The Woman in the Well: Murder at Sutherland's Shore Hotel

On June 29, 2006, on the west corner of 108^th Street and Central Avenue in the Saskatoon neighbourhood of Sutherland, a work crew discovered a woman’s body while excavating fuel tanks from an old gas station. She had been murdered, wrapped in a burlap sack, stuffed into a barrel, then thrown into a well. The Shore Hotel once sat on the site where the woman’s body was found.

Subsequent investigations by the Saskatoon City Police determined that the “Woman in the Well,” as she was soon called, had been killed sometime in the early 1900s. Her body and clothing were relatively well-preserved due to the mixture of water and gasoline from the gas station that was later built on the site.

Carole Wakabayashi, a clothing and textile historian, worked with the City police and was able to date the woman’s fitted jacket, high collared blouse, and long skirt to somewhere between 1910 and 1920. A broken golden necklace was found with the body. Also found rolled up in a ball next to the woman’s corpse were a man’s vest and trousers.

Two facial reconstructions of the Woman in the Well. Source

Dr. Ernest Walker, forensic archeologist at the University of Saskatchewan, helped the police determine that the victim was a Caucasian woman between the ages of 25 and 35, five feet and one inch tall, with a prominent nose and light brown to reddish hair. Walker extracted mitochondrial DNA from the woman’s remains, which investigators hoped would help to match to a living descendant. Police unveiled two facial reconstructions, a two-dimensional image from an RCMP facial reconstructionist in Fredericton, and a 3D model from an expert from Montreal who volunteered to work on the case. It was hoped someone might recognize the woman from old family photos. Police subsequently received about 30 calls from people across Canada and as far away as France looking for a missing mother, grandmother, or great aunt, but no DNA matches have been made to date.

The Shore Hotel

The only photo I have found to date of the Shore Hotel. Source: The Star Phoenix, December 16, 1912.

The Shore Hotel was erected in May of 1912 by William W. Shore in the village of Sutherland. Located about three miles east of Saskatoon, Sutherland was founded by the Canadian Pacific Railway (CPR) in 1908 and incorporated into a village in 1909. By the end of 1912, its population had grown from 100 to 1500. Over half of the residents were employees of the CPR.

“I have a good business here which has been growing by leaps and bounds,” Shore told the Saskatoon Daily Star in January 1914. “Since the advent of street cars, the receipts have doubled.” When the City of Saskatoon built a new streetcar line to Sutherland that year, people originally waited for the arrival of streetcars inside the Shore Hotel. The hotel must have had an unsavory reputation because, on January 14, 1914, the Sutherland Town Council requested that City of Saskatoon build a separate shelter, stating, “… it is not conducive to the morals of the community to have ladies and children awaiting the arrival of cars in the Hotel.”  

Prior to 1914 when water mains and sewer lines were extended from Saskatoon to Sutherland, water was either delivered by horse-drawn tanks to barrels in the kitchens of the town's homes, or hauled from wells. The well on the Shore Hotel site may or may not have been in active use at the time of the woman's murder.

Ownership of the Shore Hotel changed three times in 1914. On January 3rd, John King of Kindersley bought the business for $50,000. The 1914 Henderson’s Directory lists five members of the King family living in the Shore. Joseph Pelowski of Watson bought the hotel from King in July of 1914. Saskatoon real estate broker W. J. Graham handled the sale. On December 3, 1914, Graham sold the Shore Hotel to a Saskatoon man, whose name was withheld, for $51,000.

Source: The Star-Phoenix, November 23, 1927.

Prohibition (1915-1924) spelled the end for the Shore Hotel. According to Saskatoon City Archivist, Jeff O’Brien, the Town of Sutherland took the property back when the owner didn’t pay his taxes. The Henderson Directory lists the hotel as closed until 1925, when it disappears from the record. Advertisements in October and November 1927 issues of the Star-Phoenix show that the hotel building had been declared a public nuisance, dangerous to public health.Tenders were sought for the demolition of the old hotel.

