Canadian Torture
Here’s a piece of Canadian history for you. In 1734, an African slave by the name of Marie-Joseph Angelique set fire to her slave owner’s home in Montreal (yes, there was slavery in Canada) to avoid being sold, and to run away with her lover. The fire not only burned down the slave owner’s house, but it destroyed most of the city of Montreal as well. As a result, Angelique was accused, tortured and hanged shortly after the incident, which has been documented by several Black Canadian scholars within the last 20 years. The latest publication about this tragic affair is The Hanging of Angélique: The Untold Story of Canadian Slavery and the Burning of Old Montreal written by Afua Cooper. Cooper’s book is on Maclean’s magazine’s list of “recent, new and upcoming books”. An interview with the author can be found in one of the January issues of The Hour:
The French wanted to make an example of Angélique. So Montreal Judge Pierre Raimbault found her guilty on circumstantial evidence and sentenced her to death.
On the morning of June 21, Raimbault went to the prison where Angélique was being held and told her she would die by public hanging that same day on a specially built gallows on rue St-Paul, right in front of the charred remains of the Francheville home. Afterwards Angélique's corpse would be burnt on a pyre…
… when Montreal's hangman and torturer Mathieu Léveillé - himself a black man from Martinique - crushed her bloodied legs and knees, Angélique confessed that she, and only she, had set the fire. Half satisfied, Raimbault sent Angélique to the gallows.
Angélique was barefoot, dressed in a knee-high white chemise with the word "incendiaire" embroidered on the front and back. Since she could not walk, she was piled into a rubbish cart in which she held a two-pound torch that symbolized her crime, arson.
Léveillé drove the horse-drawn rubbish cart surrounded by guards through the blackened streets of lower Old Montreal, where residents stood roadside jeering and spitting on Angélique.
(via The Hour)
I read that Angélique was African descendent but she was born in Portugal, of a white father and black mother. Possibly her name was Maria José Angélica but was changed to french as she came to Canada. Changing the name according to the country's language was a common practice up to the mid-19 th century. (Comment this)
Terry (Comment this)