100 years ago: Death of prominent Brandon citizen Robert Lane

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This article was published 17/06/2024 (508 days ago), so information in it may no longer be current.

One hundred years ago, prominent Brandonite Robert Lane died. He is known as a notable businessman from the early days of the city. But he is more well known for his family being impacted by a sensational murder.

Born in Ontario in 1862, Lane as a teenager moved with his parents to the Birtle area. As a young man, he relocated to Brandon and established himself in the transport business and as a contractor. His commercial interests ranged from delivering coal and fuel wood to building roads.

Lane also provided ice to Brandon residents. In winter, his crews cut ice from the frozen Assiniboine River. In summer, they delivered the frozen blocks to households to keep food cold in ice boxes.

Another project of Lane’s was a partnership with Brandon butchers William Burchill and John Howey. Using river transport, they shipped cattle to the Yukon gold rush. Good money was made slaughtering the animals in the north and selling the meat to hungry miners. Profits from that enterprise enabled Howey to finance the construction of a building at 934 Rosser Avenue — the Yukon Block.

In 1890, Lane married Mary Robinson of the Birtle area. Born in England in 1867, her family immigrated to Canada when she was a child. Robert and Mary Lane lived at 333 10th Street. Over the years, they had five children. Sadly, their first child, Annie, died at the age of one. In 1898, the Lanes hired a live-in, domestic servant named Hilda Blake.

Blake was born in England and had been sent to Canada as an orphan at age 10. Blake was one of more than 100,000 “home children” shipped to Canada from shortly after Confederation until the start of the Second World War. The children were placed in Canadian families where they performed farm and household chores. They were often mistreated and abused.

Blake ran away from her first placement, which resulted in a battle over her custody with another family. Blake lived in at least one household where there was a mysterious death. She worked for several families in Westman and Winnipeg before she was hired by the Lanes.

Then: the murder in the afternoon of July 5, 1899. Mary, 32 and pregnant, was hanging curtains in her house. Suddenly shot from behind at close range, she ran outside, collapsed to the ground and soon died. The only witness was Blake. The servant reported that Mary had been shot by a tramp, angry after being refused food.

“An Awful Tragedy,” the headline in The Western Sun began. “Mrs. Robert Lane, the Wife of one of Brandon’s Prominent Citizens, Murdered by a Tramp who then Escaped. The City in a Great Turmoil.”

The call went out to find the suspect and search parties materialized to hunt for tramps. At one point, 200 men scoured the eastern outskirts of the city. Several tramps were detained, with cries for lynching luckily avoided.

But Blake’s story soon fell apart. The police discovered she had purchased a gun in Winnipeg a couple of weeks earlier. Blake confessed to the murder to police chief James Kirkcaldy. She said she was jealous of the relationship Mary had with the children.

At her trial in the fall, Blake was found guilty of murder and sentenced to death. She was hanged at the Brandon courthouse on Dec. 27, 1899 and buried there in an unmarked grave. She was 21. The courthouse is now the Rideau Park Personal Care Home.

Blake was the only woman hanged in Manitoba and one of only 11 hanged in Canada. (Murderesses usually had their death sentences commuted).

Friction among classes in the community in those days is examined in a provocative local book. Among those chafing against one another in fin-de-siècle Brandon: respected, prosperous families like the Lanes; lower-class servants like Blake; working-class immigrants in the North End ghetto; and scorned, destitute tramps. The book, by Brandon University academics Reinhold Kramer and Tom Mitchell, is “Walk Towards the Gallows: The Tragedy of Hilda Blake, Hanged 1899.”

In 1900, Lane married Jessie McIlvride. They moved from 10th Street and lived in several residences, ending up at 428 13th Street. The couple had seven children.

Lane died of encephalitis on June 29, 1924. He was 61. He was buried beside his first wife Mary and their daughter Annie in the family plot in the Brandon Cemetery — Section 5, Block E, Plot 3. His widow, Jessie, died five years later and also was buried there.

The obituary in the Brandon Daily Sun described Lane as a “man of quiet demeanor and a good-hearted fellow whose death will be regretted by his fellow citizens.”