Gurney Fire - 1910

At 5:35 p.m. on a cold February day, February, 17, 1910, many workmen in the Gurney-Tilden foundry were glancing at the clock anxiously anticipating the end of that day’s shift.

          Suddenly, with out any warning whatever, volumes of thick, acrid smoke poured up the building’s stairways and through elevator shafts. Within seconds there was a mad scramble as the workmen quickly headed for the exits.

          There were over 200 workmen employed in the section of the building where the fire broke out. Many barely escaped with their lives.

          One workman, interviewed after the fire, escaped down an elevator shaft by gliding down a greased cable :

          “We were so thick coming down the elevator rope that the man who was coming down beside me, kicked me in the head several times, and I thought that I would lose consciousness between the thick smoke and the kicks I received.”

          The Gurney-Tilden foundry was a large, four storey brick building which ran the whole bock on the east side of John street between Gore (Wilson) and King William street.

          A major department of the company was the japanning room where black enamel was prepared so that the stoves could be lacquered to a durable, glossy finish.

          It was later presumed that the insulation on one of the electric wires which ran over the lacquer pots burned through, causing the wire to fall into the hot flammable liquid. Following a brilliant flash, dense, black smoke rolled along the length of the floor, enveloping the room in semi-darkness in a split second.

          Mr. William H. Griffin, interviewed after the fire, said that he was passing the lacquer room, “when suddenly there shot up from the lacquer tank a big flame, which instantly caught the stairs, which were close by. Then the smoke began to rise from the tank and stairs in dense volumes. The girl, Miss Payne, and the boy, Ed, the only two employees in the room, besides myself, fortunately were not near the tank; had they been they would have been burned to death, as the flame would have enveloped them. I at once cried fire and the girl began to develop hysterics and seemed powerless to move, so I pushed her through the door and Mike Griffin, another blacksmith, helped her to escape. I then notified all I could of the fire.”

          Harry Bowden Jr., a foreman of the girls’ lock room said to the press after the fire that Dunnett rushed into his room shouting “Fire! :”

          “I told him to be quiet, and hastened to assure the girls that there was no cause for alarm, and succeeded in keeping them from becoming excited. They quietly got their hats and coats, and after I had seen them all safely out, I left myself.”

          As the Central Fire Station was less than a block from the scene of the blaze, there were several streams of water turned on the flames within a very brief time after the alarm was turned in.

          A Times reporter on hearing the fire alarm rushed to the scene from the newspaper’s office just a few blocks away at the corner of  King William and Hughson streets.

          Turning north on John street, he could see that the whole street was filled with dense smoke. Later, he wrote that “the scene was one of the most thrilling ever witnessed in Hamilton. All along the building, windows were seen to crash through. The firemen ran ladders up and three or four men piled out of each window helter skelter onto the ladder and slid to the ground. They were hardly able to walk.”

          At one of the windows, a man was seen smashing glass with his bare hands, and then climbing out onto the window sill. After the fire net was put under him, the people below called for him to jump. At first, the man was hesitant; the crowd’s pleas for him to jump renewed but were more a sending for appeals rather than commands.

          Finally, the man hurled himself off the ledge and pitched headlong into the net. His name was Samuel Hobson, Later Hobson was quoted as saying that he saw the smoke pouring forth and realized that he had to get to the windows “but the smoke was faster than I, and I had great trouble in finding the windows. As soon as I did, however, I heard the voices below yelling to me to jump and I did so.”

The fire was mainly limited to the lacquering room and the firemen were able to have it extinguished within minutes.

As the dense, poisonous clouds of smoke began to clear, efforts were made to account for all the employees who would have been at work in the vicinity of the lacquering room.

“Where is Harry Bawden?” someone cried out.

 Ladders were set up allowing several firemen including the Chief to plunge into the smoke to search for any missing workmen. Within, the firemen reappeared with not one, but two, lifeless bodies.

Both bodies were carried to the sample room A large crowd followed, anxious to learn the identities of the two unfortunates.

 Among the crowd was Harry Bawden, Junior,

“As he peered over the shoulders of the crowd, he was horrified his father stretched out, cold in death.”

