Great Unsolved Mysteries in Canadian History - The Redpath Mansion Mystery - Admission/Application Essay Example

 The Redpath Mansion Mystery was a remarkable event that occurred sometime in the early part of the 20th century in an affluent district in Montreal. This was a remarkable event because it involved a well-reputed family that belonged to the crème de la crème of Montreal society. What was more remarkable was that it involved the deaths of that family’s matriarch and youngest son, which from all accounts did not involve an outsider or a third party. The deaths were attributed to mental and psychological imbalance. In the light of contemporary medical knowledge, however, it would seem that temporary insanity due to an epileptic seizure could not have been the cause of the deaths of the mother and son. The implication of this finding is that there was a cover up of what really occurred on the dreadful night of June 13, 1901 in the Redpath mansion. The cover up, however, is not surprising taking into consideration the social context under which it occurred in which family honor and reputation took precedence over everything else. From the evidence, narratives, accounts and documents surrounding the Redpath twin deaths, it could be deduced that Ada Redpath had no hand in pulling the trigger to cause her own death. The body of evidence suggests it. Ada Redpath sustained a gunshot wound at the back of her head which could not have been self-inflicted. Suicide is, therefore, not an option here. Clifford, on the other hand, died from a gunshot wound in his left temple according to Dr. Hugh Patton as indicated in the Coroner’s Report on June 14, 1901. This implies that either Clifford is left-handed or that somebody else shot him. It would have been difficult to shoot oneself on the left temple if one is right handed. A right handed-person committing suicide would have normally put the gun’s barrel on his right temple rather than awkwardly on the left. There is no account, however, that states categorically that Clifford was left-handed. It is not plausible either that Ada shot Clifford because as the accounts stated, she was suffering from partial paralysis and it would be right to assume that she would have been seated on a wheel chair rather than standing when the incident happened. The gunshot sustained by Clifford would mean either the assailant was standing on a level, more or less, with him or that Clifford was on his knees or was sitting when he was shot and the assailant was standing or sitting on a level above him. A scenario in which Ada shot her son is implausible considering the location of the gunshots in the body of both victims. Neither is the participation of a third person outside of the mother and son probable considering that none of the evidence and accounts suggested the same. The person of the suspect should be confined either to Ada and Clifford. As earlier discussed, the higher probability is that Clifford was the one who pulled the trigger in both instances. As a matter of fact, the coroner’s inquests for Ada Redpath and Clifford Redpath done on 14th of June 1901 categorically stated in their verdicts that Ada died from the gunshot wound inflicted on her by her son Clifford and that Clifford meanwhile, died from a self-inflicted gunshot wound on his left temple, respectively. The inevitable question should be: why Clifford killed his own mother? According to the aforementioned coroner’s report Clifford committed the acts unconsciously as he was at that time suffering from an epileptic attack and was therefore temporarily insane. Yet, this medical condition never appeared in any of his sister’s diaries or journals or in any document, medical or otherwise. While several of the correspondence of the members of the family had talked about the tuberculosis that had afflicted Peter or the paralysis and other ailments that Ada suffered, none ever suggested or hinted that Clifford suffered from any kind of ailment other than he was overworked. This is significant because according to the book Epilepsy: Patient and family Guide, a person is diagnosed as epileptic only if he or she has least experienced two seizures. The book defines epilepsy as a neuralgic disorder in which the person suffering from a fit has a breakdown of “the regulatory systems that maintain the normal balance between stimulation (excitation) and dampening (inhibition) of nerve cell activity” (Devinsky 4). The implication of the above description of epilepsy does not tally with the concept of epilepsy that the doctors who went to the Redpath mansion and were part of the coroner’s report. The coroner’s report, as earlier discussed, attributed Clifford’s action to an epileptic seizure implying that a seizure can cause temporary insanity and not merely a neurological disorder. Yet, the modern concept of epilepsy does not point to mental imbalance, temporary or otherwise. This means that Clifford could not have killed his mother and committed suicide because of temporary insanity. Furthermore, a person suffering from seizure would not have control of his muscles to have steadily fire the gun accurately. The coroner’s report declared only one shot in the shoulder and another on the head of Ada and one in the left temple of Clifford. If Clifford did not kill his mother and himself out of temporary mental insanity, then