Missing Persons

Who was the Woman in the Well? Was she a prostitute in this rough-and-tumble town filled with railway workers? Was she an employee at the Shore Hotel, killed by a man at the hotel? Was she a transient herself? Was the crime a domestic one?

Source: The Saskatoon Daily Star, December 27, 1912

 

One sad story. Saskatoon Daily Star, March 3, 1923

There were certainly a lot of missing persons back then. “Sorrowing Mothers, Fathers and Relatives Seeking Information in Regard to Missing Ones in Canada,” reads the headline in the December 27, 1912 issue of the Saskatoon Daily Star. “Western Canada appears to be the mecca for many people wishing to hide themselves if enquiries received here by mounted and local police during the past year are to by taken as any criterion.” The newspaper reported that, throughout 1912, hundreds of letters from anxious family members had been received by the Saskatoon police on an almost daily basis. The paper provided names and descriptions of some on the missing persons list, including several women. For example, Mrs. Charles Washam of St. John, North Dakota, was sought by her husband. “She is 5 feet tall, weighs 140 pounds, slight in figure, blue eyes, brown hair, fair complexion, brown fur hat and brown suit. Has false teeth.” 

Those last three words rule out the mystery woman found in Sutherland's well. Investigators revealed that she had one tooth that had been filled by a dentist and an abscessed tooth that would have needed attention. Sadly, despite the valiant efforts of the Saskatoon Police Service, we will probably never learn her identity.

©Joan Champ, 2019

Chambermaid Blues

 

Staff at the Turtleford Hotel, 1917. Source: Turtleford Treasures, 1986.

Chambermaids were essential to the operation of a small-town Saskatchewan hotel back in the early 1900s. The hotel chambermaid worked from morning ‘til night, cleaning guest rooms, doing laundry, and washing dishes for which they were paid $30 per month, plus room and board.

Some aspects of a chambermaid’s work were less than appealing. In the days before hotels had running water, chambermaids’ duties included retrieving chamber pots from under beds and emptying the contents into a receptacle behind the hotel building. And, in the “occupational hazard” department, chambermaids were usually the ones who discovered dead bodies in hotel rooms.

The Story of Pauline Gerring, Chambermaid

The most appalling story I have come across about a chambermaid in a small-town Saskatchewan hotel is the drugging and rape of Pauline Gerring in 1920. At age 19, Pauline applied for a position as a chambermaid at the hotel at Chaplin, located half way between Moose Jaw and Swift Current. When she arrived, she was shown to her room by the hotel manager, a woman of some disrepute named Virginia Paul. 

The Chaplin Hotel, c. 1915. Source

At the end of her first day on the job, Gerring was invited to a drinking party at the hotel proprietor’s house where she met a member of the Saskatchewan Provincial Police (SPP), Constable Harold Dewhirst. Prohibition was in full swing in the province, and it was the job of the SPP to enforce the Temperance Act. Dewhirst had other ideas. On the night of November 10, 1920, Gerring’s second night of work, the policeman and Virginia Paul gave the young girl two drinks of whiskey in the hotel. When the chambermaid refused a third drink of whiskey, Paul held a glass of water to the girl’s lips while she drank. The next thing Gerring remembered was waking up in the morning, partially dressed, with Constable Dewhirst in her bed.

As a result of Pauline Gerring’s complaint, Virginia Paul was charged with unlawfully administering drugs, and, along with Constable Dewhirst, with violating the Temperance Act. Dewhirst was also charged with a breach of the Provincial Police Act, fined, and dismissed from the force. He was later charged with bribing Pauline Gerring to disappear so that she would not testify against him on the rape charge. Gerring ran to Calgary. When she was brought back to Regina to testify, she was so frightened that she ran away a second time. On February 28, 1921, after two trial adjournments, the rape charge against Dewhirst was dropped because Pauline Gerring refused to tell her story.

