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Record #18320
Name :
: George FROST (1874 - 1897)
  aka : G. Frost


Father
:
Mother
:
BMD and other details
Date of Birth
: 1874 (approx.)

Marriage (1)
:
Marriage (2)
:

Date of Death
: 26 Mar 1897   Notes : Gunshot Wound to Chest
Abode (1) : Place of BirthEngland
Abode (2) : Place of Death / BurialCanada, Blenheim
Sailing Information
Date of Arrival
: 4 Apr 1890
Country
: Canada

Ship
: Sarnia

Placement Family
:
Homes / Agencys
Institution (GB)
:

Agency
: Unknown
Notes[EDITORS NOTE: George Frost MAY be the name of the child who came on this voyage. Nothing documentary has surfaced to prove or disprove this theory.]

In 1890, G. Frost, 16, arrived at Halifax, Nova Scotia, Canada, in a group of 84 children from an unidentified agency en route by CPR to Toronto, Ontario, Canada.

Winnipeg Free Press March 29, 1897

DELIBERATE MURDER

The killing of George Frost Was Not a Result of Sudden Rage

Princeton, Ont., March 28.--Latest developments in the case of the killing of Geo. Frost by Ephriam Convey on Friday last, near this place are unexpected and sensational. Convey's story was that he and Frost had a row and he struck him with a shovel, knocking him down. It now appears from the post-mortem that Frost was killed by a revolver shot through the heart. No revolver has yet been found, but the coroner's inquest resulted in a verdict of murder against Convey, who was committed for trial on the charge. He denies his guilt, but his story places him in a bad light. Convey is a man of ungovernable temper and rumors credit him with having threatened to "do" Frost before April 1st. He is 75 years old and formerly a blacksmith. Frost was a Barnardo boy and 26 years old.



Daily Mail and Empire
March 29, 1897

SHOT THROUGH THE HEART

Sensational Disclosures at the

Princeton Inquest.

NOT KILLED BY SHOVEL.

A Bullet Through Frost's Heart Caused

Death.

CONVEY COMMITTED FOR TRIAL.

The Pistol With Which the Shot Was Fired Not Yet Found--Remarkable Course of the Bullet.

Pars, Ont., March 28.--(Special)--Sensational disclosure were made at the adjourned inquest held in Princeton yesterday on the body of George Frost reported killed by a blow from a shovel in the hands of Ephraim Convey, on the farm rented by Russell Grover, Frost's employer, lot 9, concession I, Blenheim. The post-mortem disclosed the fact that death was due to shooting, the bullet--a 32-calibre ball--having penetrated the heart.

The medical evidence was reserved until the close of the enquiry, and as the public had not the slightest inkling of the result of the post-mortem, it caused a decided sensation. Convey's statement to Henry Grover that "George and I have had a fracas and I struck him with a shovel and I think he has fainted; come out and see him," was the basis of the theory that death resulted from the blow. The surgeon's knife, however, brought to light the murderous missile which sent George Frost to a premature grave.

A REMARKABLE WOUND

The ball had entered near the left nipple, one inch to the right and three-eights of an inch below it, penetrating the skin and tissues, passing through the fifth rib at the junction of the rib with the fifth costal cartilage. The heart, one and three-eights inches above the apex, was found to have a wound penetrating the wall of the right ventricle and the spetum between. From the heart the bullet took a most unusual course, for, after a momentary stop in the heart, it was forced by the pulsations into the femeral or main artery, and in the few seconds that vitality remained was carried as far as the thigh of the right leg, where it was found.

Dr. Taylor read the report of the examination, which had bee conducted by himself and Dr. Staples during the night. The report concluded:--"I am of the opinion that death was caused by a gunshot wound, the bullet having penetrated the heart."

The jury returned a verdict in accordance with the medical opinion adding that in their belief the shot was fired by the hand of Ephraim Convey.

