#welland county jail

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"TWO SAW WAY OUT OF JAIL MAKE LADDER, SCALE WALL," Toronto Star. May 14, 1943. Page 3. --- Cut Six Iron Bars on Window at Welland, Tear Boards Out of Shed --- ONE FROM TORONTO --- Special to The Star Welland, May 14 - Police in the Niagara peninsula today are hunting for John Stark, alias Stack, 24, Crowland, and Peter Max, 27, Toronto, who escaped from the county jail here during the night.

Stark and Max sawed their way out of their cell with hacksaws, crossed the corridor and sawed through six iron bars on a new window in the north side of the jail. They also sawed away the iron sash and crossbars of the window itself. Dropping down six feet from the window into the jail yard, they went to an old woodshed and broke away a part of the shed. With this lumber they fashioned a ladder to scale the jail wall and dropped 25 feet to the street.

The escaped men had been on remand for the past two weeks. They were arrested by provincial police near Port Colborne. They allegedly were carrying three revolvers, one an automatic. Police said they picked them up in a stolen car,

("We want these men in Toronto," stated Inspector of Detectives Arthur Levitt of Toronto police. "They are wanted on housebreaking and car theft charges. One of the revolvers found on them was stolen from Oriole Parkway in Toronto."

(Police also stated the men are wanted in Hamilton on theft and shopbreaking charges.)

The men's escape was discovered by a night guard, Harry Herman.

"We suspect they got outside help in some way," said Sheriff V. L. Davidson of Welland county. "They have had visitors."

C. F. Neelands, deputy provincial secretary, said the men would be wearing civilian clothes. "There are about 25 prisoners in the jail," he said.

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"Alphonse Plante, Well Known Here, Makes Jail Break," Ottawa Citizen. October 9, 1941. Page 22. --- ST. CATHARINES, Ont., Oct. 8 -(C.P.) - Overpowering a guard at the Lincoln county jail late this afternoon, two prisoners escaped and tonight were the object of a search led by police from St. Catharines, Niagara Falls and Welland.

The escapers were Alphonse Plante. 38, formerly of Montreal, sentenced recently to 10 years for breaking, entering and theft, and Ruben Penner, 19, on remand on a vagrancy charge. They were said to have attacked and overpowered Officer Lambert, 65, running down the corridor outside their cells and disappearing after scaling the jail wall.

Later in the evening city police surrounded the St. Catharines silk mills after a report the two had been seen entering the premises but the search there was fruitless.

Plante and Penner were the first prisoners to escape from the county jail here in more than 15 years. Plante, in addition to the 10-year term, was under sentence of eight years for theft and two years for theft and resisting an officer, the latter term imposed Sept. 4 at North Bay.

Plante was spotted by police here last June 27 and after a chase jumped off a bridge and escaped. He was caught at North Bay in September where he was given two years and returned to St. Catharines, where the longer sentences were imposed. He was awaiting removal to Kingston penitentiary at the time of today's break.

WELL KNOWN HERE. Alphonse Plante is well known to Ottawa police and has a lengthy record here. News of his escape and his description have been given to all patrolmen and broadcast to prowler cars. He is described as five feet, seven inches, tall and of medium build with light grey eyes and light hair.

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"EXPECT ROSE BAGNATO OUT OF PRISON TO-DAY," Toronto Star. December 8, 1933. Page 1. --- Release Delayed Because Deputy Attorney-General Bayly Is Busy ---- Friends working towards the release of Rose Bagnato from Welland jail, following the announcement yesterday that her fine would be remitted, were optimistic that the order would be signed this afternoon. Presence of E. W. Bayly, deputy attorney-general, at Osgoode Hall, where he is representing the state of Illinois in the habeas corpus proceeding brought by Martin Insull, has delayed proceedings somewhat, but it was probable that action would be taken to-day.

Toronto police have not yet been officially advised of the remission of the fine and the intention to free the girl at Welland, but they are prepared to bring her to Toronto when she is released in order that she may face the charge of incorrigibility laid by her mother.

Efforts of the girl's friends to have this charge withdrawn and to secure the consent of the mother to marriage with Nick Morgese have so far been in vain.

