So, in 1914, my grandfather, Jules Crepeau, was accused of “being a grafter” by one Edward Beck, former managing editor of the Herald and Montreal Star, in his new weekly, Beck’s World.
I found a Toronto Sunday Sunday article on the topic where the Beck’s World article is quoted. My grandfather was assistant city clerk, a position that gave him the confidence of the Board of Control and the City Council
He was set up by the Press, and offered money by a private Burns Detective, to influence aldermen on some issue or other. No wire in those days and hiding a Talking Machine under your lapel was probably quite tricky. They had something called a ‘detectaphone.’
The article from Beck’s Weekly (a brand new but short-lived exercise) is written in the cheesiest dime store detective novel prose. Cue Humphry Bogart:
“The City Hall is a sweet-scented sink hole of pollution if men like Crepeau speak the truth. Their greedy official hands take toll of contracts, levy tribute on ordinances, and prey upon the poor city labourers. Graft, graft, graft is written over the doorways, the lintels and on the doorposts.”
My grandfather denied everything, well, sort of and sued the Beck’s Weekly and won… He sued for slander, and 25,000 and got 100 and legal fees.
Hmm.
Oddly, Beck died in 1930 and his obit says he started Beck’s Weekly in March 1914, so this was written up in the first issue. He probably wanted to start with a bang. The story wasn’t mentioned in the obit. And the Weekly ended when war broke out, but a few months later.
I guess Beck’s people, too, wanted to forget the incident.
I’m sure my grandfather was no saint, but he ended up penniless and that is usually not the fate of a master grafter.