THE INQUEST

The inquest was held in the Oddfellows' hall, a fair-sized room situated above the hearse-house of the undertaker. Probably 150 men and boys were crowded towards the front of the room, when Constable Watson warned them back, as the building was unsafe. Fearing a catastrophe, men were set to work to prop up the floor with planks, and by clearing the room and restricting the readmission to a safe limit accident was avoided. But none of those whose duty it was to be there were comfortable until they were out of the match-box building.

Russell Grover, the first witness, is the man who worked the Convey farm on shares and resided in one-half of the house, Convey and his wife and daughter, his son, wife and child occupying the other. There has been constant friction between landlord and tenant as to the interpretation of the lease, a document drawn by an amateur conveyancer. A Police Court case and Division Court suit arose from the constructions put upon this lease, and the feeling engendered was shown in Grover's manner on the stand. Witness said there was no more feeling between Convey and Frost than between Convey and any other man. They had annoyed each other, but no threats had been indulged in. Convey had carried stones, but never a jack knife or a revolver, to his knowledge. Frost was a boy no man could irritate. Witness had never heard that Convey had threatened to kill Frost. Convey had quarrelled with every man witness had hired.

In answer to Mr. Smoke, he said Convey never threw stones at any of the men, and possibly carried them to drive his cattle across the farm.

THE SON'S STORY

Thomas Convey, son of the accused, affirmed that his father and Frost did not get along well together, and there were constant disagreements. Frost annoyed his father, but he had never heard a threat. Witness, who came home half-an-hour after the tragedy, found his father unhitching a horse.

"We've had a bad thing happen while you were away," he said. "George is dead in the barn."

He told him he was in the hole in the barn pitching out turnips when George got down on his knees and was spitting on him. He told him to stop. George picked up one of the short planks (four and one-half feel long) used to cover the root-hole, and threatened him. The old man then hit him with the shovel. "Father," said the witness, "is irritable at all times. The turnips were decaying fast, and that annoyed him so that it was not a time to torment him." Neither party carried firearms to witness' knowledge.


To Mr. Smoke witness said his father regretted the occurrence very much, and made no attempt to conceal anything or evade arrest.William Laird, a neighbour living across the road, was asked by Henry Grover to go for a doctor. He sent a boy, and went to the barn. He saw the body lying there. Convey was there in the hole working at the turnips not more than three feet from the corpse. Convey said he had hit him with a shovel for spitting on him.

Thomas House described the accused as an agreeable man to with with; he had worked for him and had not trouble.

Dr. Olivery Taylor read the report of the post-mortem, finding all the organs of the body in a healthy, well-nourished condition. The cause of the death was a bullet wound, as related above. There was an abrasion on the left temple, as from a blow, but not sufficient to cause death or even to stun a man. The shot must have been fired from a point directly in front and death would be almost instantaneous.

This closed the testimony and the jury's finding was as before mentioned.

COMMITTED FOR TRIAL.

Mr. Crosby, the local magistrate, was in the room, and as soon as the jurors signed the verdict the prisoner was arraigned before him.

The information, sworn to by Henry Grover, charged Ephraim Convey with the wilful murder of one George Frost on March 26th.

Prisoner pleaded not guilty in a voice that betrayed not the slightest agitation, and after the evidence just given at the inquest had been read and informally agreed to by the witnesses, Convey was committed to the Woodstock gaol to await trial at the Fall Assizes.

NO PISTOL FOUND.

Constables Watson and Logan made a thorough search of the house, barn, and stable, but no trace of a revolver to fit the bullet found in the body of the murdered man was found.

Summed up, the facts of the case, in a few words, are these:--Frost went out to the barn at 12.30 to do chores which would occupy him thirty minutes. He did not complete the work. At 1.20 Convey, who is 73 years of age, knocked at the door of the Grover house, and said: "George and I have had a fracas. I struck him with a shovel, and I think he has fainted." Two minutes later, Henry Grover found Frost in the bar with life extinct, and all the evidence, despite the total absence of motive, thus far points strongly to Convey as the man who committed the deed. He admits there was a row, admits using the shovel, but denies the shooting.