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"Jail-Breakers Are Captured," Niagara Falls Review. May 20, 1943. Page 1. --- Wanted men taken after thrilling chase, Brockville --- BROCKVILLE, Ont., May 20 - (CP) - After a thrilling auto and foot chase here today Provincial Constable James Harris, Brockville, arrested John Williams, 24, Welland and Sutty Movick, 22, Hamilton, wanted for alleged escape from Welland County jail and theft of a car last night at Hamilton.

The pair were later remanded on vagrancy charges and in court here said their names were John Stark and Peter Max, respectively.

District Inspector Chris. F. Airey of the Provincial Police at Niagara Falls was notified this afternoon of the arrest of the men.

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"Flee From Jail, Still Roam Free," The Globe and Mail. May 15, 1943. Page 2. --- Welland, May 14 (CP). - Two men who were being held in Welland County Jail awaiting trial on a theft charge continued at liberty today after having sawed their way from their cells early this morning. They are John Stark, 24. of Crow 1 and, Ont., and Peter Max, 22, Toronto.

They sawed their way into a jail corridor and caped in the jail yard after severing the bars in a window. In the yard they demolished a coal shed and used the lumber to build a ladder to scale the wails.

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"JAILED ON LIQUOR CHARGE." Toronto Globe. April 19, 1933. Page 3. ---- Welland, April 18. - Found guilty of being in possession of twenty gallons of illicit spirits, contrary to the Excise Act, Charles Cipollo, aged 19, son of Mateo Cipollo, was fined $400 and costs and sentenced to one month's imprisonment by Magistrate John Goodwin today. He was also fined $100 and costs for having liquor not acquired on his permit.

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”Plot To Free 4 Convicts Fails,” Border Cities Star. December 21, 1931. Page 1. ---- Welland Jail Under Guard --- Doomed Slayer and Trio From Niagara Falls Watched --- ‘Tip' Balks Scheme ---- Police Surround Building; One Prisoner Had Cut Cell Bars ---- By Canadian Press WELLAND, Ont., Dec. 21 - Plans for a sensational jail- break were foiled here at an early hour today when acting on information received from an anonymous source. Police Chief George T. Crowe, of Welland, threw a cordon around Welland Jail an thwarted the attempts of Basquale Ferrati and Louts Gatto and Vito Delveccio, all Italians of Niagara Falls, to escape.

DOOMED MAN INCLUDED It is also believed the plans also included the liberation of Nick Kozub, Beaverboard, sentenced to hang Dec. 30. Gatto and Ferrati were sentenced to life imprisonment at the fall assizes. here for attacking Vito Perri of Niagara Falls, while Del Veccio was sentenced to ten years' imprisonment for wounding Perri with intent to maim. Chief Crowe was informed at 11 o'clock last night of the escape plans and he immediately enlisted the aid of provincial officers from Welland City and county and together with the city police formed a cordon around the jail.

CELL BARS CUT Cars drove past the jail at frequent intervals but didn't stop. At 2 am. Sheriff Davidson visited the cells to make sure everything was in order and found Ferrati sawing through the bars in the corridor window leading to the jail yard. He had already sawn his way out of his own cell. He submitted to the sheriff without a struggle and was placed under heavy guard. A rope made of bed sheets was lying be- side the window and three saws were found in Ferrati's cell.

Outside aid would have been necessary for Ferratti to get to the street and it is believed the police cordon thwarted those on the outside who were to assist in the get-away.

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"BOTH GIVEN TERMS," St. Catharines Standard. June 23, 1933. Page 4. --- WELLAND, June 23. - Found guilty of breaking into the E. L Stephenson store on South Main street, Crowland, on the night of June 13, and stealing a quantity of tires, tire tubes and other goods, Edward Zeilinsky of Crowland was yesterday, in city police court, sentenced to two years in Portsmouth penitentiary. Magistrate John Goodwin also sentenced Ben Borkoski, Deere, street, Crowland. to one year definite and an additional term of six months indeterminate at the Ontario reformatory at Guelph for this offence.

