Category: Montreal

Benjamin Workman, MD: Leading the Way

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One spring day in 1819, a young man named Benjamin Workman stood on the dock at Belfast, Ireland, trying to decide where he should immigrate to in North America. He had relatives in the United States, but before he booked his passage, he wanted to check on the safety of the vessels that were scheduled to leave soon. 

He noted that the captain of the New Orleans-bound ship appeared to be drunk, the mate of the ship going to New York swore profusely, and the crew of vessel going to Philadelphia ignored his questions, but the captain of the Sally, bound for Quebec, impressed him favourably, so that’s the ship he chose. He later noted that this had been a lucky choice since yellow fever was widespread in American port cities that year.1 

Benjamin left Ireland on April 27 and arrived in Montreal a few weeks later. He was 25 years old and had 25 guineas (a coin worth one pound, one shilling) in his pocket.

Caption: This photo of Dr. Ben Workman appears in Christine Johnston’s book The Father of Canadian Psychiatry, Joseph Workman.

His choice of Canada turned out to be a good decision: within 10 years, all of his eight younger siblings and both of their parents had followed him. The Workmans were all hard-working, ambitious and smart, and they took advantage of the opportunities available to them in their new homeland. Four of Ben’s brothers (Alexander, Joseph, William and Thomas) became prominent in business, medicine and politics. His only sister, Ann (1809-1882), married Irish-born Montreal hardware merchant Henry Mulholland and was my great-great-grandmother. 

Benjamin’s parents were Joseph Workman (1759-1848) and Catherine Gowdey (1769-1872). Ben was born on Nov. 4, 17942 in the village of Ballymacash, County Antrim, near Lisburn, where the family lived in a small house near the top of a hill.  

Joesph was a teacher in Ballymacash, but he left teaching for a job as a manager for a local landowner, and as a deputy clerk of the peace for the area. Without its only teacher, the local school had to close, so young Ben started studying on his own, reading the Bible and geography books while his father helped him with arithmetic. When Ben was 11, Joseph apprenticed him to a linen weaver, but it soon became clear that Ben had no talent in that field. What he really wanted to do was study. Eventually, Ben went back to school, where he excelled in grammar and the classics. After he graduated, he found a teaching job in Belfast, then another position near Lisburn.   

Ben’s decision to leave Ireland was influenced by an event that took place in 1817. As he was eating his evening meal at his parents’ home, a dozen beggars came in the gate and asked for food and money. Perhaps realizing how widespread poverty was in Ireland, he began to think about going to North America.3

Montreal suited Ben well: other Irish and Scottish immigrants arrived there around the same time, and there were work opportunities for all. He immediately found a teaching job, but after that school’s owner disappeared with its funds, several parents who had noticed what a good teacher Ben was started a new school, with Ben as headmaster. 

The Union School, as it was called, was unique. For one thing, girls were admitted, although they were taught separately by a female teacher. It was also successful. By the spring of 1820, it had 120 pupils, and it remained the largest English school in Canada for 20 years.4 Several of its graduates went on to have distinguished careers in business and politics. In 1824, Ben became the sole owner of the school, but he eventually turned over the responsibility of running it to his brother Alexander, who had come to Montreal in 1820.

In 1829, Benjamin switched careers and became a newspaper editor, partnering with a friend to purchase a weekly Montreal newspaper, the Canadian Courant. It had been founded in 1807 as the Canadian Courant and Montreal Advertiser. Ben published the newspaper until 1834, using it to promote his liberal religious views, social welfare issues, and the temperance movement. When the paper ceased publication, Ben blamed distillers, saying that their advertising had dried up because of his support for temperance. 

Meanwhile, Ben experienced several tragedies in his personal life, as he was married twice and became a widower twice. He married Margaret Manson, a teacher at the Union School, in 1823. The couple had no children and Margaret died seven years later. He married Mary Ann Mills on October 14, 1838, in Franklin, Michigan, and the couple had three children: Mary Matilda, born in July 1840; a son, Joseph, who was born in November 1841 and died at age 10 months; and Annie, born in July 1843. Mary Ann died two months after Annie’s birth, and Ben’s mother, Catherine, looked after his two daughters.

Soon after that, Ben took up his third career — as a druggist. For several years in the 1840s, Lovell’s city directory of Montreal listed “B. Workman & Co., chemists and druggists”, located at 172 St. Paul Street, corner Customs House Square.5 Meanwhile, he studied medicine at McGill University, graduating in 1853, at age 59. He was henceforth known as Benjamin Workman M.D., which helps differentiate him from several other Benjamins in the family.

During these years as a pharmacist and doctor, Ben demonstrated compassion and generosity, often providing care to people who were too poor to pay. Then, in 1856, he reinvented himself again and moved to Toronto, where he assisted his brother Joseph run the Provincial Lunatic Asylum, the largest and most progressive psychiatric hospital in Canada at the time. 

Benjamin Workman’s grave is located in Montreal’s Mount Royal Cemetery, next to the Workman family plot. JH photo.

