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| Victim Raoul Adelard |
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| Murder scene. "Scene of Ghastly Snowdon Tragedy. Corporation- owned shack near which Henry Higginbottom, a civic employee, discovered the body of Raoul Delorme, wealthy college student, early Saturday morning. Higginbottom is seen posing for a photographer to re-enact his find. |
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| J. Adelard Delorme is picked up and driven to police station for questioning. |
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| A scene from Delorme's trial |
Delorme, 24, was found lying dead at Coolbrooke and Snowdon in January 1922 with six bullets in his head and upper spine.
It was later determined that he had been tossed out of a car after a struggle.
His half-brother Adelard was a priest and they lived together with two sisters on St. Hubert when Raoul wasn't attending Ottawa university.
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| Trial court officials (judge, jury, lawyers, etc) visits the Delorme residence at 190 St. Hubert, (address has since been changed). "The scene outside the Delorme home as the travelling court made its first stop in its 40-mile trip via Snowdon and Cote St. Michel yesterday." |
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| Trial court officials visit the murder scene (Decarie and Snowdon area) |
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He had recently taken out a $25,000 life insurance on his half-brother. His trial received incredible media attention, with attention to many details, one paper even published his will on page 1.
The first jury found him not guilty by reason of insanity, soon afrer he given a certificate of sanity and two hung juries ensued in 1922 and 1923 another in 1924 finally acquitted him.
Adelard faced three juries and was never convicted.
Eventually an insurance company was forced to issue him at least some of the inheritance money, after unsuccessfully arguing that the death was a suicide and was therefore not eligible for settlement.
He died of a brain hemorrhage in 1942.
1922, the Delorme case, Reverend Adelard Delorme accused of killing his brother, caused quite an uproar in the catholic community, a few trials ensued,this was a murder that took place in the Snowdon district
ReplyDeleteBack then, the retarded catholics who were on the jury could not conceive that a priest could be a murderer and acquitted him as a matter of course.
ReplyDeleteKinda like those who murdered blacks in the South…
I'm very interested in the location of one of the photos in particular. It is the photo of the cars, crowds and court officials seemingly in the middle of the country somewhere near Snowdon and Decarie.
ReplyDeleteIn the middle of the photo, there is what looks to be a duplex in the distance. Beyond the duplex are trees and a very large brick building seen above it that appears to be at least three or four storeys high. That might be the clue as to the exact location of this photo.
While it looks like the old Robitaille Motors (and formerly Snowdon De Luxe Garage) on the west side of Decarie just south of Queen Mary (and still there today), the Lovell's Directories don't show that building until after the photo was taken. The only other similar building might be an apartment building that would have to have been built by 1922.
So does anyone have a clue as to where the exact photo location is? Are we on Snowdon? On Decarie? On Coolbrook? In which direction are we looking?
Thanks for your help.
It's hard to tell from that photo where exactly the victim was found.
ReplyDeleteHowever, there might be a clue in the re-enactment photo next to the headshot. The church steeple in the background might be that of a forerunner of St. Antonin Church, presently at the corner of Snowdon and Coolbrooke.
Judging by the angle of the morning sun, the re-enacted murder-scene in photo 2 would be looking at the south side of the shack, therefore the viewer would be facing the north side of Snowdon Avenue and standing approximately 20 paces east of Coolbrook (note that Lovell's spelling is "Colbrook" up until 1927-28 when it is corrected to Coolbrook).
ReplyDeleteAccording to a 1925 map, the church in the background must be St. Matthew's Anglican Church on the northwest corner of Coolbrook and Snowdon Avenue. See the more revealing photo here:
http://www.museevirtuel-virtualmuseum.ca/sgc-cms/expositions-exhibitions/detective-investigator/en/zoom/mcq92.html
At that era, Snowdon Avenue began at Decarie Blvd. then zig-zagged slightly north and then west again at Coolbrook where the church was located. The front door of the church is on Coolbrook (as shown), its actual address first appearing in 1926-27 Lovell's.
Regarding photo 7 (assuming that it is indeed in the vicinity of the murder scene)--again with the late-spring or early-summer's morning sun's shadows in mind--is that the viewer is standing on Snowdon Avenue and facing east and across a very rustic-looking Decarie Blvd. with Musset Avenue clearly going uphill in the background. Musset was later renamed Snowdon Avenue to match up as the logical continuation from the west side of Decarie.
In the left upper background appears to be the hazy outline--not of Mount Royal, which from such a perspective would be too far to the right--but of Northmount, the hill just east of Queen Mary and Decelles, upon which the University of Montreal would later be built.
Who can say exactly what the crowd is looking at? Surely not the "shack". The area is too wide open. The horse in the left side of the photo would be facing south on Decarie.
The 2-storey house on Musset directly behind the pole which appears from the edge of the top of the photo may still be there, or perhaps later demolished for the Decarie Expressway.
For such a well-publicized cass, there must surely be many more photos like this one. Serious archival research will be needed.
Note the popularity of those "straw-boater" hats!
I omitted to include the address of St. Matthew's Church: it is listed in the 1926-27 Lovell's as 240 Colbrook (later renamed Coolbrook), located on the west side of that street.