[Zeilinsky or Zielinski was 23, single, from Poland, an immigrant in infancy, a structural steelworker, and with several terms in the Hull Jail and the county jail in Thorold. He was, unusually, a non-smoker. He was convict #3103 and worked in the blacksmith shop at Kingston Penitentiary. He was transferred December 1933 to the low security Collin's Bay Penitentiary as inmate #620, and was paroled in early 1934.]

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"Prisoners Recaptured, Stolen Car Recovered," Hamilton Spectator. May 20, 1943. Page 24. ---- Brockville, Ont., May 20. - (CP) -Provincial Constable James Harris, of Brockville, to-day arrested John Williams, 24, Welland, and Sutty Movick, 22, Hamilton, wanted for alleged escape from Welland county jail and theft of a car last night at Hamilton.

They were later remanded on a vagrancy charge. In court here they said their true names are John Stark and Peter Max, respectively.

The two men arrested are not known by the local police. It is believed, however, that the car reported recovered by the Brockville police is the property of Nick Woriorski, 154 Wallace avenue. The machine was taken from a garage at the rear of the Wallace street address.

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"HIGHWAY MAN GOES TO "PEN"," St. Catharines Standard. October 31, 1913. Page 1. ---- Victor Griener Sentenced to Serve Three and a Half Years ---- He Admitted Holding up a Man, With a Revolver at Fort Erie ---- Welland, Oct. 31 - Victor Grenler of Buffalo, aged 23 year, was sentenced by his Honor Judge Livingstone yesterday to three and a half years in Kingston penitentiary for holding up a man at Fort Erie in August and robbing him. The prisoner pleaded guilty of the charge.

Grenier was recognized at the time of the hold-up, and County Crown Attorney Cowper instituted extradition proceedings, through which the prisoner was turned over to the Canadian authorities at Fort Erie on Monday. Magistrate Clarke committed him for trial. A signed statement made by Grenier, admitting his guilt, was presented his Honor.

The Crown Attorney said that the prisoner had served terms at Blackwell's Island and Elmira State prison. This was a serious crime and too much leniency was an invitation to the thugs of Buffalo to come over to this side and commit deeds of violence.

Grenier admitted that he, had served time at Elmira, but denied having been committed to Blackwell's Island. He denied, too, that he lived by a life of crime. He had a trade and worked most of the time. It was seldom that he committed theft, but whenever he did he had the misfortune to get caught. He pleaded for a light sentence at the prison farm and promised to be honest after he was returned. It was for larceny that he served three years at Elmira, and he had been out of jail for eight months when he got into this trouble. He had hymn working In Erie until a week before he committed this robbery and was thrown out of work there by a strike.

"I could sentence you to penitentiary for life for this crime," said His Honor, but you are a young man. I believe that the sentence I am going to pass is far more lenient that you deserve. Your crime was one of the most serious that could be committed. I will sentence you to serve three yours and six months, in Kingston penitentiary."

[Grenier was 23, from Buffalo, a machinist by trade, and two previous terms, at Elmira as established at the trial and a term at the Auburn Prison, both in New York. He was convict #F-683 at Kingston Penitentiary and worked in the machine shop. He was reported twice in 1914 for minor offences - losing 10 days remission, and was reported three times in June 1915 for insolence and fighting, spending a week in solitary. He was released and then deported in mid-1916.]

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“REFORMATORY TERMS GIVEN,” Brantford Expositor. January 4, 1933. Page 4. ---- Two Found Guilty of Conspiring to Rob Norwich Bank ---- HAMILTON, Jan. 4 — (CP)- James Mills and Arthur Brzeirt, found guilty a week ago of conspiring to rob a bank at Norwich, Ont., were each sentenced by Judge Carpenter in county criminal court Tuesday to terms of two years less one day in the Ontario reformatory. 

The two young men had been in Jail at Welland. There they met Louis Horton. Horton told police they had conspired to rob a Norwich bank and that the two had tried to have him join them. An investigation followed during which provincial police listened through a transom to a conversation during which it was alleged the robbery was discussed by the two accused men.