Benjamin Workman is probably best remembered as the founder of the Unitarian Congregation in Montreal.  In Ireland, the Workman family had attended the Non-Subscribing Presbyterian Church of Ireland in Dunmurry. Its members strongly believed in freedom of thought in religion.6 

When Ben first arrived in Montreal, there were not enough Unitarians to organize a congregation, so he attended the St. Gabriel Street Presbyterian Church. When the city’s Unitarian congregation was permanently established in 1842, he played a key role.7 

In 1855, Ben got into a disagreement with the congregation’s minister, Rev. John Cordner, a man he himself had recruited for the job. Benjamin argued that Cordner had excessive authority, and when the rest of the congregation sided with their minister, Ben withdrew from the church. Soon after, he moved to Toronto, joining the Unitarian congregation his brother Joseph had helped to found there. He got along well with the Toronto congregation’s members and their minister, and he ran the Sunday School there for many years.

Ben lived with his daughter Anne in Uxbridge Ontario at the end of his life, dying there on Sept. 26, 1878, several weeks short of his 84th birthday. He was buried a few days later next to the large Workman family plot at Montreal’s Mount Royal Cemetery.

This article is also posted on the collaborative family history blog https://genealogyensemble.com

See also:

Janice Hamilton, “Dr. Joseph Workman, Pioneer in the Treatment of Mental Illness” Writing Up the Ancestors, Oct 26, 2017, https://www.writinguptheancestors.ca/2017/10/dr-joseph-workman-mental-health-pioneer.html

Janice Hamilton, “Henry Mulholland, Hardware Merchant” Writing Up the Ancestors, March 17, 2016,  https://www.writinguptheancestors.ca/2016/03/henry-mulholland-montreal-hardware.html

Notes:

The children of Joseph and Catherine Workman were: Benjamin (1794-1878), Alexander (1798-1891), John (1803-1829), Joseph (1805-1894), William (1807-1878). Ann (1809-1882), Samuel (1811-1869), Thomas (1813-1889), Matthew Francis (1815-1839).

Benjamin kept a journal in which he recorded his memories of growing up in Ballymacash, and an account of the Workman family’s 200-year history in Ireland.  A large online database called A Family Orchard: Leaves from the Workman Tree, https://freepages.rootsweb.com/~database/misc/WORKMAN.htm, includes a family history going back to the 1600s, that was part of Ben’s journal. The late Calgary researcher Frederick Hunter prepared this site and database.  

Catherine Gowdey’s name has been spelled in various ways, including Gowdie and Gowdy. 

Thank you to Christine Johnston, former archivist and historian of the First Unitarian Congregation of Toronto for all the research she did on the Workman family.

Sources:  

1. Christine I. M. Johnston, The Father of Canadian Psychiatry: Joseph Workman, Victoria: The Ogden Press, 2000, p. 16. 

2. A Family Orchard: Leaves from the Workman Tree, https://freepages.rootsweb.com/~database/misc/WORKMAN.htm, accessed Jan. 31, 2025. 

3. The Digger, One Family’s Journey from Ballymacash to Canada, Lisburn.com, http://lisburn.com/history/digger/Digger-2011/digger-19-08-2011.html, accessed Jan. 31, 2024. 

4. Nicholas Flood Davin, The Irishman in Canada, London: S. Low, Marston, 1877, p. 334, Internet Archive, https://archive.org/details/irishmanincanada00daviuoft/page/334/mode/2up, accessed Jan. 31, 2025.

5. Lovells Montreal Directory, 1849, p. 246, Bibliothèque et Archives nationales du Québec (BAnQ), https://numerique.banq.qc.ca/patrimoine/details/52327/3652392, accessed Jan. 31, 2024.

6. Christine Johnston, The Father of Canadian Psychiatry: Joseph Workman, p. 15.

7. Christine Johnston. “The Irish Connection: Benjamin and Joseph and Their Brothers and Their Coats of Many Colours,” CUUHS Meeting, May 1982, Paper #4, p. 2. 

R. Stanley Bagg, Tory Politician

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Stanley Bagg (1848-1912), was a Montreal businessman, sportsman and life-long Tory. A newspaper report of his death noted, “He was a staunch Conservative both in and out of power, and some years ago was president of the Liberal-Conservative Club giving a great deal of his time to the work of organizing as well as well as to public discussion. He was well known amongst the French-Canadian people and spoke French almost as fluently as his mother Robert tongue.”1

My great-grandfather’s interest in politics was not limited to reading about the issues of the day in the newspaper (The Gazette was a die-hard Conservative-leaning publication) or debating issues privately with his friends. Stanley became actively involved in the Liberal-Conservative Club after it was founded in 1895 as a rallying point for English and French-speaking Conservatives in Montreal. The club took a leading role in the Dominion (federal) election of 1896, and the Quebec campaign of 1897. No doubt to Stanley’s dismay, the Conservatives lost in both elections.

The Conservatives had been the party of Canada’s first prime minister, Sir John A. MacDonald, who is said to have been a personal friend of Stanley’s father, Stanley Clark Bagg (1820-1873). They remained in power until 1896, when Sir Wilfrid Laurier’s Liberals defeated them, and Laurier remained prime minister for the next 15 years. One of the main differences between the two parties was that the Conservatives promoted loyalty to the British Empire, independence from the United States and protectionism in trade, while the Liberals were in favour of free trade.

