The Black Donnellys by Thomas P. Kelley

Author:Thomas P. Kelley [Kelley, Thomas P.]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Thomas P. Kelley
Published: 2018-02-27T18:57:08+00:00

CHAPTER TEN

Fire and More Fires

The countryside became a place

That lived in fear of night.

When burning barns and fields would flame

The heavens with their light.

- Old Song

Even today, around Lucan, Ontario, you find the pro-Donnelly and anti-Donnelly groups. The thirty-three-year old Donnelly feud has never ceased being hotly debated since its murderous climax on the morning of February 4, 1880. While those murders were being discussed at a meeting of the Middlesex Historical Society at London, Ontario, an elderly man strode angrily from the room, then paused in a doorway to shout:

"The Donnellys might have cut the tongues out of men, but never out of horses! "

But another old boy with a good eighty winters on him, rose from a chair to wave his cane and retort: "You're a damn liar and you know it! The Donnellys were murdering devils, every one of them. Look what they did to my own father!"

And Lucan's constable, big Dave Egan, ever on the lookout for trouble - especially on Saturday nights, when the surrounding farmers drive into the village for supplies and to "hoist a few" - will tell you: "It's like someone was playing a piano. He goes along alright for awhile, then strikes the wrong note." That "wrong note" is any ill-timed mention of the Donnelly feud.

For despite their many unquestioned depravities, the barbaric manner of the massacre of the Donnellys and the passing of years has aroused sympathy in many. There are those who will tell you that the continuous persecutions of their enemies - "hangdogs" - as well as the law, were responsible for the transgressions of Biddulph's bad boys. Old records and newspapers, however, do not verify that "more sinned against than sinned," theory.

Travel some day up Lucan way, and go out on the Roman Line. There you will find the clock of time has seemingly turned its hands back.

Finding the road that knew the violence of the Donnellys will not be difficult. Leaving London, Ontario and driving north on Richmond Street, once you are beyond the city's limits you will see some of the land that has made Canada famous; flat and fertile territory, the Mecca of the agriculturist. You will pass a crossroad, about ten miles from London, that is grimly linked with the past. According to one story, scarcely forty yards on the right from the highway, Tom Donnelly once held the hand of a male schoolteacher, while Mike bent the pedagog's fingers back and snapped them, one by one, like chalk.

It was down this same sideroad that James Jr. was riding, following his robbery of the Granton Post Office, when he was overtaken by a posse of three. Pulled from his horse, Jim Donnelly's eldest son, after a furious struggle, laid out his pursuers, rode on and finally made his way to the border and Detroit, where he remained in hiding for several months.

Your mileage gauge should clock fourteen miles and decimal two, after leaving London and traveling a broad highway, every inch of which has known the rumble of Donnelly coaches, when you reach Elginfield.

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