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"Long Terms To Jail-breakers," Niagara Falls Review. May 28, 1943. Page 10. --- Pair who escaped Welland jail sentenced 2-1/2 years; another 2 years for guns --- WELLAND, Ont., May 28 - (CP) - John Stark, 24, of Crowland, Ont., and Peter Max, 22, of Toronto, were sentenced Thursday to two and a half years for breaking from the Welland jail and an added two years on a charge of possession of weapons when brought before Magistrate Hopkins.

The two men escaped from jail May 13 and, were recaptured later in Brockville.

They also were convicted on six counts of burglary at cottages in the Port Colborne area and were given 18 months on each of these charges, the terms to be concurrent.

[AL: Max was convict #7323 - a first time penitentiary inmate with a rather short criminal record. He was quickly transferred to the low-security Collins Bay and released from there in early 1945. Stark was convict #7324 at Kingston Penitentiary, and like Max had never been in penitentiary before. He was the son of Russian immigrants, unemployed, with two previous terms in the reformatory to his name. In March 1944, he was transferred to Saskatchewan Penitentiary and became convict #4291. He was also released in early 1945.]

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“Jailbreaker Held After 12 Years,” Toronto Globe. August 14, 1931. Page 02. ----- Police Chief Recognizes Him on Arrest in St. Catharines --- (Special Despatch to The Globe.) St. Catharines, Aug. 13. - On March 11, 1919, John Barber of this city, after receiving a sentence of five years in the Provincial Penitentiary for housebreaking, escaped from Lincoln County Jail here.

There was no record of Barber again until Wednesday afternoon, when he and his brother Jesse were arrested by city police for having a revolver in their possession. They had been shooting at a target on the old Welland canal bank.

As Police Headquarters, John Barber was recognized by Chief of Police William Shennan and Desk-Sergeant William McCarthy. The brothers, to fool the police, had switched names. The fingerprints of John Barber, taken at his arrest in 1919, were produced, and the prints taken again. As they were just the same, John Barber admitted everything.

In Police Court this afternoon, John Barber pleaded guilty to the unusual charge of being out of custody during the term of his prisons sentence, Magistrate James R. Campbell ave him two years additional, telling him he would also have to serve out his previous term of five years. Jesse Barber was allowed to go.

[AL: Barber, a relatively well-behaved prisoner despite his old escape attempt, was only reported twice during his delayed sentence at Kingston Penitentiary. He does not appear to have taken part in the October 1932 riot, and was serving concurrent sentences so he was released July 1935.]

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“Drunken Driver Sentenced,” Toronto Star. April 17, 1930. Page 03. ---- Eight Days in Jail for Truck Driver Who Fractured Victim’s Leg --- Welland, April 16. - Steve Kowal of Port Colborne, driver of the truck which struck Guiseppe Rotura, Crowland, on the Port Colborne highway, sending him to the Welland hospital with a double fracture of the right leg, pleaded guilty before Magistrate Godwin to-day to being intoxicated while driving an automobile and was sentenced to eight days in jail.

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“Dickout Captured,” Toronto Globe. December 22, 1910. Page 02. ---- Young man Who Escaped From Welland Jail Caught at Bridgeburg. ---- (Special Despatch to The Globe.) Welland, Dec. 21 - Claude Dickout, the young burglar who created a sensation here on Sunday by knocking down Assistant Turnkey Mains and escaping, was captured this afternoon at Bridgebury by Ontario Police Detetcive Dowd and safely lodged in Welland jail. Dickout was sentenced to the Kingston penitentiary for three years, to be taken there Monday, but escaped on Sunday. He will now have to stand trial for escaping from jail.

