Thomas Langton “Tommy” Church, the feisty mayor of Toronto from 1915 to 1921, had very strong opinions about the Don Jail. “It’s not a jail at all — it’s simply a stop-over place,” he snapped at the time of Vera de Lavelle’s escape. He laid the blame for the Don’s abysmal administrative record squarely on the incompetent provincial government, because even though the city was responsible for paying guards and other officials, it was the province that actually selected them. So when it came to choosing a new governor for the jail, Church notified Provincial Secretary W.D. McPherson that he would simply refuse to certify the paycheques of any new appointees unless they were returned soldiers. He considered this a safe bet: veterans were regarded as exceptional candidates because of the comprehensive training and experience they received in the military.
George Hedley Basher. Even the name suggests a man who would not shirk from imposing order and discipline on the unruly. He certainly was a returned soldier, and, as his resumé showed, he unquestionably had the necessary qualifications for the position of governor of the Toronto Jail.
Born in Cornwall, England, George Hedley Basher worked for three years as a policeman in his native country before moving to Toronto to join the police force in 1913. During the First World War, he served as a commissioned officer in Egypt, Salonika, and France. He rose rapidly through the ranks, receiving several decorations on the way, and ended the war as a major in charge of a large military prison in Rouen, France.
Major Basher was a shoo-in for the position of governor at the Don. His first day on the job was September 1, 1919. After twelve years of remarkably sloppy management between 1907 and 1919, the jail was about to experience a very different and much sterner organizational regime.
An example of this new and tougher stance came within months. In early 1920, banking on the mystique of Frank McCullough, which lingered on in the public consciousness, a movie company had the “nerve” to apply for permission to make a film about the charismatic ruffian’s life and prison escape.
“Of course the request was refused,” declared Major Basher in an interview. “This year we have already had more people pass through the jail than in the entire year preceding.… The principal crimes are burglary, housebreaking, robbery with violence, hold-ups in automobiles, and there are many offenses under the Ontario Temperance Act.”
And what was one of the principal factors that lured young people into a life of crime? “Moving pictures,” said Basher. “The lads see these films and then go out in a spirit of bravado to emulate the villain of the screen. Some time ago I witnessed a film in which a jail escape was depicted. It was remarkable the amount of applause which the criminal received. Recently, to learn if my opinion was generally held, I asked a prison official of the United States if he attributed a large percentage of crime to the movies, and he agreed with me.”
No wonder that cheeky request was turned down so firmly.
The ex-soldier soon developed a reputation as an honest, just, but very strict disciplinarian. This seemed to have been typical of the positions, both military and civilian, that he occupied during his long career in service. As a fellow soldier who served in Basher’s regiment in the Second World War once put it: “His enforcement of strict discipline became a tradition in the regiment, and because he was always fair and impartial, men were proud to be associated with him. Even those who ‘suffered’ often in his orderly rooms were known to have boasted about having the toughest, but fairest, CO [commanding officer] in the Canadian Army.”
However, there were times at the jail when Basher found himself having to temper harsh discipline with mercy. In February 1922, for example, David Harri, a prisoner awaiting execution in the death cell, went on a hunger strike, refusing anything other than cigarettes. He would wake up crying at night. He was Armenian, and there was no priest of the Armenian Church in Ontario to act as his spiritual adviser. Basher arranged with the secretary of the Armenian Relief Society in Canada to find a priest in New York or Boston willing to offer support to the anguished man.
By the end of 1922, a relative calm had descended on the jail, interrupted only by an escape attempt in late December by seven female prisoners. Had their escape not been foiled by jail staff, they would have missed church services and the traditional Christmas dinner, which included apples, nuts, pork pies, and candies.
“If anything, there is less serious crime this year than last year,” Governor Basher told the press at the time. “The change in conditions is likely due to the stiff sentences given by Judges, which appears [sic] to have had the desired effect. It is altogether likely the improvement will be permanent if the ticket-of-leave people [those granting parole to prisoners] are not too generous.”
But there were many challenges. In 1923, Tommy Church, formerly Toronto’s scrappy mayor and now a quarrelsome member of parliament, complained that a prisoner could not secure bail over a weekend. Basher went on the defensive, explaining that although everyone who was entitled to bail should be able to get it at any hour, there was simply not enough staff on duty in the evenings or on holidays to safely bring the prisoners out. The following year, public attention was brought to the death from a drug overdose of Frank Anderson, a prisoner in the Don awaiting transfer to a federal penitentiary. Again, Basher found himself in the hot seat, explaining that although a watch was kept on all prisoners and known addicts were carefully searched, it was “impossible to defeat the ingenuity of some.”
