Elizabeth Stuart had fallen madly in love. But there was one major flaw with the man she’d fallen in love with: he wasn’t her husband. His name was Lieutenant John Grogan, an Irishman in the British army. His unit had fought to put down the rebellion in Lower Canada, was even there for the massacre at Saint Eustache, when troops set fire to a church full of rebels, picking them off as they tried to escape before setting the whole town ablaze. Since then, they’d been stationed in the town of London, far to the west of Toronto, which had also seen a small rebel uprising. That’s where Lieutenant Grogan and Elizabeth Stuart met and fell in love, starting an affair so shocking it would be debated and dissected in Parliament.
Lieutenant Grogan wouldn’t be in London for long. Two years after he arrived, his regiment was sent away to Toronto, to take up residence in Osgoode Hall. Today, it’s one of the oldest buildings in the city; the east wing was erected nearly two hundred years ago. Named after the colony’s first chief justice, it was originally built as a home for the law society and a law school, given a prominent spot on the edge of town. Today, it stands between Osgoode Station and Nathan Phillips Square, hidden away behind a black iron fence and green trees. It’s still home to provincial courts, the Law Society of Ontario, and a magnificent library. But there was a brief period when it wasn’t home to lawyers and judges. In the wake of Mackenzie’s rebellion, the building was leased by the army for a few years.
Osgoode Hall became a garrison on the edge of the troubled capital. Law students were kicked out in favour of soldiers — including Grogan’s regiment. So soon after falling in love, Elizabeth Stuart and her lieutenant were going to be torn apart. And to make things worse, she was pregnant with his child.
That’s when Elizabeth Stuart made a bold move. Leaving her husband and her three girls behind, she fled London and joined her lover in Toronto. She spent a night with him there at Osgoode Hall, daring to sleep with him in his quarters, a married woman defying one of the most rigid social conventions of her time.
The scandal would rock Toronto. And the affair was made all the more shocking by the fact that Elizabeth Stuart was a member of what had once been one of the most respectable families in the entire province.
Elizabeth Stuart had been born Elizabeth Powell. She was Anne Murray Powell’s granddaughter.
In many ways, John Stuart must have seemed like a perfect match for her. They were both born into prominent families, both grandchildren of some of Upper Canada’s early settlers. While Elizabeth was the granddaughter of a chief justice and the great Anne Murray Powell, John’s grandfather had been the first Anglican priest to call the province home. On the surface, a marriage between Elizabeth and John must have seemed like a promising and appropriate union between two of Toronto’s most storied families.
Anne Murray Powell, on the other hand, knew it was a mistake right from the very beginning. It had been nearly two decades since the matriarch of York had withdrawn from public society. She was nearing the end of her life now, almost eighty years old, but she still knew an approaching disaster when she saw one.
“Affection on her part is out of the question; and of [this] everyone who knows her is fully aware,” Powell wrote before her granddaughter got married. And her opinion didn’t change after the wedding. It was still very clear that Elizabeth didn’t love her new husband — even he knew it: “Hers is a most ill assorted and unhappy match. He was aware of her indifference before marriage, and is not … calculated to excite affection. It is a forlorn prospect.”
The old woman was right. As the newlyweds set off for London to begin their life together, they were headed toward marital doom. It was only five years later that Elizabeth left her husband to join her lover at Osgoode Hall. Her reputation was ruined, and her marriage with it. It was such a blatant and public insult her husband could hardly ignore it.
John Stuart began by suing Grogan for damages — and won. But that was only the initial step, a necessary prelude to what would come next.
A divorce was a hard thing to get in Upper Canada; the courts had no power to grant one. Instead, each individual case required an act of Parliament: a bill approved by both houses of the legislature. John Stuart was determined to get one. He petitioned Parliament soon after his wife left him, and the process began. First, a trial was held by a committee of the Legislative Council, complete with lawyers and witnesses, dissecting the details of Elizabeth Powell’s adultery. They found in favour of Stuart, so it went on to the next stage: a vote in the Legislative Assembly, which he also won. But the idea of granting a divorce was so unusual in the early 1800s that the lieutenant-governor refused to sign the bill into law himself. Instead, it was sent all the way to England, where it finally received royal assent two years after that infamous night at Osgoode Hall. It was the only divorce ever granted in the entire history of Upper Canada — a period that covered half a century.
It was, by the standards of English law, an unusual divorce; while most forbade the guilty party from ever getting married again, this one let Elizabeth Powell have another wedding. It was held at St. James Church in the summer of 1841. She was finally free to spend the rest of her life with the man she loved.
But that life wouldn’t be easy. Lieutenant Grogan was ruined by the lawsuit. The court had awarded Stuart nearly seven hundred pounds in damages, plus costs. Grogan was forced to sell his military commission in order to cover the debt, losing his livelihood. Disgraced by the scandal, the newlyweds were driven from Toronto. The Grogans shunned them and the Powell family was split in two; while some relatives supported Elizabeth, most refused to see her at all. When the penniless couple eventually returned and tried to re-enter society, Anne Murray Powell met them with the same steely resolve she’d used against Elizabeth Small all those decades earlier. “I would as soon receive a Housebreaker or a Murderer,” she wrote, “as a Man who had inflicted indelible disgrace on a large and respectable family.” She was sure Elizabeth was doomed to an unhappy life with an unfaithful man. “Her crime will be her punishment, for misery must attend a marriage with a noted profligate who tho’ neither young nor even good looking has been the ruin of several married women; some of respectable connections.”
Anne Murray Powell had spent her life trying to build a sterling reputation for her family. And she’d failed. Even now, her descendants were still letting her down. “I writhe under that which casts a stain upon my family,” she wrote. “We are become subjects of scorn or of pity.” She had seen her children convicted of piracy, drowned in shipwrecks, and tainted by scandal. Now, she’d lived long enough to see her granddaughter get Toronto’s first divorce.