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“...the most common precisely defined charges against Welland county residents were related to alcohol: being drunk, drunk and disorderly behaviour, selling liquor without a licence, violation of the Ontario Temperance Act (1916–27), and, from 1927, violation of the Ontario Liquor Control Act . The analysis of alcohol-related crimes thus affords an especially useful way to consider both the development of Anglo-Canadian views of immigrant offenders and the ways in which the resulting stereotypes hid the complex role that the production and consumption of alcohol played in immigrant communities. Anglo-Canadian temperance advocates and local newspapers blamed foreign immigrants for making Niagara communities among the most drunken places in the country. They claimed that “the illicit sale of liquor” throughout the Niagara region was “almost entirely in the hands of foreigners.” Immigrant women involved in bootlegging attracted special censure in the press. At a time when many scholars believed that the lack of differentiation between the sexes was a mark of primitive or savage societies, some residents of Niagara saw the participation of women in such illegal activities as evidence of their lack of femininity and, hence, of primitivism and racial inferiority. The Thorold Post, for example, reported with disgust that a female immigrant boarding-house keeper hid a liquor bottle under the baby in her arms when the police raided her home. During another raid in Thorold’s foreign quarter, the newspaper noted disapprovingly, police discovered liquor bottles hidden in a cradle under a sleeping baby.

Welland County jail records belie the accuracy of such newspaper accounts. In the decades under consideration here, Niagara residents of British descent outnumbered foreigners among those charged with alcohol-related crimes. Foreigners were over-represented among those arrested for alcohol-related offences in 1920, while Niagara residents of British descent were under-represented, a situation that reflects the suspicion of foreigners that prevailed as a result of the First World War and the labour unrest that followed.

By 1930, however, despite an increase in the proportion of foreign-born residents in Welland County, their presence among those arrested for alcohol-related crimes declined significantly.  They made up only sixteen percent of those in this category. The proportion of British residents arrested for drunkenness and related crimes grew appreciably to seventy-two percent of the total. According to the chiefs of police of Crowland and Port Colborne, an important reason for this change was that the decriminalization of brewing and winemaking for home consumption made it difficult to catch those who sold home-made wine and beer without a licence, a category that included most foreign bootleggers.

There were a number of reasons in addition to racism that drew the attention of Niagara’s dominant groups to immigrant drinking and bootlegging specifically. Because their crowded quarters were not ideal for relaxation, many immigrant men spent their leisure time in public places. They loitered on public sidewalks, finding refuge in railway stations in the wintertime. In good weather on holidays and weekends, they moved from urban sidewalks to the “bush.” They were visible in these locations and, hence, vulnerable to arrest. In June 1919, for example, “a lot of foreigners” were “drinking wine and carousing” in the bush near Stamford. While most escaped when the opp came upon them, the four who were caught faced the choice of paying steep fines or serving three months in jail.

Ontario’s early twentieth-century liquor laws also helped to criminalize immigrant alcohol consumption. Both Ontario’s Temperance Act (1916–27) and the Liquor Control Act (from 1927) permitted the possession of liquor in a private residence. Boarding houses with more than three boarders, of the type that housed a great many foreign immigrants, however, did not qualify as private residences. Both boarding-house keepers and residents were thus subject to prosecution for behaviour deemed perfectly legal for people who could afford to live in single-family homes. 

While foreign immigrants were not alone in running and living in boarding houses, the attention of the press and public officials, including liquor inspectors, focused largely on immigrant boarding houses, which least resembled Anglo-Canadian households. As noted above, many foreign migrants, married or single, came to Canada on their own. The boarding houses they inhabited were frequently all-male establishments. In the eyes of English Canadian observers, therefore, they lacked the stabilizing, moral influence of women. Because of the desire of the sojourners to live as inexpensively as possible, even boarding houses run by immigrant couples were often very crowded. One reason that women joined their partners sojourning in Canada was that they hoped to increase household income by keeping boarders. To do so, however, they placed as many beds as possible in every room, at times renting the same bed to two men who worked and slept in shifts. Many boarding-house keepers – men and women – sold alcohol, just as they provided food for their boarders. Because their economic prospects were limited, boarding-house keepers, as well as other petty entrepreneurs in Niagara’s immigrant communities, such as grocers and operators of ice-cream parlours, billiard halls and even gas stations, also engaged in more than one type of enterprise, including bootlegging. Paying hefty fines on occasion was less expensive than purchasing a licence to sell liquor. Despite the involvement in bootlegging of some career criminals, such as John Trott, Police murderers, and the sensational stories about foreigners in Canada collaborating with American gangsters who drove fast cars and carried automatic weapons, immigrant bootlegging in Niagara was primarily on a modest scale. Even so, it was lucrative. In 1916, for example, when a large scale police raid netted twenty-three blind-pig operators, most were fined, but none had any difficulty paying the $300 fine on the spot.

