The Donnelly Album: The Complete and Authentic Account of Canada's Famous Feuding Family

Peter Martin is a senior projects editor at the University of Ottawa
Press.

Anyone who thinks that things were better in the old days should read
this account of the goings-on in Biddulph Township (near London,
Ontario) a little more than a century ago. The story began in June 1857,
when James Donnelly killed Patrick Farrell with a handspike (the men
were part of a land-clearing crew at the time, and they were drunk), and
climaxed on the night of February 3, 1880, when a mob of (mostly drunk)
vigilantes killed five Donnellys: James, his wife, two sons, and a
niece. Between these two defining events were innumerable knife fights,
shootings, cattle rustlings, barn burnings, livestock mutilations, fist
fights, acts of sabotage, barroom brawls, and lawsuits.

Biddulph and the village of Lucan were rife with divisions—between
the lawless Donnellys and almost everybody else, between Catholics and
Protestants, Liberals and Conservatives, Irish and non-Irish. There were
disputes over land titles, money, and stagecoach routes. There was a
priest who railed from the pulpit against the Donnellys, and then
expressed anguish when they were murdered. There were police constables
who were little better than bounty hunters. There were corrupt and
incompetent magistrates. Inevitably, there were big-city (London)
lawyers who profited from all of this.

Ray Fazakas is more thorough and less judgmental than earlier writers
who distorted the story by simplifying it. Readers will occasionally
find themselves confused but never bored. Most of the book’s more than
100 illustrations are period photographs. The most telling of these
depicts 12 men—jurors in the key trial of one of the vigilantes who
participated in the murder of the Donnellys. The jury acquitted, then
rushed off to the studio to have their picture taken. They look
unmistakably smug; they may even have been sober.