Government Scandal 

For some reason, the Hon. George Langley, MLA for Cumberland and Minister of Municipal Affairs, decided to get involved in the Gerring case - a decision that ended his political career. When Gerring was brought back from Calgary after her first disappearance, the magistrate in the rape case committed her to jail in Regina until the next trial could take place. Langley felt it was wrong that the victim was being held as a prisoner. He therefore intervened, and on January 28, 1921, arranged for Gerring to be moved to a mental home on Dewdney Avenue in Regina. To read Langley's statement about these events, click here.

Gerring made her second escape from this home the day before the next trial date of February 7th. While Langley claimed that all authorities, including the police, had been notified of the removal of Gerring from jail, Premier Martin was furious. He charged Langley with having stolen the young woman from jail and hiding her from police. The Premier asked for, and received, Langley's resignation. To read the Premier Martin's entire version of the story, click here 

Corruption

Dewhirst told his side of the sordid affair in a letter to the Regina Leader-Post on February 4, 1922. “The whole thing simmers down to a jazz party, such as are carried on every day,” the unemployed former policeman wrote. He went on to blame Pauline Gerring, who “was not used to drinking liquor. She admits herself to two or three drinks. How much liquor will a person take if not used to it?” As for his violation of the Temperance Act, “how many persons holding important positions even of a more exacting nature that a policeman’s have also violated the [Act]?”

This crime against the young chambermaid at the Chaplin Hotel is an example of the negative effects of Prohibition. The growth of the illegal liquor trade in Saskatchewan fostered excessive drinking and made criminals out of many, including policemen.

No Money to Hire Chambermaids

After the decimating effects of Prohibition (1915-1924) on Saskatchewan’s hotels, and the subsequent onset of the Great Depression, there was no money to hire chambermaids or other hotel staff. All members of the hotel owner’s family had to share in the work of running the hotel. For example, Harry Swanson, owner of the Snowden Hotel, married his wife Aster in 1936. “I brought my new bride home to the new venture,” Swanson wrote in Snowden’s local history book. “She became cook, waitress, chambermaid, and did the washing by hand; what a job for my bride!”

©Joan Champ, 2019

The Prohibition Years: Hotels Struggle to Survive

This is my second blog post about the effects of Prohibition on Saskatchewan hotels. For the first post, click here.

Regina Leader-Post, October 28, 1918

Is it a hotel or a bar? This question being asked today about small-town Saskatchewan hotels, is not a new one. It was being asked back in 1915 at the time Prohibition effectively shut down all the bars in the province.

There was a great deal of anxiety on the part of Saskatchewan’s hotel owners when Prohibition came into effect in the province on July 1, 1915. With closure of the bars, their chief source of revenue was taken away.

June 7, 1915

Dramas large and small ensued. A month before Prohibition came into force, the Saskatchewan Licensed Victuallers’ Association, whose members included 80 percent of hotels in the province, issued a proclamation that all hotels would close as of July 1^st. “It isn’t a case of closing just to be spiteful,” stated Arthur Mason, vice-president of the Association, “but simply because we can’t afford to keep open.” The Regina Morning Leader took the hotel association’s proclamation to task on June 4, 1915, calling it both “a confession and a threat.” “The pretense of these men in the past has been that they existed primarily for the purpose of supplying hotel accommodation to the travelling public and that the sale of liquor was an adjunct to that business,” the newspaper’s editorial claimed. “The hotel men now confess that the hotel was merely a plausible excuse for the bar. They tell us, in effect, that the provision of hotel accommodation for the travelling public was to them a matter of indifference, except inasmuch as it served as a blind to the real motive for which they were in business, which was to reap the maximum of profits from the sale of booze.”