ReplyDeleteFor researchers, bear in mind that on the island of Montreal (with some suburban exceptions), on north-south streets, addresses ending in an even number always appear on the west side and the odd-ending addresses on the east side.
Likewise, east-west running streets have their address numbers ending in an odd number on the north side of the street, and even-ending addresses on the south side.
(Excluding the exceptions (such as some angled-streets in Lachine's industrial park, for example), fact-finding is speeded up once you have memorized this arrangement.
Thanks Harold and Urban Legend for the speculation. If indeed we are looking east on Snowdon (Musset) in Photo 6 of 7 with Decarie running left to right, then what is the large building seen beyond (and above) the Duplex in the middle of the photo? Iona School was only built in 1935 and would be to the right of that building and there are no other large buildings like it in the area.
ReplyDeleteOne building I find particularly fascinating in that area of Snowdon, is the old and large Robitaille Motors garage. It is still there on the west side of Decarie just south of Queen Mary at the corner of Wellsteed. The Snowdon De Luxe Garage as it was once known, is very similar to the now demolished Mansion's Garage on the west side of Guy between St. Catherine and De Maisonneuve. Why were these garages built? Finding parking at the time would have been relatively easy so you wouldn't need that much indoor parking space. It seems much too large and expensive for a car dealership of the 1930s when empty land was still relatively cheap and available for a large outdoor lot. The garage has multi-levels with ramps so it wasn't used for repairs which would have meant pits or lifts.
The Robitaille Garage in the early 1960s had a go-kart track in it for a year or two on one of the upper levels. Imagine the deafening noise and the noxious fumes. The teenagers of the day didn't seem to mind and neither did the health and safety officials.
Ah...more speculation. More head scratching and more interesting reading. Many thanks for everyone's thoughts, research and interest in Montreal neighbourhood history.
It would be preferable to examine the actual photo 7 print or at least have more information and more photos taken by the photographer at the scene, which may very well be located somewhere else other than in Snowdon. We just don't know. This a jigsaw puzzle with too many missing pieces.
ReplyDeleteThere does appear to be some kind of building behind that duplex, but it does not match up with anything circa the 1920s in that general direction. I would even hazard a guess that there were probably very few buildings of that size in the Snowdon area (unless it is situated on a hill a anf not just taller) until the late 20s early 30s, but I could be wrong, of course.
I first considered that the upward sloping hill in the background might be Coolbrook facing south of Snowdon Ave., but that would then place the aforementioned tall building in the background somewhere on Cote St. Luc Road, and set the time of day that the photo was taken in the early afternoon.
In any event, in the Lovell's 1922-23 edition there is no garage building listed on the block where the indoor garage at 5006-5008 Decarie currently exists today. The 1930-31 edition begins using the four-digit addresses on Decarie (changed over from the previous 3-digit ones). In the 1931-32 edition, the address 5008 makes its first appearance as "Proulx Bros. Snowdon Garage". A Bank of Montreal is at 5010, and McCrory Coal Co. Ltd. at 5012, then Queen Mary intersects.
More information is needed for a conclusive answer. Wish I had a time machine!
Urban Legend, I believe your first assumption is the correct one. The crime reenactment photo (cars, people and horse-drawn wagon) appears to have been taken from the west side of Coolbrook and just north of Snowdon (as if you would be standing on the lawn of today's Saint Antonin's Church).
ReplyDeleteWe are looking south on Coolbrook toward Cote-Saint-Luc Road. The horse-drawn wagon is facing west on Snowdon.
The distant hill to the left is the hill behind Monklands or today's Villa Maria School. The large building in the distance above the "duplex" is the large Catholic Orphanage on the west side of Decarie just south of Cote-Saint-Luc, which according to Lovell's, was there at the time of the photo. The trim around the windows and even the roof line of the orphanage building seem to match the one in the photo.
I realized that the orphanage did exist in that era, but wondered if it could actually be seen from street level from as far north as Coolbrook and Snowdon Avenue.
ReplyDeleteToday, of course, it cannot be seen at all due to the tall trees and intervening housing--especially now since that high rise was built on the southwest corner of Decarie and Cote St. Luc Road.
Furthermore, despite discrepancies among old maps, Snowdon Avenue and the former Musset Avenue do not precisely meet in a straight line, so the aforementioned photo must indeed be facing south on Coolbrook from a point just north of Snowdon Avenue.
It would appear that the building behind the pole which extends from the very top of the photo is no longer there, as the duplexes currently on Coolbrook are much closer to the street--unless, of course Coolbrooke was later widened.
A tricky photo to work with!
Urban Legend,
ReplyDeleteActually that duplex at 4645 and 4643 is still there. That's the two-storey building in the middle of the photo. In fact, most of the area from Snowdon to that duplex was still empty up to 1940 according to fire insurance maps so the view would almost be the same. Coolbrook was widened somewhat. If you go to Google Streetview, you can see the building. Note the window arrangements and the trim. It's the same building. It even has the enclosed stairway in the back.
This shot is definetly looking south along Coolbrook, that white house with the peaked roof was just recently demolished to build condos. You can still see that white building in google maps.
ReplyDeleteTo the previous post; the other duplex style homes built on the East side of Coolbrook went up in 1938 and 1939, not sure what the fire insurance maps are showing.