William Jackson, already sentenced for amied robbery, had been brought back from Portsmouth Penitentiary, at Kingston, Ont. In other words, these men had too much time in which to plan their escape, in which to become familiar with the weaknesses of the jail routine, in which to find out which guard or guards could be bribed. A few weeks before the second escape, guard James Morrison was sentenced to two years for attempting to smuggle hacksaw blades and a screwdriver to Leonard Jackson.
After that I wrote to provincial authorities expressing concern over the safety of the Don Jail, and asking for a conference. Nothing came of my request. It is interesting to note, though, that after the second recapture the Boyd gang scarcely had time for breakfast before they were in court.
From now on I am assured that justice will be administered in Ontario more on the lines of the British system swift and. It took the gang nearly a month to saw through the bars.
Boyd told me. The gang members were talk. William Jackson was so talkative that once Leonard Jackson shut him up with a scowl and a growl. Every time the guard had punched the time clock in the comer of the cell block one of us would dash out for five minutes and saw away like blazes.
The only time we could take a chance on working more than five minutes was between 5. S we squeezed through the window bars, crept along a wall and were about to make the long jump to earth when we froze. Two policemen were patrolling the outside wall.
We flattened ourselves, and pushed ourselves even flatter against the top of the wall when a pigeon, scared by our movement, flew upward. We looked down and breathed easy. They walked slowly toward each other, met, stopped for a minute to exchange a few words, and walked on in opposite directions.
We waited until they had disappeared around the angles of the wall, jumped down, and ran up the valley as hard as we could. I asked Jackson if that had not hampered his flight. I stuck a tin cup on the j stump—the tin cup we had taken the j handle off to make the key—and I passed some of those other guys on my I way up the valley.
The foot had been left by outside members of the gang in a cache somewhere between the jail and the deserted bam, seven miles to the north, which was the hide-out of the gang. Also in the cache was a razor, fifty dollars, three guns and ninety-six bullets. Just where they picked up those items, and from whom, was the one subject the Boyd gang declined to discuss with me. The items in the cache were, in the opinion of the gang, the minimum requirements for safety.
The guns. The fifty dollars would keep the four men from starving for a week or two while they were lying low waiting for. As it turned out, the razor proved to be the most useful item in the cache.
The kid could have collected the twenty-six thousand dollars reward posted for our capture. While the Boyd gang was on the loose for the second time, an eminent Toronto clergyman, Rev. It is not enough to go after these tough mugs who shoot it out in bank holdups and endanger the lives of our gallant police. For well over a year the United Church has been pointing out that there are alarming evidences of gangdom and underworld crime activities in some of the larger centres of Ontario.
It is time the big shots in Ontario's crime areas of prostitution, the liquor traffic and gambling were brought to justice. The United Church is determined to oppose gambling of every form whether proposed by Toronto's mayor.
Ontario's brewer or any other so-called sporting big shot. Mutchmor, as gently as possible, that the droves of clergymen who visited the Boyd gang in the Don Jail contributed nothing to the case of lawenforcement. Quite frankly, some jail officials regard visiting clergymen as a menace to prison security and discipline. There is undoubtedly a place for religion in the rehabilitation of wrongdoers.
I question whether a jail like the Don. If you want to smuggle a letter out. If you want concessions from the jail officials, the minister will work on them for you. In the case of Boyd the attention of ministers almost reached the point of absurdity. Boyd himself played the part of a brand ripe for plucking from the burning.
Presumably these visits were requested, quite legitimately, by Boyd through friends who visited him. There is nothing in prison regulations to limit the number of ministers who may visit an inmate. Boyd prayed with them, and a number of them reported to prison officials that Boyd was "ready to take his medicine. He earnestly prays that he will receive twenty or twenty-five years instead of life. Just how many different ministers visited Boyd there is no way of knowing, since it was not until soon before.
But my information is that Boyd received more visits from ministers than any convict since the notorious Norman Red Ryan. While preparing for his second escape Ryan started to build up a reputation of piety.
Paroled in he became a sort of exhibit A of reformation. The leader was described as a tall athletic man I with jet-black hair.
Ryan, a tall athletic man with bright red hair, deplored these crimes. Then a liquor store at Sarnia was held up, a policej man was shot dead, and so was the gang leader, a tall black-haired man who turned out to be Ryan with his hair dyed. With the Boyd gang at large hundreds of tips poured in from all parts of the province and beyond. Four nuns in a car were pursued by police; a Whitby farmer shot an innocent prowler-an escaped inmate of a mental institution—and wounded him; four United States tourists had the fright of their lives when their car was stopped by police with drawn guns.
Thousands of police man-hours went into the hunt, all police leaves and days off were canceled. On Sunday, Sept. Twenty-four hours later these prayers were answered. The sentence was carried out in the Don Jail — the same institution the Boyd Gang had twice escaped from, capturing the attention of the police, the press, and the public across the country.
Nate Hendley is a Toronto-based journalist and author who has written several books, primarily in the true-crime genre. Valerie Andrews was 16 years old when she entered a Toronto home for unwed mothers. Sixty-eight years ago, the notorious Boyd Gang broke out of the Don Jail for the second time — and humiliated authorities wanted to find the men fast.
By Nate Hendley - Published on Sep 08, Edwin Alonzo Boyd was arrested in bed in Toronto on March 15, Boyd is escorted by sergeant of detectives Adolphus Payne left and detective Jack Kenneth. Comments X. View the discussion thread. Our journalism depends on you. Portrait Image. Nate Hendley. Follow natehendley. Stay up to date! Subscribe Now. Not at all Likely. Why do you feel this way? Next Submit. Search for:. Execution Playing Cards Exclusively available on this site: our one-of-a-kind custom playing card deck.
Every card features a historical execution from England, France, Germany, or Russia! But over time the jail became squalid, overcrowded — at times holding up to three men per cell. One slept on the floor cot, two slept in hammocks one above another. It has been estimated that more than a million prisoners passed through the jail by the time the original building closed in But its east wing, completed in , housed inmates until the end of It was supposed to hold , but was always over-capacity. Two Royal commissions, in the s and s, referred to the jail being grossly overcrowded and understaffed.
Violent or mentally disturbed patients were often left tied to their beds for lack of other options. But aside from its malodorous milieu, the Don garnered headlines over the years for some infamous escapes. One of these was year-old Frank McCullough, convicted of killing a policeman, who escaped from his death row cell in Probably the most sensational breakouts were engineered by brash bank robber Edwin Alonzo Boyd and other criminals he hooked up with in the Don Jail. Their escapes sparked huge manhunts and led to a Royal Commission in to review how they did it.
Earlier in life, the luckless Lennie had had a run-in with a train and lost his foot.
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