of William Thomas, Glenn McArthur and Annie Szamosi marvel at the “surprising naiveté” displayed by Thomas in acceding to requests of the board and foregoing normal tendering processes. These are challenges that fledgling architects learn about in ARCH 101, and failure to adequately address them could indeed be seen as shocking in a professional man of Thomas’s stature and experience. In his defence, however, he was in very poor health by that time, and it may well be that he was simply no longer able to cope with the stresses of the job.
Immediately following the release of the select committee’s report, the city council had a short, sharp debate on what to do next: dismiss both of the squabbling architects? just one of them? Fortunately for Thomas, the final decision was to keep him on and let Young go.
This was hardly the end of the problems associated with the construction of the jail. In May 1859, it was the turn of Skelsey and Sinclair, the brick- and stone-work contractors, to cause mayhem. Thomas complained in a communication to the city council that “the contractors had as yet done nothing towards the work, except delivering rubble stone, while the time allowed for the completion of the basement story [sic] had already expired.” Skelsey and Sinclair asked to withdraw from the project, which led to howls of indignation from the council. The jail was excessively expensive to build, huffed several of the aldermen, and “its unproductive character, magnitude, and distance from the courts” would be “a perpetual drain” on the resources of the city. On the contrary, countered the Committee on Police and Prisons — if the project were abandoned, the property would end up being sold at a loss. And just think what that would mean to the city’s bottom line.
New contractors were finally found for the brick and stone work, and the chief architect’s son, William Tutin Thomas, eventually replaced Young as superintendent of the works.
Finally, to everyone’s relief, a new chapter seemed to be beginning.
Amid great pomp and Masonic ceremony, the cornerstone of the new Toronto Jail was laid on October 25, 1859. Everybody who was anybody in the corridors of power joined in the day’s festivities, which started with a parade from City Hall to the northeast corner of the jail, where the ceremony was to take place. The Globe was on the scene, recording for its readers effusive descriptions of the august event. First, the Masons: “many … in full dress; bearing the banners of their lodges, covered over with symbols of awful meaning. Some of them carried huge candles, others swords, squares, plumbs, and levels, while upon the breasts of all shone brightly the jewels which they were allowed to wear.” Then, the firemen: “strong, useful, practical looking men, around whom no mystery gathers. They wore their handsome uniforms well … and added much to the interest of the procession.” Then, officers of the Volunteer Militia, and, finally, His Worship the Mayor, Adam Wilson, followed by the Council of the City of Toronto. Everyone fell into step behind the Toronto Union Band and marched from the assembly point to the construction site. On arrival, band after band played the Masonic Anthem with great enthusiasm.
The Free and Accepted Masons had originated in medieval times among the stoneworkers of Britain. Over the years, the Masons developed into an international fraternal organization with complex secret rituals. They came to Canada through this country’s position within the British Empire and have traditionally wielded immense influence in Ontario and elsewhere. As an indication of the extent of this power, eleven of the thirty-six Fathers of Confederation, the political leaders who played a major role in stitching together the British North American colonies to form the Dominion of Canada in 1867, were Freemasons. Small wonder, then, that the honour of laying the cornerstone of the new jail was bestowed upon Lieutenant Colonel William Mercer Wilson, the organization’s Grand Master. This grandee solemnly addressed the gathering and was presented with a “very handsome” trowel, which was “of silver, with a maple wood handle, and decorated with Masonic emblems.”
St. Lawrence Hall’s splendid great hall was a fitting setting for the sumptuous lunch that followed the ceremonial laying of the Don Jail’s cornerstone in October 1859.
Although some work had been done back in the spring of 1858 on the fencing and grading of the site, there was still just a gaping hole in the ground where the building would one day rise.
No matter. The foundation stone had been ceremonially laid, and now it was time for lunch. And what a lunch it was. The splendid affair fittingly took place at the St. Lawrence Hall, arguably the most outstanding achievement in Toronto of William Thomas, the architect of the yet-to-be-built jail. Guests were no doubt overwhelmed by the magnificence of the great hall on the third floor, which was described in the 1858 Handbook of Toronto as “100 feet long, 38 feet 6 inches wide, and 36 feet high, with a gallery at the entrance end. The ceiling of the Hall is ornamented by flat hemispherical, enriched panelled, domed compartments, and lyres surrounding them.” The space was lit by a “large and magnificent chandelier” that had a “brilliant and most imposing effect” when illuminated.
Three tables stretched the full length of the hall, but the list of in -vitees was so long (more than four hundred in all) that many of the dignitaries had to be seated in overflow rooms along the sides. The catering was superb, and champagne flowed freely. The company ate, sang, and caroused until the affair broke up shortly before eight in the evening.
In sharp contrast to that raucous and boozy celebration, a far more restrained ceremony had been held a month earlier just a little to the north of the jail, or rather, as one news report acerbically put it, “to the north of the hole that [had] been dug for the gaol.” The purpose of this gathering, too, was to lay the cornerstone of a new building. It was attended by the mayor of Toronto, Adam Wilson, a handful of aldermen and other officials, and the architect, John Aspenwall Tully. For posterity, a number of items, including several current newspapers and a few coins, were placed in a glass case. One of these objects was a roll of parchment containing an inscription, which the mayor read out to the group before the case was carefully positioned inside a hollow in the cornerstone and cemented into the wall: “This corner stone of the House of Refuge, at the Industrial Farm, Toronto, was laid by Adam Wilson, Mayor of the city, in the presence of the members of the Corporation, this 14th day of September, Anno Domini, 1859, in the 23rd year of Her Gracious Majesty, Queen Victoria.”
The House of Refuge, as you will remember, was being built on the industrial farm site to provide shelter for “vagrants, the dissolute, and for idiots.” Unlike the new jail, it was up and running within a year. Its cost was a modest $30,000.
By December 1859, the extravagant Don Jail stone-setting gala was over but not really forgotten, and Toronto was nursing a sour hangover. This was not remedied when the bills started rolling in. Some examples: $261.00 for the catering; $140.75 for the champagne; $50.00 for the silver trowel.
Beneath the headline “Wanted, Ninety-Six Thousand Dollars,” was this blistering re-evaluation from the Globe:
Toronto was flattered by visitors from other cities, who deigned to honour us with their company at “lunch.” She was congratulated upon the happy prospect before her; for was she not to possess a gaol which should do her honour, which should eclipse all other gaols, which should become the building of the city? But neither they nor the institutors of the “lunch” thought of the people outside, who had no champagne, who heard the noise but could not join in the revelry — the stern blue-coated gentlemen at the doors refusing entrance to the canaille unfavoured with tickets! The dinner was finished, but not so with the gaol.
There was a crater in the ground waiting to be filled, but none of the eloquent after-dinner speeches or the Masonic ceremonies would succeed in filling it without the consent of the “champagneless thousands.”
The follow-up was swift. As with all city expenditures, the request for additional funding had to be approved by the rate payers of Toronto. In a terse report dated December 6, 1859, the city clerk informed the city council that “the by-law for raising $96,000 had been defeated, by 587 nays to 199 yeas.” The champagneless thousands, or at least their representatives, had spoken.
The lavish cornerstone celebration (or great “gaol guzzle,” as the press later called it), ushered in 1860 with new controversies and onerous financial demands. By the time the saga ended in 1864, costs had ballooned. Did the citizens of Toronto eventually come to believe that they had made a grave mistake? Maybe, after all, they should have just ponied up the original and much more reasonable sum of $96,000.