A GENUINE and painful sensation was caused in the city last night...

A GENUINE and painful sensation was caused in the city last night, when the news arrived that young CLIFFORD REDPATH, of Montreal, had shot and killed his mother, only twenty years his senior, for no apparent cause and that immediately afterward he took his own life. The REDPATH family is one of the oldest and best known in Canada, and in Quebec there are many citizens who have been acquainted with three generations of it. The news, as our readers may readily believe, was very shocking, and it speedily became a keen subject of conversation throughout the town. The details of the tragedy were sought for in vain. At the home of the victims no special information throwing light on the subject could be gleaned. Mrs. REDPATH died instantly. Her son, with two bullets in him, lingered a few hours in the hospital before his own life became extinct. The cause of the fatal shooting in each case is still a mystery, for no one seems to be living who could reveal the true origin of the double crime, matricide and suicide. Even the investigation at the coroner’s inquest unearths no clue to the dreadful deed, or what circumstances led up to its perpetration. There are surmises of course, but surmises do no come under the category of evidence. The only cause assigned for the fearful episode in Montreal’s social history is that, the young man who killed his mother and himself, was temporarily deranged at the time of the shooting. To this is added the fact that he was suffering from the effects of an epileptic fit, which left him on the borders of insanity. Why a loaded revolver should have been so near at hand, it is difficult to say. Loaded revolvers are bad things to keep in one’s house. In this age, there does not seem to be a justifiable reason for having them so handy, and particularly in keeping them so near the hand of a man addicted to fits, epileptic or otherwise. Talk will not restore the dead to life, but for the living there is a lesson to be learned. Keep loaded guns out of reach.

Young Mr. REDPATH was a gentleman of refinement, scholarship and pleasing manners. He was intended for the law, and made his studies at McGill University, the hall of learning in Canada, which owes so much to the munificent contributions of the REDPATH family. W[e] learn from a private source, that he had been invited to accept a partnership in a leading law firm in Montreal. Those who knew him best, loved him most.

Source: Unknown, "A Genuine and Painful Sensation," The Quebec Daily Mercury, June 15, 1901. Notes: PG, 2

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