Occasionally, I have been asked which history column has been my favourite and/or the most interesting to research and write. Although it is difficult to choose just one, I think the story of the murder of Thomas Clegg and subsequent manhunt would be near or at the top of the list. The incident happened just south of Williams Lake at the 140 Mile hill on Aug. 16, 1863, and Clegg’s gravesite can still be seen today if one knows where to look. I wrote about this event in March of 2014, but I thought that I would revisit it in today’s column.
Tom Clegg was a 23-year-old man from Dayton, Ohio, who had initially come to the Cariboo seeking gold, but when that proved to be unrealistic, he found a good steady job. By the early 1860s he was a trusted employee of E.T. Dodge & Co., a Lillooet firm which supplied goods to the goldfields and which provided loans to individuals and companies associated with the gold mining business.
In the summer of 1863, Clegg was sent to Barkerville to collect monies owed to the company. He was accompanied on this trip by Captain Joe Taylor, a recently retired army officer and a good friend of Clegg’s brother. The debts owed to the company were collected without any problems and the two men headed back to Lillooet on horseback. Clegg was carrying about 100 pounds of gold, worth some $30,000 in his saddlebags.
The two men had an uneventful trip south. At Williams Lake, they stayed overnight at the stopping house which was located in the area we now call the Dairy Fields. The next morning, they set out again, arriving at the 141 Mile roadhouse for a midday dinner. Then, after eating, watering their horses, and rearranging some of their gear, they resumed the trip south. They had only travelled about a half a mile or so and were climbing the 140 Mile Hill when two armed men ambushed them from the bushes at the side of the road. In the ensuing struggle, Tom Clegg was killed. Captain Taylor managed to escape unhurt, although his horse suffered a bullet wound.
The Colonist newspaper from Victoria described the event in its August 28 edition as, “a most horrid and cold-blooded murder,” going on to say, “Poor Tom Clegg was shot dead, one ball going through his head behind the ears and several shots entering his body.” The New Westminster British Columbian newspaper also carried the story with all the gruesome details under the headline, “Startling Intelligence from the Interior- Murder of One Man and Narrow Escape of Another.”
The robbers searched Clegg’s body and took his belongings, then searched his saddlebags, but found no gold. In an interesting twist of fate, during the stop for dinner, Captain Taylor had volunteered to carry the gold heavy saddlebags on his horse in order to give Clegg’s horse a break. So, after the murder, there was a little to be found of any value, and the thieves beat a hasty retreat southward.
Meanwhile, Taylor had been able to make it back to the 141 Mile House on his wounded mount. Word was soon passed along about the ambush and murder. A substantial reward was offered for the capture of the two culprits ($2,000 from the E.T. Dodge Company and $500 from the B.C. government.)
A posse of appointed constables and angry Cariboo residents was quickly formed, and the chase was on! The two murderers were tracked down to Bridge Creek (100 Mile House), then over to the Green Lake brigade trail which led to the Bonaparte River near Cache Creek. There, the two outlaws split up. One of them, an American named Fred Glennard, made his way further south to the Thompson River, and tried to swim across it. He drowned in this attempt and his body was recovered downriver in mid-September.
The second man, William Armitage, a young Englishman, was found hiding out in a hut near Cache Creek. When he was captured and searched, Tom Clegg’s distinctive pistol was found concealed on his back. He was taken to Lillooet, charged, and jailed. The local newspaper noted “A man answering to the description of one of the murderers of poor Clegg was escorted into town. Everyone turned out to view the animal.”
At first, Armitage admitted to the crime, but later he denied that he had been the murderer, stating “I did not shoot Clegg. Fred Glennard shot him.” Armitage was tried at the Fall assizes at Lillooet in Mid-October. The October 21 edition of the Colonist newspaper reported that the trial took place before Judge Begbie and that the principal evidence was Armitage’s own confession and Clegg’s pistol which had been found on him. He was found guilty. The paper went on to state, “The wretched convict appeared to be deeply sensible of his position and made an earnest appeal to the court for mercy.” The appeal had little effect, and Armitage was sentenced to death. He was hanged at Lillooet in Late October, 1863.
William Armitage was a member of the British aristocracy. His father was said to be a duke. Prior to his hanging, he entrusted his possessions to the local magistrate at Lillooet, Judge Elliott, to send them back to his family in England. He expressed his shame over his role in the murder, and he pleaded with Elliott not to bring disgrace upon his family’s honour by providing them with the details about his crime and his resulting punishment. Elliott must have had some empathy for the young man because his correspondence to the family did not mention the crime, manhunt, the trial, or the sentence. He simply informed them that Armitage had “died of a broken neck from a fall from a horse,” which, in a strange way, was the truth.
Thomas Clegg was buried at the side of the road on the 140 Mile hill, very close to the spot where he was killed. For several years afterwards, the freight drivers and stagecoach operators would stop and toss a rock onto the gravesite as they passed by. Eventually, quite an impromptu cairn was built up.
Today, the gravesite is still there, although it is hard to find. A few years ago, someone cleaned it up and erected a small picket fence with a wooden headboard. It sits on the little island of land with the old highway on the right and the new highway on the left as you travel south up the 140 Mile hill. It is a reminder that here in the Cariboo, we too had our wild west episodes of robbery, murder, and frontier justice.
The information for this column was gleaned from the writings of Irene Stangoe, the files of Dr. John Roberts, and the internet.