The other victim, Arthur McCulley, had only been working at the Gurney foundry since the previous Monday.

Chief Ten Eyck, who happened to be a personal friend of McCulley, had been the one to find his body in the building :

“That he lost his way and did not know the layout of the room he was in was shown by the fact that in going from where he was working to where the body was found, he had passed a door which would have led him into the other part of the building and, for a time, out of the smoke. He would then have been able to get out.”

While McCulley lived for a while, due to the resuscitation efforts of Police Constable Campaign, he could not be saved. Both McCulley and Harry Bawden suffocated and there were no burns on either body.

Percy Woodbridge risked his life in a vain attempt to save one of his comrades. He said that “it seemed as if a black curtain  had been thrown over the entire department. I could not see a soul in the place because the smoke was so thick and it was all the time becoming denser. As I was slowly making my way across the room, I almost tripped over a man who seemed in a state of suffocation. With all the strength I could muster, I tried to assist him to the window, but he was too much for me and he fell from my grasp across a bench, apparently unconscious. That man, I believe, was McCulley.”

Coincidentally,  Percy Woodbridge’s 9 year old sister-in-law happened to be in the neighborhood of the Gurney foundry when the fire broke out.

          “I was walking along John street about twenty minutes to six,” she said, “when I heard the reels coming, and looking up at Gurney-Tilden’s factory saw that it was on fire. Then a man appeared at an upper window, and I cried “Look, look, there is a man at the window. Oh, poor man, he might be my brother-in-law. I then saw the fire escape put up and when the man was brought down, I saw it was Percy. I then hurried home and told mother.”

Harry Bawden Junior had collapsed upon seeing his dead father’s body. He was sent by cab to his home, having the responsibility to tell the sad news to other members of his family.

When a Times reporter called at the Bawden home with the purpose of obtaining a photograph of the dead man, he found the son “scarcely recovered from his terrible shock, he staggered around under the burden of his grief, talking incoherently. Upstairs the dead man’s widow, heartbroken, sobbed pitifully.

1910 - Movies and Censorship

1910 – Movies

        In the fall of 1910, the Hamilton Spectator launched a crusade against the type of moving pictures that were being shown in local theatres. In the days before censorship mechanisms were established, the laws covering the type of moving pictures shown in Ontario were vague and open to a wide variety of interpretations.

          On August 31, 1910, the Spectator ran an article under the headline, “Pictures That Foster Crime : Hold Officers of the Law Up to Ridicule,” in which the reporter described a film which he felt encouraged disrespect for the law.

          In the film, a police constable was savagely attacked by a burglar who had broken into a store to steal food. The reporter felt that it was no mere coincidence that a crime of exactly the same nature had been committed in Hamilton while that particular picture was being shown.

          In 1910, there were no restrictions regarding the admittance of children to moving picture theatres. The reporter described in detail one film which he considered unfit for children to see.

          In that film, a beautiful young woman, described as a “poorly dressed artist’s model” threw herself off a bridge because of unrequited love:

          “Special pains were taken by the filmmakers to give the audience a near view of the unfortunate girl as she sank for the third time. Later, the body of the girl was seen lying in the morgue just as it had been removed from the water. She lay on her back, her wet hair suspended. As she thus lay, the faithless lover, who had been the cause of the tragedy, entered, and in apparent grief, fell on the swollen, lifeless form. Those who saw the sight shuddered in horror.”

          As the days passed, the Spectator’s campaign against what they called “the mental filth and rot” of moving pictures intensified. In particular, a poster advertising a  film was condemned. The poster depicted a “semi-nude colored woman.”

          After a complaint to the manager of the theatre involved, a promise was made to do something about the poster. The “something” consisted of pasting a piece of paper, two inches square, over the objectionable part of the poster. Noting that the poster was located “only a stone’s throw from the police station,” the reporter pointed out that “probably it did not occur to the police that this woman was alive inside the theatre and could be seen exactly as depicted on the poster for the sum of five cents.”

