Theft, Death, and Disappearance: The Alberta Penitentiary 1906-1920

Matt Ormandy

The Alberta Penitentiary, 1908. Photograph: Byron May, City of Edmonton Archives (EA-500-151). Image Description: A large brick building with windows and guard towers, surrounded by a fence.

“There’s just one kind favor I’ll ask of you,

See that my grave is kept clean.”

Lemon Jefferson, 1927

The Alberta Penitentiary was a federal institution that operated from 1906-1920 just east of Amiskwaciwâskahikan, also known as Edmonton, located on the stolen lands of diverse Indigenous peoples. Forced labour in the prison coal mine, farm, and construction shops were a foundational part of incarceration practices in this period. The first group of prisoners built the prison buildings and prisoners were put to work digging the first mine shaft when the ‘Pen Mine’ opened in 1910, digging the coal that was used to heat the penitentiary. Given the harsh conditions and lack of quality nutrition and healthcare in the Alberta Penitentiary, two dozen prisoners died during their incarceration.

In this piece I explore the limited archival evidence about people in the Alberta Penitentiary and I situate the institution within the context of settler colonial, capitalist development in the early 20^th century. Despite the scarce sources, I endeavour tell the story of some of the individuals who died while incarcerated at the Alberta Penitentiary. For most such as Carl Bansemer (died c. 1911) and James Ford (died c. 1913) the archival record contains little but a name and the year they died.

William Jones, one of few Black prisoners in the Alberta Penitentiary, died on May 1^st, 1910. Jones was the only prisoner to die in the Alberta Penitentiary in the 1910-1911 fiscal year. Jones lived the last year of his life in the penitentiary. His body was interred at the Edmonton Cemetery in an unmarked grave, located about 100 metres from the large and well-maintained headstone of Matt McCauley. McCauley was warden of the Penitentiary during William Jones’ imprisonment and death.

The unmarked graves of William Jones, Fred Houston, and Philip Craine. All three men were incarcerated at the Alberta Penitentiary when they died. Image description: A patch of worn grass in a cemetery, the area has no grave markers and is next to a large pine tree.

Jones committed perjury and was halfway through his sentence when he died. Two local newspaper articles from 1910 reported on his death. The Edmonton Capital reported “Death Released Negro Convict” on May 2^nd, 1910. On the same day the Edmonton Journal reported “Colored Convict Dead.” Though Jones lived in Regina at the time of his conviction, he was taken to Edmonton because Saskatchewan did not have a federal penitentiary until 1911.

In McCauley’s 1911 report to the Inspector of Penitentiaries no mention is made of Jones’ death. In fact, McCauley reported that “the health of the convicts as a whole has been good.” The surgeon’s report also fails to mention Jones’ death specifically. His death was simply reported with no date or cause. The sad story of Jones’ premature death is that of one individual who was trapped in and ultimately killed by Canada’s racial capitalist, settler colonial carceral system.

The Alberta Penitentiary was not a particularly large prison, holding 206 prisoners at its peak in 1913. It was, however, an important piece in the federal penitentiary system which served a few significant functions in this era. First, penitentiaries played a role in establishing capitalist social relations. Poverty and theft were criminalized in society and federal penitentiaries predominantly incarcerated those who were convicted of poverty related crimes. Forced labour was framed as a solution to the perceived immorality of these crimes. Penitentiary officials argued that forced labour, would help prisoners develop “The habit of industry… [which] must be acquired as it is not a natural habit with those convicts whose indolence and idleness have led to a criminal career” (p. xiii). These ideas about prisons functioned to assert those outside waged labour as deviant. Additionally, the forced labour of prisoners was used to produce goods which were sold to finance operations of the penitentiaries, and from 1914-1918 to supply materials for the First World War.

A second key function of the federal penitentiary system was as an arm of settler colonial domination on the prairies. Other federal institutions including Stony Mountain in Manitoba were used to incarcerate Cree, Blackfoot, and Métis participants in the 1885 Resistance. Tracing how early settler colonial laws criminalized Indigenous peoples on the prairies, Ojibwe scholar Heidi Kiiwetinepinesiik Stark notes that a new wing of the Stony Mountain penitentiary was created specifically to hold Indigenous prisoners from 1885 onwards. Penitentiaries worked alongside other containment mechanisms of settler colonialism including Indian Residential Schools and reserves to limit the movement, actions, and cultures of Indigenous Peoples on the plains.

