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Hamilton Brothers - It was quite possibly the most infamous case in Fredericton's history. Though the details may be vague and the exact date may escape them, many of the city's residents can still recall the night that George and Rufus Hamilton went to the gallows.
The crime sealing the fate of these young men from Barker's Point took place January 7th, 1949. On that evening, George (23) and Rufus (22) Hamilton called a taxi, a phone call which ultimately led to the brutal murder of the driver, Norman "Silver" Burgoyne. The resultant trial raised more questions than it answered due to contradictory testimony and the fact that each tried to pin the crime on the other. Both, however, would pay for the crime that the Deputy Attorney General described as "one of the most cold-blooded, planned, and brutally executed murders in the history of New Brunswick." There was little question, once they were found guilty, as to what their ultimate fate would be: A murder conviction called for a mandatory death sentence!

Interview with Paddy Gregg - "The evening that George and Rufus were hanged the roofs were crowded. There were kids and young adults perched on those roofs like…like black birds around a pea patch all waiting for this moment."

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Copy of newspaper picture of George Hamilton.
27 July 1949
668 Brunswick Street, Fredericton, N.B

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George and Rufus spent their last days locked in Cells 1 and 2 of the York County Jail, with a guard on duty around the clock. They were permitted to step outside their cells only once a week to bathe. From the confines of their cells, the brothers were well within earshot of the workmen's hammers as they erected gallows in the shed adjacent to the jail.
A reporter for the Daily Gleaner had this to say about the events of the early morning of July 27th:
"Heralded by the tolling of St. Dunstan's Church bell...the arrival of Sheriff E.M. Lyons and [an] unidentified hangman from Montreal, on the stroke of two o'clock, signaled the dropping of the final curtain on the grim sequel to the Richibucto Road murder in January."
The crowds that gathered outside the jail cheered as George and Rufus Hamilton were escorted to the gallows. One news report noted that "every adjacent rooftop, line fence, window, and woodpile were at a premium" as the crowds sought a glimpse of the condemned men. Words between the two were few, but what was said raises questions about the entire case. Reportedly Rufus turned to George and begged his forgiveness. Whether this means that George's accusations were true and Rufus actually struck the fatal blow we'll never know, for moments later - shortly after 2:00 AM - the two died, back-to-back, at the end of the hangman's noose.

Sheriff Lyons later provided an account of the Hamilton executions:

"The act of hanging was not as gruesome as one might expect. The official hangman did his job most effectively and it was something that had to be done. The most difficult period is the time from the date of sentence until the actual execution. It is a worry that I wouldn't wish to go through too many times. It is rather a relief to see the little black flag flying in the breeze after the Medical Doctor in attendance advises you the execution is successful."

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Copy of a newspaper picture of Rufus Hamilton.
27 July 1949
668 Brunswick Street, Fredericton, N.B

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Execution Poems
George Elliott Clarke

PLOT
Geo: If the job is to get money,
a hammer'll do the job.

Rue: It'll effect a cash transfusion,
Georgie, like surgery.

Geo: Nail some wood - or nail a skull.
Rue, we gotta carpenter rascally.

Rue: We'll only fleece Silver of his gold and silver,
not flay his self - fiascoly.

Geo: Then I'll go fetch a hammer.

Rue: But I will use the hammer.
Outlaw deeds carry rough threats of vengeance - sour honey rotting in the mind,
the small dark box of bitterness.

Geo: I'm gettin the hammer.
(George exits)

Rue: In a painting, a man takes his head off and blood spurts up.
Beside a gallows.

In life, a man feels his leaden Zeppelin head fizzle onto his chest -
while silvery oxygen spills, deflating his pockets.

THE KILLING
Rue: I ingratiated the grinning hammer
with Silver's not friendless, not unfriendly skull.
Behind him like a piece of storm, I unleashed a frozen glinting -
a lethal gash of lightning.
His soul leaked from him in a Red Sea, a Dead Sea,
churning his clothes to lava.

Geo: No, it didn't look like real blood,
but something more like coal, that inched from his mouth.

Rue: It was a cold hit in the head. A hurt unmassageable.
Car seat left stinking of gas and metal and blood.
And reddening violently.
A rhymeless poetry scrawled his obituary.

Geo: It was comin on us for awhile, this here misery.
We'd all split a beer before iron split Silver's skull.
Silver's muscles still soft and tender. That liquor killed him.
The blood like shadow on his face, his caved-in face.
Smell of his blood over everything.

Rue: Iron smell of the hammer mingled with iron smell of blood
and chrome smell of snow and moonlight.

Geo: He had two hundred dollars on him; bootleg in him.
We had a hammer with us; a spoonful of cold beer in us.

The taxi-driver lies red in the alabaster snow.
His skeleton has taken sick and must be placed in the ground.

This murder is 100 per cent dirt of our hands.

Reproduced by permission of the Author

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This is a piece of the rope that was used in the Hamilton hangings in 1949.
27 August 2004
668 Brunswick Street, Fredericton N.B

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This is a piece of rope used in the 1949 hanging of George and Rufus Hamilton

Interview with Paddy Gregg continued - "We sat through the long evening and there were comings and goings and all sorts of speculation, a man would come. "It's the hangman," they would say. "No, no, no, it's not the hangman it is the priest" or it's this or that and we waited in expectation. Finally later on, George and Rufus did in fact come out the door of the jail and it was a scene [pause] it was a scene from an old southern-type movie. Not the fact that they were black so much and they were in a distance, but it seemed to me that I recall they were wearing some kind of pajama-type garment. My memory doesn't serve me that well but it struck me that it must have been sort of light canvas suit of some kind, but they marched out and they shuffled out. They shuffled out almost as if they had been drugged. All these things about them having been drugged, somehow sedated, would all be discussed and become the matter of urban legend later on and eventually would be proved or disproved but, nevertheless, that swept around the city like all good urban legends do. And then they shuffled across one behind the other. I can't recall seeing anybody else in that snapshot of those many years ago. Whether there were people trailing behind them, surely there must have been or in front of them. I could only see these two figures shuffling across and then going up the stairs. Now, throughout the evening there had been this sort of chatter of people talking and the restlessness of us younger kids, because I would have been a kid at the time, and people asking questions and moving and that sort of thing, but then it became very, very quiet. It was deadly, deadly still and I recall there was a "doi-oi-oi-oi-oing", as you might expect a spring-loaded trap door or something opening."

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Doors with iron bars leading out of the dungeon museum and into the former exercise yard.
20 August 2004
668 Brunswick Street, Fredericton, N.B

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On the day of execution, once the prisoner passed through this gate there was no coming back. The Hamilton brothers experienced this very same feeling as it was the point of no return!