Lois Simmie - The Secret Lives of Sgt. John Wilson: A True Story of Love & Murder

ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS

There are many people to thank for assistance with this book. Lynn Hudson gave generously of his knowledge and supplied the cover photographs and others. His historical booklet Murder in Uniform, co-authored by Christina Stewart, started me on this odyssey. Thanks to Glenn Wright, historian at the Ottawa rcmp Historical Branch, for pointing me in the right direction and for casting his professional eye over the manuscript for accuracy in police references. Thanks to Rob Sanders, my publisher, and my editor, Jennifer Glossop, who has made another one better. Thanks to Byrna Barclay, who kept saying, Not another letter! and who gave me so much of her time, advice and encouragement, not to mention her office, computer and Kleenex for several days. Thanks to Moira Gilmour, who read the manuscript and made suggestions for the truth of the Scottish voice, customs and geographical references, and to Betty Graham, my test reader. Thanks to my old friend, June Gibson, for her generous support, and to friends and family for putting up with me these last two years. And very special thanks to Scott Simmie, who made sure I got to Scotland and home again.

All letters, police reports and telegrams are from the National Archives of Canada. I also consulted the following sources in the writing of this book:

Christina Stewart and Lynn Hudson. Murder in Uniform. Privately published, 1978.

Iain Somerville and Christine Warren. Bygone Carluke. Glasgow: Lanarkshire Heritage Series, 1991.

Ellen Pettigrew. The Silent Enemy: Canada and the Deadly Flu of 1918. Saskatoon: Western Producer Prairie Books, 1983.

Ren J. Dubois. The White Plague. New Brunswick, New Jersey: Rutgers University Press, 1987.

Mark Caldwell. The Last Crusade: The War on Consumption 18621954. New York: Athenium, 1988.

Patricia Giesler. Valour Remembered: Canada and the First World War. Ottawa: Department of Veteran Affairs, 1982.

The Saskatoon Daily Star, 19191920.

AFTERWORD

Fifteen years ago while working in a second-hand bookstore, I read a historical booklet called Murder in Uniform, by Christina Stewart and Lynn Hudson. It told the story of John Wilson, the only member of the RNWMP , including the RCMP , to ever be tried and executed for a crime. It had all the elements for an intriguing film, but not knowing what to do about that, I put the idea away. But the story wouldnt go away. Every so often Id tell it to someone, and no one had ever heard of this fascinating piece of Saskatchewan history. Then in 1992 I told the story to Rob Sanders, publisher at Douglas & McIntyre Ltd., who said, Thats a wonderful story. You write it and well publish it.

In order to do that, I needed much more information, and wasnt finding it. Then Glenn Wright, a historian at the RCMP headquarters in Ottawa, suggested I ask for File #3275, Volumes 1 through 4, at the National Archives in Ottawa. This I did while in Ottawa for meetings of the Writers Union of Canada in 1993. At the archives they produced four full boxes of files all labelled John Wilson MurderWaldheim. Needless to say, I didnt get to any Writers Union meetings that weekend, and I stayed over an extra two days reading and tagging pages for photocopying.

It was all there, beginning with the impassioned, pain-filled letters from Elizabeth Craig to the police, begging for news of her sister, to the last crime report filed on the day John Wilson was hanged. A multiplicity of crime reports and letters by the RNWMP and the SPP, urgent coded telegrams, Wilsons forged letters to Jessie, his letters to Pollys family, the autopsy report, Wilsons statements and much more were in those boxes. In the last file in the last box was a large manila envelopethe kind that closes with a string looped in a figure 8full of passionate love letters from John Wilson to Jessie Patterson and a few from her to him. When I finished reading through all this material, I knew I had to write the book.

But why would I write my first non-fiction book about this particular story, of all the stories out there? asked another writer. Not until then did I realize how much this story resonated for me personally. It took place, or much of it did, in small-town Saskatchewan, where I grew up. My father, Ed Binns, who immigrated to Canada from Kentucky as a young man, was a great storyteller, and many of the stories he told were about the early days in Saskatchewan and the Mounted Police. He was fascinated by that colourful history. I thought of him often as I wrote the book, and wished I could tell him about it. I passed so many hours of my childhood at his desk in the Pool elevator office in Mervin, drawing on old grain ticket books with indelible pencils, and listening to the voices of rural prairie men. Those voices are as natural to me as breathing, and there are many in this book.

And as I wrote about Polly Wilson I thought often of my grandmother, Annie Thomson, who came to Ontario from Scotland as a young woman. I realized for the first time how many of her customs and habits came from her Scots background. She was a courageous, resourceful woman with a strong faith, and like Polly Wilson, she worked as a seamstress before she married my grandfather.

My mother told me she remembered my grandparents talking about the Wilson case. They kept clippings of it, and since I read everything in that house, its likely I read about this story fifty years ago. To answer my friends question, I chose this story to write (or it chose me) not only because its such a good one, but also because I felt at home in it.

From the time I started working on the book, Id wanted to see Scotland, but could not afford to go. In February 1995, my son, Scott Simmie, was home for a visit from Moscow, where he produced the news for CBC. He presented me with a ticket to Scotland and said, You still have time to see these places youre writing about. I went on April 1, and I did see those places for myself; the village of Slamannan, in lovely, hilly, sheep-studded countryside, close to the Ochil Hillshills formed from slag which in Pollys childhood were lit at night by the flames of an iron foundryand with the blue and purple Pentland Hills in the distance. I saw the stone schoolhouse where she went to school, and the church where she married John Wilson, the love of her life. In that churchyard, many people in this story are buried.

In the village of Kilncadzow (Kilkeggie), I learned that the corner of Portage and Main in Winnipeg is not the windiest place in the world. Apart from a few newer bungalows, it looks as it must have looked when Polly Wilson kissed her children good-bye and departed on the quest that would end in a culvert so many miles away. The land slopes away on all sides of the village, and the vista looking toward the distant Tinto Hill is moody but beautiful.

In my research at the New Register House in Edinburgh, I found that John and Polly Wilsons daughter, Helen (or Ella), was still living at age eighty-three. She had lived all her life close to her grandparents home, which told me that they had likely raised the Wilson children.

Polly Wilsons parents did indeed raise the two Wilson children, Helen told me, and apart from this terrible tragedy in their lives, they wanted for nothing. No one can imagine what its been like to live with this all my life, she said.

Sadly, William Hutchison, broken-hearted about Pollys fate, died December 8, 1921, just two years after hearing that his daughters husband had murdered her. He was seventy-two. Pollys mother, Helen Hutchison, died March 7, 1935, at the age of eighty-two. James Hutchison was present at both deaths, and he signed the death certificates.