Sometime in January 1909 a passenger named Daniel M. Brady, president of Brady Brass Company, accused train car conductor George W. Griffin - an African American - of stealing a card case containing about $20 and a few other items.
Little is known about Brady other than that he was the brother of James "Diamond Jim" Brady who gained a fabulous fortune in railroad supplies. Brady Brass does not appear to have had any Montreal operations at the time.
Montreal police heeded Brady's complaint and hustled Griffin off into jail for two hours (other accounts say he was detained overnight).
Judge Choquette then released him without charge on the grounds that there was no evidence that Griffin had committed any crime.
Griffin did not lay a complaint against the Montreal police, instead he focused his attentions on his accuser Brady.
Back in New York Griffin sued Brady for $10,000 (roughly the equivalent of $277,000 in today's terms) for falsely accusing him and leading to the false imprisonment.
The jury sympathized with Griffin and opted to award him $2,500, (about $70,000 today.)
Justice Philip Henry Dugro instead told Griffin's lawyer that he would order a new trial if they didn't accept $300, a sum that the defendants had already refused as a settlement.
Griffin's lawyers didn't bite and Dugro lowered the settlement to $300 (around $8,000 in 2018 money).
The judge then issued a lengthy and highly dubious statement of the most offensive quality explaining why he thought Griffin should get a lower settlement due to the colour of his skin. The comments were reported by the New York Times and do not appear to have been part of an official transcript.
Judge Dugro said:
You cannot say that he is just the same as a white man, when you come to say how much his name will suffer. He might suffer more. But, after all, what are the probabilities about it? Is it likely that when a colored man is arrested and imprisoned he feels just as much shame as a white man of any circumstances might? I think if you were to take the mayor of the city and arrest him he would feel very much more humiliated than this porter, from the fact he was the mayor and not a colored man, for if he were a colored man he might not feel quite as much humiliation and shame.
If one sees a colored man is just as good as a white man, for the law says he is, but he has not the same amount of injury under all circumstance that a white man would have. Maybe in a colored community down South, where white men were held in great disfavor he might be more injured, but after all that is not this sort of community. In this sort of a community I daresay the amount of evil that would flow to the colored man from a charge like this would not be as great as it probably would be to a white man.Countless newspapers across the United States ran a wire piece on the story on May 22, 1909 but the entire episode appears to have gone under the radar in Montreal, as the dailies do not appear to have reported on it.
The jury are well aware of that fact. After all, the fact that he is a colored man just as much a fact as anything else. The fact that he was a young man was a fact, just as well as anything else that the jury had a right to consider. Young men have not any more rights than old men, but the jury may consider the fact that they are young.
A few editorials criticized the judge but the story otherwise disappeared into the mists of time.
Griffin apparently attempted to appeal the verdict but it was upheld twice,* in spite of the blatant racism of the decision.
*Fault Lines: Tort Law as Cultural Practice By David Engel, Michael McCann p. 162
You should correct the statement that Griffin was a "train car conductor". He was more probably a sleeping car porter. Trains had only one conductor, whose authority was higher than that of any other employee on the train, including the engineer's. In 1909 no black man would have been allowed to be promoted conductor. Sleeping and parlour car porters and dining car staff including cooks and waiters were reserved for black men. It was as rigid as that in Canada as well. Conductors had responsibility for all fares collected and had to see that passengers, express, checked baggage and mail were safely embarked at each station so that schedules were kept. They could throw drunken or unruly passengers off at the next station, whether the train was scheduled to stop there or not. Extra-fare parlour or sleeping cars had their own porters to fetch drinks, stow luggage, or prepare berths. Shoes were placed outside compartments or sections and it was the porter's job to shine them by morning.
ReplyDeleteLittle Burgundy had a large black population because of the numbers of railway employees associated with the CPR and Grand Trunk, later CNR and the proximity to Windsor, Bonaventure, and later Central, Stations. Oscar Peterson's father was one such an employee.
Yes I agree with MTC 1 streetcar. As a matter of thought I believe that the practice continued up to the 50ths. I worked for the CNR at that time.
ReplyDelete