The Life and Times of Montréal. Jean-Claude Germain, 1994.

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Disaster struck again! Montréal was once more caught in the grip of a fire! The Hôtel-Dieu was destroyed as in 1721 and, along with the hospital, almost one third of the city: 46 houses, more or less the same ones, in fact.

This time, the fire was the result of a criminal act perpetrated by a Black slave woman, Marie-Joseph Angélique, who set fire to the house of her mistress, the widow de Francheville, on rue Saint-Paul, during the night of the 10th to the 11th of April, either as an act of vengeance, or to conceal her escape.

Marie-Joseph Angélique had had a very busy love life. Four years before, when she was baptized, she was pregnant by César, the negro of Ignace Gamelin. The same César gave her twins two years later. Since then, Marie-Joseph Angélique had left César for the arms of a White man, Claude Thibault.

Marie-Joseph Angélique had the perfect love life, until she convinced herself that her mistress was about to sell her. Having decided to flee to New England with Thibault and wanting to conceal her escape plan, she inadvertently set fire to the city. It goes without saying that, during the conflagration, people had more to concern themselves with than the two lovers who had made off secretly. Unfortunately for the slave, while en route, she came face to face with officers of the constabulary. They arrested her and brought her back to Montréal, where she was sent to jail and sentenced in the midst of the ruins of a city still smouldering from the fire. Thibault managed to escape and was never again seen.

The trial was swift. On June 4, Marie-Joseph Angélique was sentenced. […]

285

The slave appealed the sentence to the Conseil supérieur and was taken to the city of Québec. The Conseil supérieur upheld the sentence of death, but softened the manner in which it was to be carried out: she would not have her hand severed and she would be hanged before being burned. She was then brought back to Montréal. On June 21, she was first subjected to the boot, which consisted of enclosing the subject’s leg between four wooden planks that were made to gradually constrict the leg by using wedges. With each insertion of a wedge into the boot, the accused was interrogated. She was resistant. It was on the fourth try only that she admitted her guilt, all the time refusing to reveal any accomplice. After her confession was heard by the Sulpician Navetier, she was turned over to the executioner, who executed the revised sentence. As fate would have it, the executioner was also Black, Mathieu Léveillé. […]

Source: Germain, Jean-Claude, "The Life and Times of Montréal" (Montréal: Stanké, 1994), tome I, pages 284-28.

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