Henry Sovereign

Henry Sovereign committed what is considered the first – and the worst – mass murder in Ontario. It was 1832, and the middle of winter in Windham Township. During the night on January 22, Sovereign ran to his uncle-in-law's house and told him two intruders had attacked his home. They rushed back, only to find the mangled bodies of Sovereign's wife Polly and seven of their children. He became the prime suspect when the murder weapons were found on his farm. Sovereign was known to drink, and people speculated he murdered his family in a drunken rage. Despite his claims of innocence, he was hanged in London on August 13, 1832.

To learn more about Sovereign's crime and the consequences, read below.

Henry Sovereign (also spelled Sovereene) was born around 1788 in New Jersey, in the United States, but his family moved to Upper Canada in 1799. By 1812, Sovereign had created a good life for himself: he was married to Mary Beemer (who went by Polly) and he owned land in Windham Township in Norfolk County.

However, in 1819, he ended up in court, where he was found guilty of killing a horse and was sentenced to hang. Judges took liberties with these unnecessarily harsh old laws, and this time Sovereign escaped the noose.

The next thirteen years passed by uneventfully. Sovereign and his wife Polly raised their eleven children, and he provided for them by working as a farmer and shingle weaver. Those who knew the family said he was "rather affectionate to his wife and children" – except when he was drinking. Under the influence of alcohol, Sovereign was angry and abusive.

The murder occurred in Windham Township, Norfolk County, but Sovereign was imprisoned, tried, and executed in London.

"Most atrocious murder"

In the early hours of January 23, Sovereign ran to his uncle-in-law's and told him that two men with black-painted faces had broken into his home, and he feared for his family's safety. The two men, accompanied by several other neighbours, hurried back to Sovereign's house. Inside they found the dead bodies of two of his children, while an infant lay half-burnt in the fireplace. A fourth child, who was still alive, succumbed to her injuries later. Outside, the corpses of his wife and several children lay between the house and a shed. Witnesses said there was so much blood it had melted through the snow. The four remaining children survived; one was in the house unharmed, and the three oldest were away from home.

Constable John Massacer soon arrived, and noticed that Sovereign kept walking by his wife's body as if looking for something. When the constable investigated, he found a bloody blade on the ground. The handle lay separately nearby, and the men realized it had belonged to one of Sovereign's sons.

Suspicious of the circumstances, Massacer arrested Sovereign and discovered a bloody jack-knife in his pocket. Another search of the house turned up a gory broomstick and a maul, hidden in the bed, that was "nearly covered with human hair of different colours."

Newspapers across Upper Canada and even in the United States reported the crime in horrifying detail. Reverend Ryerson's account was published in a New York paper, where he described seeing the scene of the murders and meeting Polly's distraught family, who questioned, "Did you ever witness such a sight? Who would believe that any man could come to this?"

The London Sun, a local paper run by Edward Allen Talbot, reported on the sensational murders [left]. The Evening Star, a New York City newspaper, published Rev. Ryerson's description of the crime and its aftermath [right].

Justice hangs in the balance

Sovereign spent seven long months at the jail in London before finally going on trial on August 8, 1832. This trial focused on the murder of his wife Polly, not the children (Elizabeth, Effy, David, Julia, Susan, Job, and Polly). It was a landmark case not only because of the scale of the murders, but also because the proceedings were written down in the earliest known record of an assize trial in London.

The prosecution called as witnesses the neighbours who had accompanied Sovereign and found the bodies, as well as a doctor who performed the autopsies. He testified that Polly's fatal wound, which passed through her liver and aorta, matched the knife found beside her. Furthermore, he said that the position of Sovereign's minor injuries on his arm and chest meant they could only have been self-inflicted, to add credibility to the story of intruders.

Sovereign told the jury "my life is now in your hands and…I can only now assure you of my innocence," but he did not answer the key questions. Why had he abandoned his family to the intruders instead of defending them? What was the strangers' motive for murdering a random family in the night? Why would the killers rely on finding weapons at the house instead of bringing their own? The jury returned with the verdict in less than an hour: guilty.

One of the murder weapons was a maul such as this one, used for splitting wood and shingles.

"Awful eternity"

Sovereign was tried and convicted on a Wednesday, but his hanging was scheduled for the following Monday, August 13, 1832. The owner of the London Sun, who had recorded the trial, came to visit the convict. He felt "an indescribable thrill of horror" as the door clanged shut behind him, leaving him in Sovereign's dark cell. The newspaperman wrote that, "His hair, which was full and bushy, was perfectly white, although his age did not exceed 50. His eye brows and lashes were dark, his forehead was high and capacious, but projected too much over the face…His beard, which was closely shaved the day of his trial, had grown considerably."

On Monday, around 300 Londoners came to watch the execution, the second one to take place in the city. It was a smaller crowd than attended the first hanging, as a cholera outbreak was ending. Sovereign approached the scaffold and asked the sheriff if he should remove his shoes. His lawyer yelled from the crowd, "For God's sake Sovereign, confess. Don't die with a lie in your mouth!" He got no response. In his sentencing, the judge had told Sovereign that "with a most remorseless ferosity [sic] you have hurried [your family] into an awful eternity," and Sovereign still did not repent or admit his crime. Instead, he calmly ascended the scaffold, and joined his wife and children in that "awful eternity."

London's court house had only been built three years earlier, in 1829, but it was already clear that the region had enough criminals to justify its existence. And not just petty criminals, but a mass murderer the likes of which had not been seen before. Londoners came out to see the executions to satisfy a morbid curiosity, and also, perhaps, to reassure themselves that there was now one less threat walking the streets of Victorian London - streets that were no less dangerous than they are now.

Sources

Primary Sources

"Horrible Sacrifice of Human Life." The London Sun (London, Ontario), Jan. 26, 1832.

Ivey Family London Room, London Public Library, London, Ontario, Canada

"Most Atrocious Murders," The Long-Island Star (Brooklyn, New York), Feb. 22, 1832.

"Most Atrocious Murder." The Evening Post (New York, New York), Feb. 15, 1832.

Secondary Sources

Brock, Daniel. Dan Brock's Historical Almanack of London: Summer 1975. Applegarth Follies, 1975.

Brock, Daniel. "Sovereene (Souvereene, Sovereign), Henry." Dictionary of Canadian Biography. http://www.biographi.ca/en/bio/sovereene_henry_6E....

Doty, Christopher. "Murder in the Family," Notebook from Yesterday. https://dotydocs.theatreinlondon.ca/Archives/hangi...

Miller, Orlo. London 200: An illustrated History. 1992.