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New ‘Lawless in Dufferin’ exhibit rolls back the years at local museum

November 15, 2019   ·   0 Comments

By Brian Lockhart

If you had been trying to sell a loaf of bread that didn’t quite weigh up to the standards of the local Town Council bylaw you could find yourself in trouble with Bread Inspector Shields.

According to the Orangeville Sun newspaper published October 24, 1889, several bakers had their products seized and distributed to the poor for trying to scam the public into buying underweight bread.

The new Lawless in Dufferin exhibit currently on display at the Museum of Dufferin delves into the past and takes a look at lawbreakers in the area.

Museum staff searched old newspaper archives from days gone by to find unusual articles detailing some of the more humorous, and by today’s standards, rather peculiar crimes of the day.

Of course they were not all funny in nature. Some reports detail some pretty serious crime that are still on the books.

Others however provide a chuckle, like the Grand Valley Star and Vidette article of several local boys being pinched by the police for swimming in a mill pond and finding themselves standing before a magistrate. 

The article doesn’t reveal what the punishment is for illegal bathing, however it does mention that there was a shortage of swimming holes in the area.

“With Lawless in Dufferin we tried to focus on those stories that challenged the bylaws and laws of the local area,” explained MOD Educations Intern, Emily Fachnie, who helped research and put the exhibit together. “A majority of the stories are pulled from newspaper articles. We went back into the microfilm to find them. A lot of the stories were about people stealing animals from other farms, which was reflective of the rural area. There was a lot of cattle stolen. There was a lot of breaking and entering and people stealing food from grainaries.”

Many local bylaws were in place to keep the town under control, however, many of them were dropped over the years.

“One of the interesting things we found was the early closing bylaw,” Ms. Fachnie said. “They had to close by 6:00 p.m. You couldn’t sell groceries and some people were fined for that or for selling bread. And of course you get the furious driving charges for driving a horse and buggy through town too quickly. Many of these laws are very specific to that time period.”

The horse and buggy article naming people who were fined and warned others to slow down was dated from 1876. 

The research did uncover quite a few crimes of a more serious and ominous nature, but for this exhibit the Museum chose to keep the display on the lighter side.

The exhibit is on display in the silo tower through to December 15, and features interactive displays for children.

If your family are long-time local residents, you just might see one of your long ago relatives listed in the crime reports from well over 100 years ago!

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