Village Squire, 1980-03, Page 19'THE DON NH%LLY HUMES7`EAD.
The Donnellys
100 years later
New book reprints clippings on the 1880 murders
The ghost of the Donnelly tragedy
continues to haunt the Lucan area 100
years after the murder of the Donnelly
family.
As this is the centennial year of that
historic event, it would seem like a good
time to put out a book on the subject and
two London area men have done just that,
in a book which compiles old newspaper
clippings on the Biddulph tragedy. Called
The Donnelly Tragedy, 1880-1980, the
book has a foreword by James Reaney who
wrote his own dramatization of the
Donnelly events.
In his foreword, Mr. Reaney says.
"Reader, pretend that it is a hundred years
ago. In Canada, what story would have just
broken in every newspaper from St. John
to Victoria? THE BIDDULPH TRAGEDY!
For almost a year from 4 February 1880
onward. not a day went by without :,ome
new and startling development in the
search tor just who had murdered five
members of the Donnelly family in the
middle of the night and why. Was the 14
year old boy who hid under the four-poster
bed in James Donnelly's room and saw the
mob enter the house to be believed or. .
If at the time you were lucky enough to
live within a hundred miles of London,
where the circus -like trials took place, two
local papers. one Grit and the other Tory,
one called the ADVERTISER, the other
called the FREE PRESS could have slaked
your thirst for reports on Biddulph, the
Donnellys and their troubles and tribula-
tions. So intense was the curiosity of the
time that the files of the London Free Press
for the crucial year of 1880 have completely
disappeared except for bits and pieces in
old scrapbooks. So, apparently, had the
pamphlet the Free Press published some
weeks after the murders; it contained
unique interviews with friends of both the
Donellys and their enemies, Again all
copies seemed to have been "read to
pieces". A few copies of a similar
publication by the Advertisier survived."
Donald L. Cosens, a St. Thomas
auctioneer and historian and Ed Phelps of
London found the missing clippings and
VILLAGE SQUIRE/MARCH 1980 PG. 17