he was sane at the time he committed those acts. According to the correspondence between the immediate family and relatives, Clifford was not only a good person but a loving, doting son. This was evident in the letters of the Redpath’s relatives to them. Grace Wood, for example, said “there must be some mistake that Clifford was also taken from you, from us, for that dear boy won my heart, and I think the hearts of all who met him.” This same warm regard for Clifford was likewise echoed by her sister Amy Redpath who in her diaries and journals had pictures Clifford as a good son and brother. She even wrote a poem for him entitled Perfect in Thy Promise. In one of the letters of Annie Redpath’s Amy Redpath dated June 26, 1901, she described Clifford as singularly selfless, true, tender hearted, high [illegible] boy.” There were claims that Clifford was pressures due to his incoming bar examination. This could have been a partial contributory factor for his lapse of judgment but it is not plausible that this alone was the reason. Such an effect would have manifested already on the days preceding the incident. As the accounts and documents went, Clifford had exhibited control of self days preceding the incident. He paid his deposit to the Montreal Bar Association two days before the incident and was described as tired before the incident but not behaving out of the ordinary. Temporary insanity as well as bad faith having been eliminated as the causes of Clifford’s actions on June 13, 1901, the only option left is to consider is that Clifford killed his voluntarily. In the coroner’s report, it was revealed that there were two guns present in the room where Ada and Clifford died. It is probable that when Clifford went up the stairs to his mother’s room, she was holding a gun trying to commit suicide. Previous accounts revealed that she had already contemplated and attempted to commit suicide. Perhaps, she begged Clifford to help her and out of pity he, who had long served his mother and understood how much she had suffered, gave in to her wishes. The pressure he already felt from being the family’s chief administrator in the absence of Peter as well as the pressure he felt for the coming bar exams must have somehow filtered in and added to his inability to exercise good judgment under the situation. The Redpath incident and how it was handled by the authorities and the family gives a glimpse of how family honor and reputation was so important in those days that the family and everyone close to it was willing to cover up real facts to maintain this honor and reputation. This propensity to keep up a good front was illustrated in one of the letters of Ada Redpath to her daughter Amy on August 19, 1901, in which the former asked her to tear up the letter as soon as she the latter has read it. In another letter by Amy to her cousin Alice, she confided that she and Peter felt disgust at nosy neighbors frequently coming over to the house and how she had spent a day tearing up all letters as if to attempting to conceal family secrets. The Redpaths was a family whose good standing and reputation in society had been already established for several generations and an incident such as the one that happened on June 13, 1901 must have been perceived as a blow to that image. It was not, therefore, surprising that all steps had been taken to conceal the real events that took place on that sad day. The police, for example, had not been involved and there were accounts that Dr. Thomas George Roddick was not in Montreal at the time the incident happened but was present only the following day. Yet, he was presented during the inquest and gave testimony that Clifford was an epileptic, the first account that declared Clifford as such. Even the correspondence between Amy and Peter, on one hand, and their relatives, on the other, did not categorically state and attribute such ailment to Clifford. On the contrary, Grace Wood, in comforting Amy and Peter, wrote that “All with tender sympathy, will trace this sad calamity, to ill health which attacked the brain – no one will attach any blame to your darling Cliff.” This note signified that even Grace was hoping that that will be the case rather than acknowledging that that was exactly the case. The Redpath incident reveals the importance of family honor and reputation, at least in Canada, in the early 20th century. This is so, that families were willing to look past actual motives of crimes and cover up family scandals and lapses to maintain their reputation in society. In the Redpath incident, the family used the insanity excuse to make the public believe that Clifford was incapable of killing his mother and committing suicide thereafter. Yet, there was no real proof that Clifford did indeed was epileptic. The most evident proof against this theory is that epilepsy does not deprive a person of sanity because it is merely a neuralgic ailment. In addition, a person suffering from a seizure would not have been able to hold the gun firmly and shoot steadily because of lack of control of his muscles. References Coroner’s Court. The Redpath Mansion Mystery. Great Unsolved Mysteries in Canadian History. http://www.canadianmysteries.ca/sites/redpath/tragedy/investigation/5436en.html. Devinsky, Orrin. Epilepsy: Patient and Family Guide. Demos Medical Publishing, 2007. Read More