John Wilson Murray

“I will follow criminals to any place and run them down.”

My uncle was a trooper for the Ohio State Highway Patrol.  He covered, with only two or three others, the 700+ square miles of Ohio's largest county, seemingly always on duty and always driving that beast of a Ford Fairlane or Chevy Impala.  In the trunk was the standard array of safety equipment, from highway flares to a first aid kit to a three day food and water pack in case he was lodged in a snow drift [that would happen enough that, when I first received my driver's license, we were required by law to have emergency food and water in our cars in the winter].  There was also a Remington pump-action shotgun and a Thompson Sub-Machine Gun in there.  My cousins and I liked to look in that massive trunk and imagine Uncle Roger's adventures.

Unk's ride.

When I was older and driving to visit my parents back in Ohio, I would spend the better part of the journey covering that big county that was my now-retired uncle's former beat.  The idea that a few troopers kept law and order in those small towns sprinkled throughout the snow, most of which had no police department or even a town sheriff with a nervous, incompetent deputy, amazed me even more than it did in childhood.  What a remarkable charge that was, and what remarkable men they were who kept some semblance of peace among the boondockers, hillbillies, moonshiners, common and career criminals, and inebriates who could make life unpredictable in the towns surrounding the "big city" of Ashtabula.  [Before any scolding social justice warriors lose their water, my uncle and I are hillbillies, too, thus we can use the "H-Word".]

Now imagine what it was like to serve as the sole agent of the law in a 400,000+ square mile Canadian province with no car, machine gun, radio, or even highway flares.  That was the charge of John Wilson Murray, who became a remarkable and celebrated detective at the turn of the 19th and 20th centuries.

It should come as no surprise that Murray was a Scotsman, not just because of his surname, but because of the rather offhand manner in which he approached a daunting responsibility.  Born in Edinburgh in 1840, Murray came to the United States with his family while still a child and, when of age, joined the U.S. Navy as a common sailor.  As most of his experience was realized during the Civil War, he performed his duty in the Great Lakes as part of the flotilla guarding a prisoner-of-war cantonment on an island in Lake Erie.  After the war's end, he joined the Erie, Pennsylvania police department, eventually serving as a detective.

With the planned completion of the Canadian intra-continental railroad, there was a general call for all sorts of workers, not just engineers, conductors, and boiler-men, but also personnel for the railway's own security force.  As it was backed by an eager government's budget, the salary was higher than that of a small city's police force [$1500 a year], so Murray became a railroad detective.  His service was so exemplary that he was hired to a rather particular job created in 1875, that of Detective for the Government of Ontario.  He was the only detective from Toronto to Pickle Lake, from Wood Creek to the border of Manitoba, responsible for investigating crimes committed among the 2,000,000 residents, from the cosmopolitan to the tribal.

From the official Ontario government history, we learn the reasons for the creation of this position:

Murray’s appointment was a response to weaknesses in the existing system of policing and prosecution. The major urban centres had introduced police forces from the 1830s, and the 1858 amendments to the Municipal Corporations Act had required towns of more than 15,000 people to establish their own constabularies. In rural areas law enforcement was the responsibility of local justices of the peace and county constables, who were remunerated by a system of fees. In all areas prosecution was the responsibility of county crown attorneys, who did no investigative work but prosecuted on the basis of whatever information the police could provide. Detectives were not a major feature of the system. Prior to Murray’s appointment the provincial government had employed private detectives on an ad hoc basis, and specialized “detectives” had been used for political purposes, for example in the observation and suppression of Fenian activity. They were also used by the new dominion government for the guarding of public buildings and the investigation of counterfeiting operations. Some municipal forces and county constabularies employed them from the 1860s, but they were not systematically used.

By the 1870s three principal weaknesses had been perceived in this system, especially in rural areas. First, in the words of Hugh McKinnon, chief of the Belleville police, the constable, who was “usually a poor man,” could afford only to “take a look about the immediate neighbourhood”; he went no further because the fees were “totally inadequate to reimburse him for either his time or necessary expenses.” Secondly, localism resulted in patronage, corruption, and jurisdictional disputes, which hampered the investigation of crimes involving prominent figures and of many major crimes. Thirdly, there was an increasing perception that rural constables were simply not capable of investigating anything but minor offences. [1]

Murray proved peripatetic in the pursuit of justice, well-known not only on the streets of Toronto but in many of the remote outposts in the province.  A stern and abiding presence, he also showed an aptitude for self-promotion that ensured that his story and photo were often in the newspaper.  I'm sure that was necessary for the job, too, as it was as much political as investigatory.

Canada's largest city, circa 1890

In 1890, Murray was involved in solving the most notorious murder in the province, the infamous Birchall Case [2], made more prominent due to the advent of Ontario's nascent tabloid newspaper industry.  As all reporting needs a hook to draw in readers [and advertisers], and the best hook is an inspiring hero, Murray's fame was solidified throughout all of Canada.  So much so that, from that time forward, he was often referred to in the press as "The Great Detective".

Murray would, with the aid of some journalist ghost writers, author an autobiography entitled [what else?] The Memoirs of the Great Detective.  Since it was meant to be a general part of tabloid ballyhoo, it cannot be trusted as an accurate source, but it sold papers and enabled Murray to enjoy job security.  Upon his death at the age of 66 in 1906, he was still serving as Ontario's detective, albeit sharing the responsibility with a few others as the provincial population had increased.

The Canadian Broadcasting Company produced a successful TV show in the early 1980's, "The Great Detective", about Murray's exploits, most of them based on factual cases.  The even more popular CBC show, "Murdoch Mysteries" [also available on streaming services and syndicated on U.S. television] is an extrapolation of Murray's work.  As designed for modern tastes, Detective Murdoch uses science and psychology to solve his turn-of-the-century crimes; it should be noted that Murray more often used the more physical and coercive tools of his era to earn confessions.

Nowadays, detection is the responsibility of the Ontario Provincial Police, or OPP, who can boast of over 6200 officers addressing issues of crime and disorderliness.  In their museum, one may read of the prominence of John Wilson Murray's contribution not just to the development of Canadian policing, but in maintaining a sense of lawfulness for which Canadians are still well-known.

So much so that each year an honor guard of the OPP meet at Murray's grave to throw him a salute, replace the OPP, traditional and contemporary Canadian flags that adorn it, and honor his memory in a manner appropriate to such a pre-eminent lawman.