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T.W. Paterson: Wanted: Hangman. No experience required (conclusion)

When no one answered his knocking or halloing, Lilley opened the door and entered the single room.
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Miller and Dring’s famous, or infamous, headstone in St. Peter’s, Quamichan cemetery. (T.W. Paterson collection)

Conclusion:

When no one answered his knocking or loud halloing, Lilley opened the door and entered the single room.

Let’s me see now, where was I? Oh, yes, I ran out of time and space in Friday’s telling of a recent cemetery tour with the Newcomers Club.

I’d brought you (but not the Newcomers, happily) to the point of explaining that teaser headline re: the hiring of executioners — hangmen — in colonial days.

So: It was only after Confederation that British Columbia shared the services of a federally employed professional executioner who became widely known by the pseudonymn Arthur Ellis. Until executions became a federal responsibility, the post of executioner in B.C. was advertised, when and as needed. There being no fulltime official appointee, this role was often filled by an amateur, someone — anyone! — seeking to supplement his income for a fee in the area of $100-150. (This, it should be noted, was an appealing sum.)

So it was in the case of a murder that, in an extraordinary twist of circumstance, provoked the murders of two Crofton settlers. Even Ripley’s Believe It Or Not is supposed to have picked up on William Henry Dring’s and Charles Miller’s headstone in St. Peter’s, Quamichan cemetery which has become famous for its headline-style inscription, MASSACRED, February 14, 1886 aged 59 and 60. (There’s a typo there, the actual date should be Feb. 13.)

Officially, their story began on Valentine’s morning with neighbour George Lilley stopping by Miller’s cabin with his mail. He immediately saw that Miller had company as there was a second horse in the corral. But no one answered his knocking or loud halloing so he opened the door and entered the single room. Dring was slumped at the table, Miller sprawled on his back on the floor. Both were dead and bathed in blood from having had their throats cut. Lilley had to gallop to Ladysmith to inform B.C. Police Const. Dan Mainguy who, with Dr. W.W. Walkem, the coroner for the Nanaimo district, began a pretty scientific investigation.

The throat cutting appeared to have been an afterthought or coup de grace, as both men were killed outright by rifle and musket blasts, Miller stabbed in the heart for good measure. From this Mainguy deduced that two killers were involved and that Miller had been the primary target as indicated by his also having been stabbed and the fact that the cabin hadn’t been ransacked.

A check of the victims’ backgrounds showed that Charles Miller was a 60-year-old Scotsman who’d participated in the 1849 California and 1858 Fraser River gold rushes. He’d homesteaded at Osborne Bay, the future Crofton, in 1866 and had, over 20 years, amassed 136 acres. If there were any ghosts in his past they weren’t apparent to the police. As was the case of 59-year-old William Henry Dring who lived nearby on 200 acres. Neither man had any known enemies.

That is, enemies known to the police. For Charles Miller was a marked man, his murder the climax to a shortlived but seething hatred.

But this was as yet unknown to police and, for a year and a half, the Crofton murder investigation stalled. Until the killing of three men on board the trading schooner Sea Bird occurred near Campbell River. This time, investigators turned up a witness, a native woman, Sally Ah-hoo-mult, who offered them a bonus — the identities of the murderers of Miller and Dring.

She fingered her uncle Johnny Kla-quot-sie and a Salmon River tribesman named Quomlet or Quamlet. Uncle Johnny, she said, had died of exposure the previous winter. Why did they kill the two Crofton settlers? Because, nine days before, her father, Quomlet’s younger brother, had been convicted of murder, mostly on Quomlet’s testimony, and hanged in Nanaimo. She’d harangued Quomlet for his ‘betrayal’ until he’d promised to avenge Kaiwoo’s death by killing the hangman — Charles Miller!

Hence Quomlet, Johnny Kla-quot-sie and Sally loaded a canoe with a Winchester rifle, a Hudson’s Bay Co. musket loaded with solid shot, a Bowie knife and two bottles of whiskey and headed for Osborne Bay. With the fatal results as described above.

On the basis of her testimony, Quomlet was arrested and charged with murdering Charles Miller. His trial in Nanaimo in December 1887 was one of the longest criminal trials in the province’s young history. Acquitted of Miller’s murder (the jury apparently didn’t believe or accept Sally’s treacherous testimony in exchange for immunity) Quomlet was held over, to be tried for Dring’s slaying. He died of consumption while in custody.

Which brings us back to Charles Miller, Crofton homesteader and — hangman? No. The man who hanged Sally’s father for a fee, identified in the press only as Richards, lived just a mile from Miller. Even more amazing, Richards and Miller so resembled each other as to be brothers. Quomlet had mistakenly targeted Miller; Dring, there that evening for dinner, was simply in the wrong place at the wrong time.

So there you have it, the story behind last week’s tantalizing headline. You didn’t think I’d leave you hanging, did you?

www.twpaterson.com