Things in History You Should Know: Sir Matthew Baillie Begbie

A 'Thor is My Drinking Buddy' original! Are you feeling privileged yet?

Back in the early days of British Columbia – ‘early’ in this case being defined as after it became a colony and before it became a province – justice was a tricky thing to administer. Tensions, both racial and national, flared. The amount of land to cover wasn’t exactly compact, nor was it easy to traverse, what with all the mountains in the way. And people, being people, refused to stop committing crimes to make things easier for a poor, beleaguered law man.

Enter Matthew Baillie Begbie, the so-called Hanging Judge. Born at sea in 1819 to Scottish parents, he frittered away his first four decades in Great Britain – attending Cambridge, being a lawyer, and that sort of thing. He must have made a decent account of himself in that field, for when the Colony of British Columbia was formed in 1858, it was decided that he should definitely go be a judge there. (Fun fact: the man who introduced the bill in the British Parliament to make BC happen was none other than Sir Edward Bulwer Lytton, of ‘it was a dark and stormy night’ fame. A robust literary career was no bar to politics in those days.)

It wasn’t a cozy desk job like he had back in London and it’s not certain why he accepted it. Most likely, he was the type of person to whom travelling hundreds of miles on horseback to hear a case sounded romantic. He rode about in his circuits, always holding court in full costume and often in his tent. And yes, there was some hanging involved, but not as much as you might think.

At the time, hanging was the only possible sentence for murder. Fifty-two murder trials were conducted during the colonial part of his stint, with thirty-eight convictions and twenty-seven actual hangings. (Begbie had asked for and got clemency for the remaining eleven convicts.) Nevertheless, the soubriquet stuck. Not that he didn’t take advantage of its intimidation factor, which was probably aided by his giant stature.

It also seems like he made it a personal policy not to be an asshole towards the locals, which was always a fine plan when they outnumbered the British in the area ten to one. He still insisted on having his trials be as British as possible, of course, but he made allowances such as switching out the oath on the Bible with something that would actually mean something to them and conducting the proceedings in their language. Did he use an interpreter? No. They were for the weak. He learned those languages, man.

Furthermore, those eleven convicts that he got clemency for were all natives and he could and did convict white men for crimes against natives using evidence from natives. This made him more progressive than approximately 95% of the English-speaking world of the time, give or take.

Now, how did Begbie get along with James Douglas, the governor of BC? It’s complicated. It seems as though most of the time, he dealt with the cranky old bastard quite well. He spoke up for a friend who wished to marry one of Douglas’ daughters and did not immediately get thrown out of the house. He served as a pallbearer at his funeral.

But Begbie made his true feelings be known at Douglas retirement party in 1864. Not only did he have the unmitigated audacity to plonk down beside the soon-to-be ex-governor whilst smoking a pipe – this was considered to be as rude as all hell even back then – he proceeded to give a speech about how he had hated every one of Douglas’ policies and he wasn’t the only one to think so. This didn’t go over well and he was booed into silence.

After BC joined up with the rest of Canada in 1871, Begbie was named its first chief justice of its supreme court. But four years later, during his first vacation in a very long time, Queen Victoria knighted him by surprise and he became Sir Matthew Baillie Begbie. Once he came back, he still rode his circuits and participated in what passed for progressive politics at the time (“I’ve got an idea, everyone! Let’s not be complete jerks towards the minorities and the poor!”). While he charmed the socks off of all the ladies, he never married. Perhaps he never met anyone who was so into horseback riding.

He died in Victoria in 1894 of cancer and buried at Ross Bay Cemetery. It is said that if you visit his grave on the night of the full moon, nothing much will happen. Maybe you’ll get rained on.