Convey takes his arrest coolly, and to a Mail and Empire representative, just before he left the village, spoke of the murdered boy as "that ---- cus that was sprawled on the barn floor."

Confinement will, it is thought tell quickly upon his health, as, despite his 73 years, he was most active about the farm, and indoor existence for a single hour was very distasteful.


Daily Mail and Empire
December 10, 1898

SERVED ONE YEAR IN PRISON

The Prisoner is Over Eighty Years of Age and is in Very Feeble Health

Woodstock, Dec. 9.--Ephraim Convey the old man who was sentenced to five years in Kingston penitentiary for manslaughter, arrived at his home in Princeton yesterday, having received the Governor-General's pardon. Convey is a very sick man, and it was his illness, together with the efforts of his friends here, that caused his release. One year of the five had been served, and as he is over eighty years of age and very feeble, he is not likely to live long. The crime for which Convay was sentenced to the penitentiary was the shooting of George Frost, a young Englishman from one of the homes, who worked for Convay, and who was teasing him at the time the deed was done.


THE TURNIP PIT TRAGEDY
from Memoirs of a great detective:
incidents in the life of John Wilson Murray (1904)
compiled by Victor Speer

BOYS were the bane of Ephraim Convay's life. He detested them as a nuisance, a pest, a plague. He had a long nose, and when he passed a boy he turned up this great nose, wrinkled his forehead, and made a wry face, as if he had been taking castor oil. The boys for miles around knew of his dislike, and they seized every opportunity to torment him. Naturally this increased his ire against all youth. He owned two big farms near Princeton, in the county of Oxford, within a few miles of the Blenheim Swamp, where Birchall murdered Benwell. Ephraim warned all boys to keep off his land. He vowed that any boy caught trespassing would be dragged to one of his barns and chastised until he tingled.

"This amounted to nothing more or less than a challenge to all the boys around to make life miserable for old Ephraim," says Murray. "They teased him in a thousand ways. At night, when he was asleep, a fiery face suddenly would loom up at his bedroom window ? a face with eyes like balls of fire, and a voracious mouth extending from ear to ear, and grinning hideously. A gentle tapping would begin on the window, made by clackers, otherwise a bunch of nails tied to a nail previously driven in the window-frame, and swayed to and fro by means of a long string. Ephraim would rise up in wrath or terror and gaze on this ghastly face. He would make for his gun and blaze away at the apparition, only to discover it was a jack-o'-lantern perched on a tall bean-pole. At other times his door would refuse to open, and he would find it nailed shut. His chimney would refuse to draw, and would smoke him out of his house, investigation revealing a bag of wheat stuck in the flue. One evening, when he went home, he found his house dark and his doors fastened. He climbed in through a window, and found himself in pitch darkness, with myriad screeching, scratching figures that darted about and leaped over chairs and tables in wild flight, and dealt him stinging blows. He lighted a candle, and found the room filled with cats collected from the entire countryside. When he got into bed he alighted on something cold and clammy. It was a turtle lying in state amid a nest of eggs.

"In the early evenings resounding knocks would thunder on Ephraim's front door. At length he began to hide inside the door with a long club, waiting to hear the knockers approach, when he planned to leap out and belabour them. They heard him in the hall, and withdrew to deliberate. In the meantime a frail and very respectable friend, going to call on Ephraim, walked up to the door and knocked. The door flew open; out sprang Ephraim, and began to smite the knocker with the club. It was so dark Ephraim could not see who his captive was, and the old man went to work as if with a flail. There were shouts and shrieks of 'Murder!' and 'Help!' The victim rolled over on the ground, beseeching Ephraim for mercy.

"'I'll show you!' roared the excited Ephraim. 'I'll teach you ever to dare to pester me again!'

"The friend thought Ephraim had gone crazy. When the old man finally paused, exhausted, and discovered the identity of his visitor, he was beside himself with shame, and grief, and anger. He vowed deep vengeance on his tormentors.