          In another film, the moral degradation of the leading character was a source of concern to the Spectator. The film portrayed the story of the downfall of a woman named Ruth, tracing her movements from the family home to “one of the dirtiest and most disreputable houses one can imagine.” In one scene, Ruth is shown “reclining on a couch, and the actions of the man in the picture are most repulsive.”

          The Spectator, in demanding action against such films, noted that the “remarkable suggestiveness of the moving picture may be related to the fact that fixing the attention on some slightly moving or quivering bright object induces a hypnotic state in which suggestion is remarkably easy.”

          The claim was made that the powerful effect of moving pictures not only caused crime by imitation of what was portrayed on the screen, but even, the Spectator declared, “persons who have witnessed the portrayal of suicide have gone home and taken their lives.”

          In an editorial calling for police action against the showing of morally degrading films in Hamilton, the Spectator emphasized that it had no quarrel with the management of local moving picture theatres. Recognizing the potential value of moving pictures for both entertainment and education, the Spectator said that it was only calling for the police to enforce the already existing laws against “the undesirable film. The law, by the way, says that no picture depicting crime or violence shall be exhibited. Also, it is required that the police department shall see that the law in this as in other matters shall be enforced. Which makes one wonder why it should be necessary for anyone to have to wage battle to induce the police to do no more than is their plain duty.”

          Eventually, a police investigation was launched. Police Chief Smith sent Constable Thomas Brown to gather information about the type of films being shown in Hamilton.

          Finally, on October 21, 1910, charges of breaching moving picture regulations were laid against five theatre managers, namely W. J. Melody of the Colonial Theatre, Herbert Clayton of the Crystal Palace Theatre, John R. Cambden of the Gayety Theatre, V. King of the Savoy Theatre and John Stewart of the Unique Theatre.

          The first case to be heard in police court was against the Crystal Palace Theatre. Magistrate Jelfs declared at the outset that it was his opinion that the police would have to prove a crime was actually depicted on the screen, not merely a representation of a crime.

          The film in question was a western in which Constable Brown saw a cowboy being pursued by other cowboys, followed by a shoot out which left one man dead. Also shown at the Crystal Palace Theatre that day was another reel depicting a house burglary.

        Herbert Clayton, manager of the Crystal Palace Theatre, pleaded not guilty to the charge and was defended by George S. Kerr, K. C.

          During his cross-examination of Constable Brown, Kerr asked him the following :

           “You don’t know whether the wild west men were properly chasing the outlaw? They might have been a mounted posse. The other film wound up with a very fine moral, did it not?”

          After the constable replied in the affirmative, Mr. Kerr went on to claim that “the moral was a touching one. It almost brought tears to your eyes.”

          Mr. Kerr argued that the depiction of crime in moving pictures had no more adverse effect than the depiction of crime in written literature:

          “Look at all the Nick Carters and cheap novels people read. They can read of crime in the newspaper every night.”

          Magistrate Jelfs said that he felt that the law against moving pictures related only to the depiction of actual crimes:

          “If they produced pictures of the Kinrade murder, say, or the murder at Goderich, I should think such pictures would come under the act.”

          Lawyer Kerr also argued that the act went too far and could stifle the picture house business.

          Magistrate Jelfs declared that he was unable to render a decision in the case and reserved judgment for a week, although he added, “in my opinion, we will have to have some representation of actual crime before there is an offense.”

          The cases against the other theatre managers were postponed until the case against the Crystal Palace Theatre was decided.

          The Hamilton Times was dissatisfied with the outcome of the case against the Crystal Palace Theatre, arguing that the point of the case was to fight the showing of “immoral and degrading shows.” The case, the Times argued, had instead become immersed in a legalistic battle over an act which was clearly inadequate:

          “In all conscience, the Government owes it to the picture men, owes it to justice, to enable them o obey the law, by itself furnishing a criterion for their guide.’

          In the absence of guidelines for the censorship of moving pictures, Magistrate Jelfs eventually ruled that the cases against the moving picture theatre managers could not proceed.

          For the moment, the campaign against the showing of questionable moving pictures put on hold.