This sketch, dated 1871, is labelled “Flogging of a Prisoner at the Toronto Gaol, Friday, Jan 6.” George Hedley Basher, governor of the Don Jail between 1919 and 1931, was a strong advocate of corporal punishment for “breaches of discipline” in penal institutions.
When it came to crime and punishment, Basher had very definite views. He was a stern advocate of the death penalty as a deterrent against serious crimes. He was less radical about hanging, telling a Senate-Commons committee on capital and corporal punishment in 1954 that “other methods that might be preferable should be explored,” although he had no suggestions as to what these alternatives might be. He certainly believed in corporal punishment; specifically, the strap. He told the committee that such punishment was the only effective way to control violent and defiant prisoners. However, he suggested changing the name of this type of discipline to “spanking.” He himself, while superintendent of the Guelph Reformatory, had ordered prisoners to be strapped, to the great gratitude, he insisted, of those on the receiving end.
“They thanked me for bringing them to their senses,” he said.
In spite of Basher’s strongly held opinions, however, the strap was eventually banned. But it would take until 1972 before judicial corporal punishment disappeared from the Canadian statute books.
On one notable occasion, Basher did relax the hard-and-fast rules ever so slightly.
This was in 1924, when Norman “Red” Ryan was committed for trial at the Police Court in Toronto for robbery with violence. Ryan could best be described as a career criminal. He had started small: stealing chickens and bikes as a youngster, then graduating to armed robbery, safecracking, and, in the mid-1930s, to murder.
As the Globe explained on January 8, 1924, Ryan was already in deep trouble at the Kingston Penitentiary for multiple unlawful acts: “A despatch [sic] from Kingston states: ‘The trial of “Red” Ryan for escaping from the Provincial Penitentiary, September 10 last, setting fire to the stable to screen the escape, assaulting Chief Keeper Matthew Walsh with a pitchfork, and stealing an auto, will take place at the Courthouse in Kingston before Chief Justice Meredith on February 5.’”
It was therefore perfectly understandable that exceptional security measures were put in place during Ryan’s stay in Toronto. Other than police and members of the press, no outsiders were allowed in the court room. Incarcerated in the Don Jail, Ryan was watched over day and night by a rotating team of three guards. He was forced to wear shackles at all times, even when he slept.
Just before his court appearance, Ryan asked to see Governor Basher. If he were given a good meal, he said, he would give the governor a surprise. On reflection, Basher agreed, whereupon Ryan handed him a seven-inch-long saw blade. How Ryan got the saw was a great puzzle to the authorities, as on being admitted to the Don he had been stripped of his clothing and given a fresh uniform.
There was no possibility that Ryan could have used the saw to make his own getaway, but escapes, and violent escape attempts, were an ever-present reality at the Don. In March 1925, Andrew Morrison and James Moss beat a guard, Thomas Richards, bloody and unconscious with a chair leg before grabbing his keys and releasing some twenty inmates incarcerated on the third floor. Several of the liberated prisoners were sleeping when the doors of their cells were flung open. They simply refused to leave their cells, believing that there was no way to escape from the building. Others, however, trashed the entire floor before a squad of policemen armed with sawed-off shotguns, hastily summoned by Basher, turned up and marched the escapees back to their cells.
Saws always seemed to be a highly sought-after commodity at the jail. In December 1926, four of these prized tools were found in one of the corridors. Two of them, both eight inches in length, had been hidden in crevices in the walls. Additionally, one of the bars in a window had been sawn nearly through. Basher was reportedly alerted to the problem by “a citizen” who knew that a big jailbreak was being planned. Basher immediately launched an investigation. The ringleader of the aspiring escapees, Norman Neal, who was awaiting transfer to the Kingston Penitentiary to serve three years for housebreaking, was placed in solitary confinement.
Two full body searches failed to reveal that Neal was in possession of a fifth saw, which he used to cut an opening measuring seven by twelve inches in the bars of his cell. He then wriggled through, earning himself the nickname “The Human Eel” from an admiring press. This was reportedly the first successful jailbreak under Basher’s watch; he must have been very relieved to identify a man caught robbing a chicken coop in Oakville five months later as the elusive Eel and to get him safely back under lock and key.
