MIDDLESEX COURT HOUSE

Plaque and historic building near corner of Ridout and King Streets, London

Of 44 prisoners taken during the Rebellion of 1837, six known prisoners and possibly nine, were incarcerated and hanged here, presumably in the Court House Square. Most of the remaining accused were transported to the penal colony in Van Diemen’s Land (Tasmania).

The Court sat in London between 23 December 1838 and 19 January 1839. Cornelius Cunningham, Joshua Gilliam Doan, Amos Perley, Albert Clarke, Hiram Bing Lynn and Daniel Davis were put on trial, and all were convicted and executed. Doan and Perley were buried in the Friends Burying Ground at Sparta.

The London “jail” was on the ground floor of the early courthouse, completed in 1829, which forms the westerly half of today’s “old Court House”. The 1837 rebels gave graphic descriptions of the bad conditions, overcrowding and lack of ventilation: “The only ventilation was through a small diamond-shaped hole in the door . . . . The only place for relieving the calls of nature was a corner of our cell”. Ironically, one of the prisoners, William Hale, had made the brick for the building in 1827 and was now “suffocating in its interior”. The building was modeled after Malahide Castle, near Dublin, Ireland, the ancestral home of Colonel Thomas Talbot, founder of the Talbot settlement. Shown here is an artist’s 1843 conception of the London and District Courthouse.

Photo Credit (painting): City of London, Ontario