The Real Haunted Story Of New Westminster

New Westminster's Glenbrook Ravine Park border grass seems innocuous from afar. It is hidden behind a large apartment and elder centre complex by a modest metal gate with a sign. Dog walkers and youngsters seldom notice. For over 70 years, it was known as Boot Hill and at least 43 or 47 or 62, depending on who you ask. Condemned inmates from the adjacent long demolished provincial penitentiary were buried.

There, child molesters, murderers, petty criminals, bullies and BC do cabores were among them. Several of their bones are in unmarked graves and stone markers with prisoner numbers. Boot Hill presumably received its first body. About 1913, although the BC Penitentiary had been the province's first highest security facility since the late 1870s.

Ravine was home to a park and Government House before. Construction this hill would make a beautiful old park. In 1859, Colonel Moody wrote the governor. I defend people in.

Beautiful Glen and valley. I hope you like Queens Ravine in his 1879 report, the exasperated federal penitentiary inspector wrote that. It needs no argument to show how incongruous, how repugnant to good taste. Leaving aside the incentive to breach of discipline and escape, it were sick to have games, music and dancing and other amusements.

With all the attendant boisterous mirth, because prisoners could see park picnics. Unclaimed criminals remains were donated to medical colleges or deposited in Douglas Rd. cemetery sites before Boot Hill, which was expensive and time consuming, requiring guarded inmates to dig through pine roots for three days.

Gin Okims 1914 gravestone is the cemetery's oldest. Although Joseph Smith and Herman Wilson were buried unmarked the year before Smith, a small, stocky 24 year old sailor. Was serving 10 years for theft and violence in 1911, after dumping ammonia on a Main Street jewelry shop owner.

Smith and Wilson murdered a prison guard during a jailbreak, which the New Westminster British Columbian termed one of the most skillful and dangerously near successful attempts at jail delivery that has ever been recorded.

After defeating 3 guards, the couple was caught in a gunfight outside the external gate that killed JH Johnson and badly wounded Wilson. On January 31st, 1913, Smith was hung in the yard where Johnson fell and Wilson died of a neck gunshot after jail authorities refused medical assistance, the British Columbian reported that.

He displayed the same fearless front and iron nerve that had characterized his whole career and more recently, in his terrible attempt to escape from prison, in which he killed his guard. Throughout his trial and solitary confinement until his last moment, the newspaper stated Smith was placed in his last resting place in a far corner of the penitentiary grounds, where the world will soon forget him.

Many boot Hill prisoners committed suicide or contracted sickness. A 72 year old petty criminal with 45 convictions died naturally in 1967. Boot Hill is a favorite getaway because convicts buried dead and carved headstones. According to the British Columbian prisoner, Philip Hopkins utilized his labor assignment to escape into the thick forest near the graves in March 1913.

The gentleman bandit, Bill Miner, fled the prisons, most renowned breakout in 1907 via the same underbrush before it was transformed into a cemetery. Minor was never discovered in Canada despite province wide searches. Miners accomplice Louis Colecombe died of TB in 1911 and may have been at Boot Hill. His body and memorial are gone. Famous Boot Hill inmate took CS prisoner during 999 isn't in jail.

Light quill talk. First Nations members see us from Greenpoint, BC was twice convicted of murder and manslaughter. The cemetery contained his remains since 1933, but severe rains in 1955 undermined the gully and uncovered his coffin. In 2004, Campbell River historian Candy Lee Chikhite found disinterred and returned Sioux corpse to his homeland after lengthy study.

Other poor individuals die at BC Penitentiary besides. 31933 Doca Bour prisoners died, including number 4214 James Terassoff, the mid 20th century del. Caboor community, protested police with public nudity and burning. To protest obligatory public education, over 600 doca bores were convicted of public nudity in 1931. To accommodate huge ducable immigration, special prisons were erected. Duc's bores had Agassiz Mountain prison by 1962.