The possibility of profiting from the sale of alcohol was especially appealing in a context where other economic prospects of immigrants were limited. Not surprisingly, therefore, the recollections of immigrants who came to Niagara before 1930 and their children offer a very different perspective on immigrant bootlegging than the views of English Canadian newspapers, temperance advocates, and officials. Foreigners recognized that offering such services was a way to increase their income with very little expense. Indeed, according to a Hungarian sojourner, they regularly had to sell liquor if they wanted to succeed during the interwar years. The trade-off was that they frequently had to put up with their boarders’ drunken behaviour.

The innocuous name given by foreigners to establishments engaged in bootlegging – social clubs – indicated the wider acceptance of this practice among immigrants than within the host society and may also have been intended to hide what was happening in these businesses. Some bootleggers bought by the gallon and sold by the glass. Others made the wine and beer that they sold. Their chief appeal for customers was that their prices were lower and their hours of operation were longer than those of hotels. In the 1920s, hotels were closed during the dinner hours, just when the day shift was ending for workers. Some social clubs enhanced their appeal by offering home-cooked food as well.

Peter Santone, a barber and Crowland township councillor, endowed immigrant bootlegging with epic proportions. No doubt exaggerating for effect, he recalled with amusement that Charlie Jary, a Hungarian immigrant, “sold more wine than the liquor store.” According to Santone, most of the Italian businesses in Welland “did a little bootlegging on the side.’ The practices of small business owners from other ethnic groups were similar, and bootleggers and their clients were not necessarily of the same ethnic origin. In the 1930s, when Adam Farioli was working at the Electro-Metallurgical plant in Welland, he and his friends from work patronized Markoff’s gas station on King Street. Markoff was also a bootlegger. “Going to Markoff’s,” he remembers fondly, “was a ritual.” After they cashed their paycheques on Thursday nights, Farioli and his friends stayed around for drinks. Rather than discrediting them, the engagement of ethnic businessmen in such lucrative illegal activities enhanced their standing in their communities. Speaking of Tony Nero, for instance, Santone recalls: “He treated the Italians good.” He carried many people through the lean times when he gave them credit. “He sold groceries in the front, used to bootleg in the back.”

The recollections of an immigrant family from Bologna provide us with the clearest illustration of bootlegging driven by a sense of mutualism among working-class immigrants. When the family of seven arrived in Welland, the father had difficulty finding work, so the family rented a house that was not much more than a shack. A mere two months later, an explosion destroyed the house and killed the father. Families from the same region of Italy came to the aid of the widow and her children. For a while, five of the children were taken in by different households of paesani, while they helped the mother find an apartment that could accommodate the entire family. The mother then took in two boarders, and her paesani helped her to set up a social club. She made wine, and, as her daughter recalled in the 1980s, “a few friends would come and drink it. That way she made a little money because she was desperate to.” This is how the family survived until the children were old enough to go out to work.

That is not to say that all foreign immigrants approved of illicit activities by their counterparts. Mary Samson (née Botari) recalled that her parents believed that the area around Tony Nero’s store was unsafe because Nero and other businesses there engaged in bootlegging. They advised their daughters not to walk through that part of Welland. Other illicit business dealings also appear less as the actions of immoral or dangerous foreigners than as small-scale business undertakings that fulfilled certain needs. Sex work involving immigrants also appears to have taken place in small, multi-purpose immigrant enterprises such as boarding houses and rooms attached to restaurants. For example, after her husband was killed in action during the First World War, Rosy Cristofono took a position as a waitress in her cousin Antonio Mosoco’s Welland boarding house and restaurant. In addition to her wages, Mosoco provided her with room and board, and Cristofono used the room to carry on “an immoral business with the customers.” She handed half of her earnings to her cousin.” - Carmela Patrias, “Foreigners, Felonies, and Misdemeanours on Niagara’s Industrial Frontier, 1900–30.” The Canadian Historical Review 101, 3, September 2020. pp. 435-439.