And then there were the riots, also known as “disturbances,” or, in Basher’s words, “breaches of discipline.” This was part of a statement issued by the department of the provincial secretary in January 1931:
Major Basher, who is the governor of the local bastile [sic], received a message from the guard in charge that a serious disturbance was taking place at the institution. Going to the jail from his near-by residence, he found that prisoners were indulging in an organized program of shouts, catcalls, profanity and obscenity. The prisoners at this time were all in their cells, with the exception of a few sleeping in corridors for lack of cell space.… It required the combined efforts of the Governor and staff from 6 p.m. until 10 o’clock to restore order.… The ringleaders were detected and placed in isolation cells, and quiet was gradually restored. It is established that the leaders were, in the main, lads of from 17 to 21 years of age. One of the chief complaints seemed to be regarding the deprivation of tobacco, use of which is strictly forbidden under the jail rules.
On learning of the “disturbance,” the mayor, William James Stewart, “summoned his own chauffeur” and paid an unannounced visit to the jail. After an hour-long tour of inspection and a conversation with the governor, the mayor declared that the problem was not caused by conditions in the jail, even though he did find that there were inmates sleeping in the corridors for lack of cell space. “I believe Major Basher is entitled to a larger staff to maintain discipline among the prisoners, particularly the younger element,” he announced. It would certainly not be necessary to take any more drastic measures, although the provincial secretary, Leopold Macaulay, was “said to be determined to compel the city to erect a new jail.”
Tellingly, the mayor added “It should be borne in mind that the population of the jail includes prisoners, men awaiting trials, awaiting deportation and men with penitentiary records of an extensive character. It is a clearing house.”
And the punishment meted out to the offenders? After receiving a report from Basher about the circumstances behind the riot, and obviously with his wholehearted support, Secretary Macaulay decreed that the seven ringleaders should be strapped. Each of the “guilty parties” was given three to five strokes with a broad strap under the observation of the jail surgeon.
By this time, Basher’s days at the Don were just about numbered. In a move described by Macaulay as “not political,” Basher was shunted off to the Langstaff Jail Farm or Industrial Farm, familiarly referred to as the Jail Farm. In announcing Basher’s appointment as superintendent, Minister Macaulay declared that he was looking forward to a great improvement in the discipline of both staff and inmates at the farm.
Macaulay’s claim that there was nothing political in his decision lends itself to suspicion. Particularly so, because he was a minister in the Conservative cabinet in Ontario. And the man slated to replace Basher at the Don was Clifford E. Blackburn, a former alderman and a prominent member of the Central Conservative Association of Toronto — or so it was emphatically stated by prominent Conservatives at an Orange Lodge banquet in May 1931. So were staff changes in the prison system still politically motivated, as they had been in the bad old days before the arrival of Basher? Was Blackburn being touted for the top job at the Don because he was a Conservative with strong Conservative backers?
If there were machinations taking place in the background, they came to naught: in the end Blackburn did not get the job. It was announced in September 1931 that the governorship of the jail had been awarded to Harry G. Denning, the former deputy governor. He was the guard who had so bitterly complained back in 1919 about Frank McCullough’s privileged treatment in the death cell.
Clifford Blackburn, runner-up for the top job, was appointed deputy governor. He lasted less than four years. He was dismissed at Denning’s request in May 1935, following more riots at the jail. “We have been dissatisfied for some time,” was the curt comment of the now Liberal provincial secretary, Harry C. Nixon, to howls of protest from Conservatives.
As for Basher, his new job in 1931 took him a few kilometres north of Toronto to the corner of Yonge Street and Langstaff Road (now Highway 7) in Richmond Hill. The Jail Farm then belonged to the City of Toronto, and it was seen as a less-dreadful alternative to the Don. Construction had begun in 1913, and until the 1950s it served as a minimum-security institution for petty criminals and first offenders. It was a proper working farm, with barns and silos and sheds and a water tower as well as the actual jail building with cells for inmates. It is said that Basher made his daily rounds on horseback, often jumping over hedges at a gallop.
When the Second World War loomed, Basher again prepared for combat, and again, he excelled. He became commanding officer of the Royal Regiment of Canada and served in Iceland, England, and Italy. He was awarded the Order of the British Empire in 1943. At war’s end, the now-Colonel Basher was appointed a special investigator in the provincial secretary’s office. After a stint as superintendent of the Guelph Reformatory from 1946 to 1952 (where his charges, you will remember, reportedly thanked him for having them strapped), he was appointed deputy minister of reform institutions in Ontario.
George Hedley Basher stepped into his civilian career in 1919 to mop up the mess at the Don Jail after the jailbreaks of Frank McCullough and Vera de Lavelle. In 1952, after several even more sensational escapes, he would again grab the reins of leadership at the Don. This would turn out to be the lowest point of his professional career, and he would not emerge from it unscathed.