The incarcerated population at the Alberta Penitentiary was mostly made up of European settlers, however many Indigenous peoples were also incarcerated there. Arthur Bullshields, a member of the Kainai Nation died at the penitentiary in 1911 or 1912. Bullshields was serving a two-year sentence for horse stealing. The cause of Bullshield’s death and the location of his burial are unknown.

A third function of the Alberta Penitentiary was to disappear people both from social life and from the archival record. When deceased prisoners lives are preserved in the archives I explored, it is exclusively because of sensationalized crimes. One example is Gary Richard Barret who died by hanging on July 14^th, 1909. Barret was sentenced to death after he killed Richard Stedman, the deputy warden of the penitentiary. Reporting from the Edmonton Bulletin documents that Barret had requested to see a doctor, but Stedman refused. On April 15th, 1909while working a shift of forced labour in the carpentry shop, Barret grabbed an axe and hit Stedman on the head, killing him within minutes. Before killing Stedman, Barret was serving a life sentence for murdering his stepson. Barret represented himself in his trial for the killing of Stedman. In his defence he expressed frustration with his perceived lack of a fair trial, both for his original sentence and in the killing of Stedman.

Unmarked grave of Benjamin Wunneade in the Edmonton Cemetery. Image description: A patch of grass with no grave markers in the middle of a cemetery. In the background there are headstones commemorating other individuals.

Another sensationalized crime was Neville Harbottle’s, an internal revenue collector who passed his Civil Service qualifying examinations in 1903. Harbottle started working as a revenue collector in 1901, and in 1908 was sentenced to two years in the penitentiary for stealing $6,913 of public funds and fleeing the city. Harbottle turned himself in the next month. By November he died of an illness he contracted while imprisoned. Harbottle was survived by his wife, four children, and friends who advocated for his release from prison. Harbottle’s status as a middle-class professional man, and the sensationalism surrounding his crime likely contribute to the more robust archive about his life. Yet even when an archival trace does exist, prisoners like Harbottle and Barret are almost entirely reduced to their crimes.

Headstone of Neville Harbottle at the Edmonton Cemetery. (Photo credit Jack Farrell). Image description: A red headstone reads “Sacred to the memory of Neville Harbottle. Born at Hamilton Ont. Oct 1, 1868. Died at Edmonton Alta. Nov 26, 1908.”

In the last years of the Alberta Penitentiary, annual reports stopped providing names of deceased prisoners. Instead, deaths were mentioned in warden’s, surgeon’s, or chaplains’ reports without a name, and often without a cause of death. For instance, in a one-year period from April 1918 to March 1919, 6 prisoners died. Warden Ponsford reported that “about the middle of October [1918] the flu epidemic got into the institution… 100 of the convicts were … affected with it, six of the convicts having died from its effects” (p. 21).

The last nine deaths at the penitentiary took place between 1915-1919. Of those nine people, only one is named, simply as “Convict Cohen” (p. 20). When I began researching this story, I endeavoured to paint a picture of the lives of individuals who died in the Alberta Penitentiary and the injustices they faced during their incarceration. However, the extremely limited archival traces of these individuals make it difficult to explore details of their lives, and at times to even identify them.

I visited the City of Edmonton archives, the online collections of Public Safety Canada, City of Edmonton cemetery records and cemeteries themselves. The limited archival traces of those who died in the Alberta Penitentiary is evidence that the federal penitentiary system in Canada has functioned for over 100 years to disappear predominantly Indigenous, racialized, and poor people as it continues to do into the 21^st century.

Matt Ormandy is a researcher living in Edmonton, Alberta. He thanks Judy Davidson for helpful comments on an earlier draft of this piece. He also thanks Jack Farrell for accompanying him on multiple trips to Edmonton Cemetery to search for headstones which they ultimately discovered were not there.   

Suggested Readings 

Adams, Howard. Prison of Grass: Canada from the Native Point of View. Trent Native Series: No. 1. General Pub., 1975.

Briarpatch Magazine. (September/October, 2021). Prison Abolition Issue. Briarpatch. https://briarpatchmagazine.com/issues/view/september-october-2021

House, Jordan and Asaf Rashid. Solidarity beyond Bars: Unionizing Prison Labour. Fernwood Publishing, 2022

Pasternak, Shiri, Kevin Walby, and Abby Stadnyk, eds. Disarm, Defund, Dismantle: Police Abolition in Canada. (Between the Lines, 2022).

Schalk, Owen. “The capitalist roots of anti-Indigenous racism in Canada: Howard Adams’ Prison of Grass.” Liberated Texts, November 22, 2021, https://liberatedtexts.com/reviews/the-capitalist-roots-of-anti-indigenous-racism-in-canada-howard-adams-prison-of-grass/.