From a Rafter?

Don Waite recalled that in 1967, when stationed at the New Westminster Detachment of the RCMP at the Court House, a Corporal Frank Bacon mentioned "that an old Katzie Indian named Slumach had been hung from a rafter above the vault's stairwell for murdering another Indian who had supposedly followed him to a gold mine on Pitt Lake." That was the first time Waite had ever heard of Slumach or the Lost Mine of Pitt Lake and it resulted in his "writing a short book about Slumach and his Lost Mine in 1972."

In Archie Miller & Dale Kerr booklet The Great Fire of 1898 we read on page 14. Sepember 10-11, 1898:

The court house, which stood on Clarkson Street, was on fire before the flames from below had really reached it, owing to the intense heat of the air and the sparks which had fallen on the roof. The records had been put into the safe but the building itself was soon a screaming huricane."

So, Slumach could never have seen the inside of the courthouse building where Corporal Bacon suggested that he'd been hung "from a rafter above the vault's stairwell." In fact, he was hanged in the yard of the Provincial jail and not at the court house at all.

The official records of the hanging and the contemporary newspapers reports show the "Provincial Goal" as the place where he was executed. "Over fifty persons witnessed the hanging." They never would have fitted where the corporal suggested the hanging took place.

Slumach was also kept at the Provincial jail. The Columbian on 11 November 1890 tells us: "Slumach, the murderer of Louis Bee, now confined in the Provincial Goal, awaiting trial at the Assizes."