(died 16 Dec. 1892, said to be aged 25), murderer. Rhodes Grant describes him as being “from Glen Walter.” If Slavin was a Glengarrian, he may have been the only Glengarrian ever executed by hanging or otherwise for a crime. Slavin is reported to have left the Cornwall area for the American West, where he followed a life of crime. On leaving the Cornwall area he was a suspect, it is said, in an armed holdup committed in Cornwall against Alex. McCracken, a butcher. But home beckoned, and Cornwall saw Slavin again, and on 6 Sept. 1892, in Cornwall among the crowds attracted by the circus visiting the town, Slavin, who had been involved that day in brawling, shot and killed a special constable, John R. Davey, known as Capt. Davey, who was one of several men attempting to control him. Davey had formerly been Slavin’s employer in Cornwall. Slavin was tried for murder on 14 Oct. and convicted, and was hanged at the SDG jail in Cornwall. Before his trial he attempted unsuccessfully, on 6 Oct. 1892, to escape from the jail by assaulting the jailer Donald Macdonell with an iron bar. Before execution, Slavin, motivated presumably by unbelief, refused the religious services of clergymen including Fr George Corbet. Slavin remarked at this time that he had several thousand years to sleep. The Freeholder thought that he had been corrupted by “a long course of vicious reading.” The indecent public behaviour of the executioner Radcliffe was noted with disapproval at the time. The surname Slavin is an unusual one, and it may be noted that there are no Slavins listed for SDG and Prescott and Russell in the 1871 census. The name sounds vaguely French, but it is listed in MacLysaght’s Surnames of Ireland.

     The Davey slaying is among the well-remembered crimes of SDG. Slavin’s whole career should be seen in connection with a strain of violence and disorder in the GC-Stormont area from about the 1860s to the end of the century. See the entries for John James Craig of the Craig and Deruchie pair (who were also of Glen Walter) and for the MacIntosh Gang, and the entry for one of violence’s victims, J. O. Simpson. It is hard not to suspect that some of the lawlessness of the American frontier was making its way east at this time by way of men returning from there to their homes in GC and Stormont.

     When Ewan Ross and Royce MacGillivray used to discuss the question in the 1970s whether any Glengarrian had ever been hanged, Ewan was fond of the solution that if any Glengarrian did commit a murder, he was probably wily enough to evade being actually hanged. It would not be surprising if there were hangings of Glengarrians, however, in the remote places to which Glengarrians emigrated, but if so, the report of the fact did not make its way “back home,” or if it did it survived (without getting into print in the Canadian newspapers) for a time at the oral level, before being extinguished by the passage of generations.

     Rhodes Grant, in his account of the Slavin murder, tells the pathetic story of Alfred Lafave of Martintown, who was one of the men who tried to subdue Slavin on that murderous circus day in Cornwall, and lost his arm when Slavin shot him. Grant reported that Lafave got no compensation and “had to earn a living for himself and his family as a one armed farm labourer for the rest of his life.” However, the Cornwall Standard-Freeholder of 18 Jan. 1935 published a “Down the Lane” column based on an interview with a Mrs Joseph Frego (née Mary Bergeron), born at Martintown in 1847, whose first husband, Louis Lafave, a carpenter, also from Martintown, had been shot and injured by Slavin in the scuffle. Like Davey, he was one of the special constables. However, Lafave’s injuries do not seem to have been major. He salvaged the bullet, and afterwards wore it as a tie-pin. Some years after the shooting, he broke his back while working on construction at Massena, N.Y., and he died two days later. He is said to have been buried at St. Raphael’s, but if so, he has no gravestone there. Mrs Frego’s report is hard to reconcile with Rhodes Grant’s. Further, it may be noted that Slavin also shot and wounded another man of rather similar name, Alex Lafex or Antoine Lafess (sp. Lafesse, Lefesse also found), who was also remembered by Mrs Frego as one of the special constables. By one account, Lafex had died in hospital by the time of Slavin’s execution.

Execution, Cornwall Freeholder 16 Dec. 1892 * Rhodes Grant, i, 143 * Davey slaying recollected, described: CF 25 April 1931; Ian Bowering’s column, “Hometown” supplement, Standard Freeholder 12 Aug. 1995; Mrs Frego as cited * Slavin’s attempted escape: 20 Years Ago column, CF 4 Oct. 1912 * list of executions in Cornwall, to date, Cornwall Standard 3 April 1919; notes 40 years earlier on same subject up to 1879, Ottawa Citizen 31 Oct. 1879 * Archives of Ontario, Criminal Indictment files for SDG 1881-1920, RG 22-392-0-5604 (where Louis Lafave’s name appears as Louis Leferre) * Boss 250 (Davey)