The Tragic
Life of "Big Bill" Kelly a Carleton County Man
OUTRAGE OF
AMERICAN JUSTICE
U.S.
Kidnaps Poor Canadian Farmer on Picayune Charge and Sends Him to
Prison to End His Life
"Revenuer"
Shoots Up Big Bill Kelly When He Starts Across Border With a Load
of Potatoes;
In Defense
and With a Bullet In Him, He Beats Up Customs Man;
Six Years
Later They Drag Him Across Border and Send Him to Penitentiary
For 14 Years
By Nixola
Greeley-Smith. (In Cleveland Press)
CARLETON SENTINEL NEWSPAPER Aug. 18, 1914
RICHMOND, N.B.,
JULY 00. NOBODY IN THE UNITED STATES HAS EVER HEARD OF AGED
CONVICT NO. 2851, WHO HAS BEEN SERVING OUT FOUR YEARS OF HIS LONG
14-YEAR SENTENCE IN OUR FEDERAL PRISON AT ATLANTA, GEORGIA, WHILE
HIS WIFE HAS WEPT AND DIED AND HIS CHILDREN HAVE STARVED!
BUT EVERYBODY IN NEW BRUNSWICK, CANADA, KNOWS ALL ABOUT "BIG
BILL" KELLY.
UP THERE ELECTIONS HAVE BEEN FOUGHT OVER THIS CASE: IT WAS THE
CAUSE OF A PROTRACTED DEBATE IN THE CANADIAN PARLIAMENT, AND THE
SUBJECT OF A GRAVE INTERNATIONAL EXCHANGE OF NOTES.
Big Bill
Kelly and Convict 2851 are one and the same man !
Kelly, a
small farmer of Carleton County, New Brunswick,
was sentenced in Portland, Maine, in 1910.
He was
given FOUR years for an offense of smuggling; and TEN years for
an assault upon a
United States customs officer made in 1903 when he was
endeavoring to cross the international boundary line without
paying duty on a wagon load of potatoes.
A wagon load of
potatoes !
And think of all
the diamonds and silks and costly finery fine ladies have
smuggled into the United States !
Kelly made the assault with a sled-stake, after he had received
two bullets from the officer's revolver.
One bullet entered his neck, the other was deflected only by his
belt.
Kelly
escaped back to Canada.
EXTRADITION WAS
REFUSED BY THE CANADIAN SUPREME COURT ON THE GROUND THAT KELLY
WAS NOT GUILTY OF "ASSAULT WITH INTENT TO COMMIT MURDER,"
THE CRIME MENTIONED IN THE EXTRADITION PAPERS, BUT MERELY OF
ASSAULT IN SELF-DEFENCE !
Six years
later an officer of the United States customs service went under
an ASSUMED
NAME to
Kellys home and
traded upon his poverty and the necessities of his wife and ten
children to induce Kelly to sell him a cow, and to deliver it, as
Kelly and his family claim, AT THE BOUNDARY.
They assert Kelly was PULLED ACROSS the boundary, and arrested, by United
States officers lying in ambush. Then he was convicted and sent
to prison for 14 years for the alleged crimes of long ago- for
the alleged smuggling of the poor little load of potatoes and the
assault committed in self-denfense !
During the Taft
administration the British ambassador, James Bryce, asked the
government at Washington for a pardon for "Big Bill", so
that he might go to the bedside of his dying wife-a woman whose HEART SLOWLY BROKE under the effort to keep her brood of TEN children together after her husband was
sent to prison.
The Taft administration REFUSED THE REQUEST of the British government and Mrs. Kelly DIED ALONE, UNBEFRIENDED, her children were scattered, the
homestead which she was unable to keep together STANDS TODAY STARK AND DESOLATE
OF ALL HUMAN LIFE !
HOW MANY TIMES DO
WE IN THIS COUNTRY READ THAT MRS. SO--AND--SO, WIFE OF A MULTI-MILLIONAIRE
FROM SOME WHERE , WAS HELD AT THE NEW YORK CUSTOMS OFFICE FOR NOT
DECLARING
A $100,000 PEARL NECKLACE OR A TRUNKFUL OF $1,000 GOWNS,
BOUGHT ABROAD ?
How Many TIMES HAVE WE SEEN THAT MRS. SO-AND-SO WAS MERELY FINED,
THAT HER HUSBAND PAID THE FINE,
AND THEY LEFT FOR SOMEWHERE IN THEIR PRIVATE CAR !
William J. Kelly
DID NOT SMUGGLE DIAMONDS OR PEARLS. I doubt if he ever saw a
diamond or a pearl ! When he was halted at the border by the TWO BULLETS FIRED BY OFFICER
BURNS ! He was
hauling fourteen barrels of potatoes on which the duty at that
time--1903 was $7.50 !
For trying to cheat the United States of THIS SUM, for defending himself from a man who had
put two bullets into him, Kelly, treacherously lured or dragged
across the line SIX years
after his offense, must spend ten years more of his life in
prison !
He is sixty-three years old, and it is not likely he will live to
see the light of freedom again unless Canada's request be
granted, and Kelly be pardoned, that he may return to his
destitute, sorrowing children.
Carleton Sentinel
Newspaper May 30, 1919
WILLIAM KELLY
PARDONED
Kidnapped by U. S., Thrown Into Prison__Dragged Across Boundary
by Revenue Officers__Sent to Prison for 14 Years.
William J Kelly, who has been serving a fifteen year sentence in
a United States Federal penitentiary, and who has been the
central figure in one of the most sensational international
boundary line cases between Canada and the United States of the
past score of years, has returned to his home at Debec, Carleton
County, N.B.
He arrived from the prison at Atlanta, Ga., on Saturday at the
international boundary between Vanceboro, Me., and McAdam, N.B.,
where he was placed safely on Canadian soil by officials of the
United States Department of Immigration and ws met by his sons,
who are employed by the C.P.R. at McAdam. His home-coming was
saddened by the death a few days before of his daughter, the
funeral taking place just the day before the return of the father.
All Richmond is jubilant over the home-coming and all animosity
that was aroused at the time of his being kidnapped by American
sleuths is being revived.
After many attempts to get the convicted man released a group of
influential newspapers took the matter up and sent
representatives here to get details.
