‘Hanging Judge’ Matthew Begbie Fought Discriminatory Laws

So said a Victoria Times-Colonist ‘commentary,’ in January.

In addressing B.C.’s heritage of racial prejudice (see Chinese Head Tax Got Off to a Slow Start), professors Hamar Foster and John McLaren (ret’d), of the University of Victoria faculty of law, noted that Sir Matthew Baillie Begbie, “B.C.’s first judge,” was a staunch defender of human rights.

This, in 1884, when such views were totally out of sync with the province’ s general (white) population.

Begbie defended Chinese immigrants by highlighting their well-known “prominent qualities” of industry, economy, sobriety and law abiding-ness. It was these qualities which so put them at odds with the majority of the population that was the real basis of their being discriminated against, he said.

He also walked the talk by striking down repeated attempts by the B.C. Government to draft racially discriminatory legislation and he (wrote Foster and McLaren), “lobbied Ottawa, usually unsuccessfully, to disallow those laws that he could not strike down”.

A century and more later, as they point out, Begbie’s then-iconic views are very much in keeping with the spirit of the Canadian Charter of Rights.

That said, the professors acknowledge that Begbie “was no saint”

During the 1958 B.C. Centennial, Home Oil Co. had fun with a series of historical cartoons, including this tongue-in-cheek look at ‘Hanging Judge’ Matthew Baillie Begbie.

Indeed he wasn’t! Remembered for his temper and outbursts to counsel, defendants and jurors as much as for his inaccurate image as the Hanging Judge, Begbie has left posterity some outrageous quotes. He used his tongue as a laser and God help the accused or the lawyer or the juror who ignited his wrath.

Most of them, and their cases, have been forgotten but numerous historians have rejoiced in replaying Begbie’s barbs for later audiences.

Complained the Victoria Daily Times, in 1889: “The Chief Justice’s law may sometimes be bad, but his manners are always worse. Public opinion has been aroused during the last few days as never before, and it will be strange indeed if a determined line of action be not decided upon to curb [Begbie’s] propensity [for] promiscuous abuse”.

But it was only wishful thinking on the Times’s part as Begbie continued to fill the bench until his death in 1894.

Here are a few of his most notorious quotes

“My idea is that, if a man insists upon behaving like a brute, after fair warning, and [he] won’t quit the Colony, beat him like a brute and flog him.”

How about this one? “You gentlemen of the jury…are a pack of Dalles horse thieves; it would give me great pleasure to see you hanged, each and every one of you, for declaring a murderer guilty only of manslaughter.”

To a man acquitted of burglary against his advice, Begbie suggested that he show the jurors “a preference” when he resumed his criminal career.

To a man acquitted of manslaughter, his most quoted admonition: “You are discharged. Go and sandbag some of those jurymen. They deserve it.”

Once, on a rare lighter note, he advised a man acting as his own counsel to, in lieu of a credible defence: “Keep the jury in a good humour.”

As for Begbie’s notoriety as a one-man champion of the gallows known to non-Europeans as the ‘Rope Tyee,” early Vancouver City Archivist J.S. Matthews, who was also known to be irascible and to wield a sharp pen if not tongue, once wrote: “To insinuate that one of our judges was a short-tempered beast who would hang a man from the branch of a tree at a drop of the hat is a disgrace.

“In actuality, Begbie was one of the kindest judges who ever graced a B.C. court. He hanged men for murder because that was the penalty for murder. But the hangings always took place after a fair trail by 12 jurors.”

For the record, between 1859 and 1872, 27 of 52 men who appeared before him to face murder charges (and one for attempted murder) were ultimately hanged. Begbie had recommended clemency 11 times and opposed it in 20 cases. It has been suggested that our morbid interest in his hanging tally appears to be of fairly recent date.

Defying his critics, Begbie continued to insult dissenting juries and journalists with impunity. Knighted in 1875, he remained in office until his death, aged 75, in 1894. He and his surviving opponents had mellowed by then. The tall old man (six-foot four) with his trim Van Dyke beard streaked with grey, was a familiar sight on Victoria streets and along its waterfront as he enjoyed his walks, usually accompanied by several spaniels.

This was the man we call the Hanging Judge. Perhaps we should better remember him as a champion of human rights.