"'Hi, Ephraim!' they would yell. 'You were a boy yourself once, weren't you?'

"'If I was, I've spent over half a century trying to live it down and atone for it!' roared Ephraim. 'No one ought to be born into this world under thirty. So long as the Lord could fix it for us to be born at all, He might as well have made the minimum entry age at least twenty-five. I'd rather have erysipelas all my life than have a boy around for half a day. You know where to look for St. Anthony's fire, but a boy is nowhere when you want him, and everywhere when you don't want him.'

"'How about girls?'

"'They are what boys might have been,' said the old man with a soft smile. "My mother was a girl once.'

"'Wasn't your father a boy?'

"'Yes; but he got over it as quick as he could,' snapped Ephraim.

"Ephraim's big farm was worked on shares by Russell Grover. Ephraim and Grover did not get along well. Grover had a young fellow working for him named George Frost. Like others, Frost teased Ephraim. On the afternoon of March 26th, 1897, the boy was found dead on the barn floor, with a bullet hole in his body. The Department was notified and I went to the farm. Ephraim had denied any knowledge of the shooting. So did Grover. Ephraim said he was not about when it happened and threw suspicion on Grover. Grover said he was away at the time and he threw suspicion on Ephraim. I learned from others that Grover was not near the barn on that afternoon. There was a turnip pit beneath the barn. To get to it several boards in the barn floor had to be raised. This trap had been moved recently and not replaced evenly. I raised it and went down into the pit. I saw the turnips, and we rolled them back from one corner and there discovered recently turned earth. We dug it up and there lay a revolver. It was a new one. I went to Princeton and to Woodstock, and finally found in Woodstock the store where Ephraim had bought it I learned from some of his neighbours that he had said he bought it for Grover, and to William Kip he had said: 'There will be murder down at the farm before April 1st.' I learned also that Ephraim had told Harvey Grover, Russell Grover's brother, that 'Frost and I have had a little fracas, and he has fainted on the barn floor.'

"I went to Ephraim again, and this time he confessed. He said he had gone down into his turnip pit to shovel up some turnips. He noticed that as fast as he shovelled them up and turned for another shovelful the turnips rolled back into the pit from the floor of the barn. Then he heard a spitting noise, as if a cat was facing a dog. He looked up and saw the boy Frost on his hands and knees peering into the pit and spitting at him and rolling the turnips back on him. Ephraim said he grabbed his shovel by the handle end, and gave Frost a pat with it. His story was that Frost then seized a plank and shoved it down into the pit at him, and seemed to be preparing to send another after it when Ephraim whipped out the revolver, fired, and Frost fell. At first the old man thought to bury him in the turnip pit, but the barn floor already was dyed crimson, so he left the body to lie where it fell. 'Before he fell he staggered over by the door,' said Ephraim. 'I stuck my head out of the pit, and he turned and looked at me ? looked, looked, looked at me, and then he fell. I dodged back into the pit, and then crept out and stepped over the body, and later went to Harvey Grover and told him I thought Frost must have fainted. I felt very sorry as I sat in the pit and thought of the boy lying on the barn floor.'

"Ephraim was tried at Woodstock in September 1897. He insisted on taking the stand and he fretted and fumed until his counsel, Wallace Nesbit and A.S. Ball, called him to testify. He began slowly and calmly, but when he came to the story of the tragedy he grew very much excited and gasped for breath, swayed to and fro, thumped on the floor with his foot, got down on his hands, and graphically portrayed the scene in the turnip pit, and finally wept frenziedly. The defence showed that a brother of the prisoner had been in an insane asylum at Toronto, and swore witnesses to prove another brother was light-headed. The Jury found Ephraim guilty of manslaughter, and Justice Meredith sent him to Kingston Penitentiary for seven years.

"'I hope there are no boys there,' said Ephraim. 'I'd be tempted to try to escape on the way if there were.'