Regina Leader-Post, July 24, 1915

Smaller dramas played out in Saskatchewan’s towns and villages. Prior to the enactment of Prohibition, there were 427 hotels in the province. By April 1917, the government reported that there were 237 places licensed as public hotels. Forty-six hotels had closed in the first three weeks following the banishment of the bars. Others threatened to close.

The Alameda Case

The Alameda Hotel, 1909. Source

In Alameda, for example, hotel owner H. MacHouse closed the town’s only hotel immediately after Prohibition came into effect. It appears that he was attempting to pressure the community in order to gain both patronage and government subsidies. His efforts were successful, at least in the short term. In a letter to the editor of the Alameda Dispatch on July 9, 1915, MacHouse stated that, while he would experience heavy losses as a result of the new law, and that, while, “in my opinion the hotel business without liquor would be a much pleasanter business,” the success of the barless hotel would require the support of the people of Alameda and district. “Where are the people who attended the temperance meeting held in the Farmer’s Hall, Alameda, shortly after the Premier’s announcement?” MacHouse asked. “I wish to say to the public that without their support and cooperation I find it is impossible to keep this hotel open.” On August 6, 1915, the newspaper reported that the newly formed Alameda Accommodation Board agreed to all the terms and conditions submitted by MacHouse, including that only one hotel license be granted in Alameda, and that the town council turn over the licensee (MacHouse) the maximum grants and other concessions provided for hotels by the provincial government. The Alameda Hotel reopened on August 13, 1915.

Ad in Alameda Dispatch, August 13, 1915.

Rest Rooms and Reading Rooms

A major feature of the Hotel Act, passed on June 24, 1915 in conjunction with prohibition legislation, was a provision empowering municipalities to establish rest rooms and reading rooms in hotels. The idea was to give a concession to the hotel owners who had lost their liquor licenses, and to transform the hotels into social centres. In the words of the Saskatchewan Methodist Conference, quoted in the Regina Leader-Post on June 14th,  “Instead of the bar we may have the rest room, the place of clean amusement, the reading room and the respectable homelike hotel.”

Under the Hotel Act, provincial grants were provided to towns and villages with populations under 1000 to help hotel owners maintain these rest and reading rooms “for the convenience and comfort of the general public.” The Public Service Monthly reported that, during the first six months after the bars closed, grant applications were received from 153 municipalities. By the end of 1916, according to the same source, provincial grants had been given for rest and reading rooms in 225 small-town Saskatchewan hotels, totalling $100,416.47.

An article entitled “The New Saskatchewan Hotel” in Public Service Monthly, August 1915, illustrates the provincial government’s hope that the hotels could be converted from saloons to community centres. A strawberry social had recently been held in the Queen’s Hotel in Qu’Appelle, sponsored by the local Red Cross Society. “This occurrence may be regarded as one of the first evidences of the great reform which has been brought about in our province by the abolition of the bars,” the article effused. “The mere fact that such meetings are now possible on premises formerly licensed for the sale of intoxicating liquors must be a cause for rejoicing by all thoughtful people.”

The sale of "temperance" beer was permitted during Prohibition. Kindersley Clarion, September 23, 1915

An Uphill Battle

The transition from bar to social space after Prohibition proved to be an uphill battle for small-town Saskatchewan’s hotels, however. On January 31, 1918, for example, The Landis Record reported that the village hotel was not being patronized to the extent required to pay the bills. “To heat a house of the dimensions of the Landis Hotel, to pay hired help in order to give good service, and to furnish good accommodation, requires considerable outlay,” the newspaper stated. “If the proposition is not a paying one, the community is bound to suffer.” The editorial concluded that, “the hotel being a necessity, it should be patronized by the farming community whenever possible.” On February 4, 1918, the Landis Village Council passed a motion levying one and a half mills on the village assessment for hotel support. 

Government subsidies allowed the hotels to limp along during the Prohibition years from 1915 to 1924, but they were no longer the paying propositions they had been before the bars were abolished.

© Joan Champ, 2019