R. Stanley Bagg, portrait by Adam Sheriff Scott. Bagg family collection.

Stanley played a role in many party activities, especially after his retirement from the family real-estate business at the turn of the century. He frequently chaired public meetings, he served for several years in the early 1900s as president of the Liberal-Conservative Club, and he twice attempted to run for a seat in the House of Commons in Ottawa. The first time was during the Dominion election of 1896 in the St. Lawrence riding, east of Mount Royal. This was the area where Stanley’s ancestors had lived and owned property for almost a century. Stanley was the third candidate in the riding, and the nomination papers he submitted showed he had considerable support among both English and French-speaking Conservatives. However, four days later, when it became apparent that the other Conservative candidate had broader support, Stanley withdrew his name.

In 1905, The Gazette anticipated that Mr. R. Stanley Bagg might run as an independent candidate for the provincial legislature vacancy in the St. Lawrence division caused by the death of the incumbent.2 The newspaper’s prediction was wrong, however, and he did not run. A few years later, in the federal election of 1908, Stanley did put his name in for the Conservative nomination for the St. Lawrence division. This time, Henry Archer Ekers, the outgoing mayor of Montreal, won the nomination by a narrow margin, and Stanley called on the meeting to make the choice unanimous.

Although he never did run for office, Stanley appears to have been a popular speaker at Conservative party functions, and the newspapers reported on his speeches on several occasions.

When he addressed a meeting during the 1897 provincial campaign, The Montreal Star summed up his remarks:

“Mr. R. Stanley Bagg was the last speaker. In a really eloquent and polished speech this gentleman drew a picture of the possibilities of the Province of Quebec under good government. Especially strong were his commendations of the Flynn educational programme, which would bestow that priceless boon of education upon the poor as well as upon the rich. This education would enable the growing generation to intelligently study the questions appertaining to the government of the province, and when the young people became enfranchised, such study would enable them to vote for honest government, for the party and platform that best represented the best interests of Quebec.“3

In January 1900, Stanley was president-elect of the Liberal Conservative Club and a general election was coming soon. In remarks to a club meeting, he pledged to put forward the interests of the club, the Conservative party and the county, adding that the Conservative party was the “true patriotic party of Canada.”4

Later that year, during the Dominion election campaign, The Montreal Star quoted Stanley’s remarks to a Tory campaign rally: “Never in the history of Canada has there been an election so important, so fraught with vital interest in the whole Dominion, as that in which the people of this country are now engaged. The relations between Canada and the Mother Country are, at the present time, peculiar. The South African (Boer) war afforded Canada an opportunity to demonstrate Canadian loyalty and Canadian valour, and today we have as a result an exceptional chance to secure favours from the Mother Country, which never before presented itself. The Imperial sentiment is strong throughout the Empire and the British people are disposed to accord to the colonies trade concessions the value of which to ourselves cannot be overestimated.

“There is but one way in which Canada can benefit from this opportunity, and that way lies through the return of the Conservative party to power. The Conservative party is pledged to use its best efforts to secure a mutual imperial preferential tariff …. The Conservative party stands for protection, for stability in the tariff, for patriotism and for progress.…”5

Eleven years later, Stanley again focused on the topic of reciprocity (free trade) with the U.S.In an hour-long address, he noted that, as someone who had taken part in a large number of election campaigns and given close and continuous study to public affairs, he had been invited to give his views on the great question now before the voters. He “emphatically urged that reciprocity be thrown out. He not only showed that the pact would be commercially injurious to Canada, but appealed to the patriotism of the electors, their spirt as Canadians and Britons. He reminded them, amidst ringing applause, how Sir John A. Macdonald had denounced the attempts of Liberal leaders to bring about unrestricted reciprocity in 1891 as ‘veiled treason’.”6

These accounts of Stanley’s speeches may seem old fashioned today, but I was pleased to discover them as they provided a window into my ancestor’s thoughts. He clearly identified as Canadian and English, although his ancestors also included Americans and Scots.

This article is also posted on the collaborative blog https://genealogyensemble.com

See also:

Janice Hamilton, “Horses, Snowshoes and Family Life”, Writing Up the Ancestors, Sept 21, 2024, https://www.writinguptheancestors.ca/2024/09/horses-snowshoes-and-family-life.html

Janice Hamilton, “The Silver Spoon”, Writing Up the Ancestors, ”, June 12, 2024, https://www.writinguptheancestors.ca/2024/06/the-silver-spoon.html

Sources:

  1. “R. Stanley Bagg Died Yesterday,” The Gazette, (Montreal, Quebec), July 23, 1912, digital image, https://www.newspapers.com/image/419604976 accessed Aug. 4, 2024.
  • 3. “St. Louis Division; Mr. Parizeau’s Supporters Enthusiastic.” The Montreal Daily Star (Montreal, Quebec), 10 May, 1897, p. 4, digital image, https://www.newspapers.com/image/740883625 accessed Oct. 1, 2024.