Nicholas Melady Jr. was a convicted
murderer from Huron County, Ontario

Huron County, Ontario

Huron County is a census division and county of the province of Ontario, Canada. It is located on the southeast shore of its namesake, Lake Huron, in the southwest part of the province...

, Canada

Canada

Canada is a North American country consisting of ten provinces and three territories. Located in the northern part of the continent, it extends from the Atlantic Ocean in the east to the Pacific Ocean in the west, and northward into the Arctic Ocean...

 . Melady was the last person to be publicly executed in Canada when he was hanged on December 7, 1869, on the outside wall of a jail

Huron Historic Gaol

The Huron Historic Gaol was established as the Huron County Gaol for Upper Canada's Huron District. Clearing of the land began in Goderich, Ontario in 1839 and the jail was constructed between 1839 and 1842 using stone from the Maitland River Valley and from Michigan...

 located in Goderich, Ontario

Goderich, Ontario

Goderich is a town in the Canadian province of Ontario and is the county seat of Huron County. The town was founded by William "Tiger" Dunlop in 1827. First laid out in 1828, the town is named after Frederick John Robinson, 1st Viscount Goderich, who was British prime minister at the time. The town...

 , for the murder of his father, Nicholas Melady Senior and his stepmother Ellen. The murders are believed to have been committed on the evening of June 6, 1868, on a farm in the present day municipality of Huron East

Huron East, Ontario

The Municipality of Huron East is located in Huron County, Ontario. It was formed in 2001 as an amalgamation of the former Grey, McKillop and Tuckersmith townships with the town of Seaforth and village of Brussels due to an Ontario-wide local government restructuring imposed by the government of...

, south of the current community of Seaforth, Ontario

Seaforth, Ontario

Seaforth is a Southern Ontario community in the municipality of Huron East, in Huron County, Ontario, Canada.-History:...

. Melady's trial was surrounded by controversy at the time, with allegations of perjury

Perjury

Perjury, also known as forswearing, is the willful act of swearing a false oath or affirmation to tell the truth, whether spoken or in writing, concerning matters material to a judicial proceeding. That is, the witness falsely promises to tell the truth about matters which affect the outcome of the...

, lost and planted evidence

Falsified evidence

False evidence, forged evidence or tainted evidence is information created or obtained illegally, to sway the verdict in a court case. Also, misleading by suppressing evidence can be used to sway a verdict; however, in some cases, suppressed evidence is excluded because it was found hidden or...

, as well as the unusual use of a female police informant

Informant

An informant is a person who provides privileged information about a person or organization to an agency. The term is usually used within the law enforcement world, where they are officially known as confidential or criminal informants , and can often refer pejoratively to the supply of information...

, who posed as a criminal and feigned affection for Melady while he was imprisoned, in an attempt to gain a confession from him. The informant, named in records as "Jenny Smith", was the wife of a local police officer. During the course of the investigation into the crime, seven other members of the Melady family, as well as two other male individuals, were initially jailed as suspects and later released. Melady's execution occurred several hours in advance of the officially announced time it was to occur in an attempt to avoid the civil disorder that sometimes accompanied public hangings. It is reported that a crowd of several thousand people were present at the jail at the originally announced time of the execution, many of whom are reported to have shouted their disapproval of the altered schedule of events. On January 1, 1870, three weeks after Melady was hanged, a Canadian federal government Order in Council came into effect that banned all future public executions in Canada.

Source

Melady, John

John Melady

John Melady is a Canadian non-fiction author from Seaforth, Ontario Canada . A former high school vice-principal, he writes primarily about 19th and 20th century Canadian history with a usual focus on acts exhibiting courage.-Education:...

(2005). Double Trap: The Last Public
Hanging In Canada. Dundern Press. ISBN 1-55002-571-6