"I advised him not to try it ... ." 
ContributorsCreated : 2012-11-22 18:21:34 / From original database

Last Updated : 2012-11-22 18:47:37 /

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Surnames starting with:   A  B  C  D  E  F  G  H  I  J  K  L  M  N  O  P  Q  R  S  T  U  V  W  X  Y  Z  30 Entries        
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3052 ABBOTT, Alfred1893ENG,     Mar 1911 : Grampian CAN Unknown  
3053 ABBOTT, Arthur1866ENG,     Jun 1884 : Sarmatian CAN Unknown  
3029 ABBOTT, Edward1863ENG, LIN, Bourne Jun 1882 : Dominion CAN Unknown  
3031 ABBOTT, Ernest1865ENG,     Nov 1882 : Parisian CAN Unknown  
3044 ABBOTT, John1855ENG,     Apr 1871 : Peruvian CAN Unknown  
8435 ABBOTT, Sidney1888ENG,     Sep 1903 : Bavarian CAN Unknown  
3008 ABBOTT, Thomas1865IRL,     Sep 1876 : Waldensian CAN Unknown  
3062 ABEL, Abraham1892WAL,    , Newport Apr 1908 : Kensington CAN Unknown  
3072 ABELL, John J. 1866ENG,     Feb 1883 : Circassian CAN Unknown  
3073 ABELL, William 1867ENG,     Feb 1883 : Circassian CAN Unknown  
3076 ABERCROMBIE, William1855SCT, LKS, Glasgow Aug 1872 : St. Andrew CAN Unknown  
3096 ABRAHAMS, Nathan1895ENG,     Aug 1912 : Victorian CAN Unknown  
3101 ABRAMS, Ada1894ENG, ESS, West Ham May 1912 : Tunisian CAN Unknown  
3106 ABSALOM, Richard1874ENG, SRY, Cobham Apr 1890 : Sardinian CAN Unknown  
18027 ADAMS, Albert1894ENG,     May 1911 : Corinthian CAN Unknown  
22545 ADAMS, Henry William1898ENG,     Mar 1912 : Dominion CAN Unknown  
9983 ADDYMAN, William Ernest Henry1890ENG, KEN, Plumstead Jul 1901 : Cambroman CAN Unknown  
6417 ALEXANDER, Charles1894SCT,     Oct 1910 : Cassandra CAN Unknown  
22544 ALLAN, Alexander D1912ENG,     May 1927 : Metagama CAN Unknown  
22784 ALLAN, Betsy1873ENG,     Aug 1879 : Canadian CAN Unknown  
14909 ALSOP, Reginald A1891ENG, ESS, Epping Nov 1896 : Laurentian CAN Unknown  
22107 ALTRIDGE, George1917IRL,     Apr 1932 : Duchess of Richmond CAN Unknown  
9593 ARUNDALE, Jessie1873ENG,     Oct 1882 : Sarmatian CAN Unknown  
18400 ATKINSON, Charles1911ENG,     Mar 1929 : Duchess of Richmond CAN Unknown  
4065 BAILEY, Ernest G.1895ENG,     May 1912 : Virginian CAN Unknown  
22722 BAIN, Gertrude1922SCT,    , Aberdeen Apr 1946 : - Unknown - CAN Unknown  
15592 BAKER, Eva L ENG,     - Unknown - CAN Unknown  
15767 BAKER, Horace1876ENG,     1889 : - Unknown - CAN Unknown  
22015 BAMSEY, Joseph Frank1892ENG,    , Devon - Unknown - CAN Unknown  
18463 BARNES, A M1880ENG,     May 1896 : Scotsman CAN Unknown  
IDNameDOBPlace of birthArrivals & ShipsDest.AgencyFamily links
Page: [1] 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 15 16 17 18 19 542 Entries        
Surnames starting with:   A  B  C  D  E  F  G  H  I  J  K  L  M  N  O  P  Q  R  S  T  U  V  W  X  Y  Z  30 Entries