A Prairie Parable the 1933 Bates Tragedy

University of Nebraska - Lincoln DigitalCommons@University of Nebraska - Lincoln Great Plains Quarterly Great Plains Studies, Center for 2009 A Prairie Parable The 1933 Bates Tragedy Bill Walser University of Saskatchewan Follow this and additional works at: https://digitalcommons.unl.edu/greatplainsquarterly Part of the Other International and Area Studies Commons Walser, Bill, "A Prairie Parable The 1933 Bates Tragedy" (2009). Great Plains Quarterly. 1235. https://digitalcommons.unl.edu/greatplainsquarterly/1235 This Article is brought to you for free and open access by the Great Plains Studies, Center for at DigitalCommons@University of Nebraska - Lincoln. It has been accepted for inclusion in Great Plains Quarterly by an authorized administrator of DigitalCommons@University of Nebraska - Lincoln. A PRAIRIE PARABLE THE 1933 BATES TRAGEDY BILL WAlSER It was one of the more harrowing episodes of as a relief case. But it was only the child who the Great Depression. Ted and Rose Bates had died when the suicide plan went terribly wrong, failed in business in Glidden, Saskatchewan, in and the parents were charged with murder and 1932 and again on the west coast of Canada the brought to trial in the spring of 1934. following year. When they were subsequently The sorry tale of the Bates family has come turned down for relief assistance twice, first to epitomize the collateral damage wrought in Vancouver and then in Saskatoon, because by the collapse of rural Saskatchewan during they did not meet the local residency require the Great Depression of the 1930s. A popu ments, the couple decided to end their lives in lar Canadian university-level textbook, for a remote rural schoolyard, taking their eight example, uses the tragedy to open the chapter year-old son, Jackie, with them rather than on the Depression.1 Trent University historian face the shame of returning home to Glidden James Struthers, on other hand, employs the incident as an exclamation point. In No Fault of Their Own: Unemployment and the Canadian Welfare State, 1914-1941, he deliberately places Key Words: Great Depression, Murder-Suicide, the story at the end of a chapter to illustrate Relief Policy, Saskatchewan the "devastating consequences" of the strict enforcement of municipal residency policies 2 A specialist in western and northern Canadian to reduce relief rolls. "In the eyes of Glidden," history, Bill Waiser, SOM, FRSC, has been a member Struthers summed up the sad affair, "it was the of the Department of History at the University of Depression, not the Bates, that had murdered Saskatchewan since 1984. He has published twelve their young son and it was R. B. Bennett's books, including the award-winning centennial history unemployment policy, with its insistence of of the province, Saskatchewan: A New History, published by Fifth House Publishers. local responsibility for the jobless, which was a direct accomplice."3 Struthers never mentioned the fate of the [GPQ 29 (Summer 2009): 203-19] Bateses when they went to trial in Wilkie in 203 204 GREAT PLAINS QUARTERLY, SUMMER 2009 March 1934. That was left to Pierre Berton, murder file and the Saskatchewan Department the only other author to examine the Bateses' of Justice prosecution file.9 story in The Great Depression.4 In a section Those who knew Ted and Rose Bates read subtitled "Death by Depression," Berton drew ily accepted their explanation for their actions on contemporary newspaper sources to flesh without question. The alternative-that the out Struthers's account and suggests that pair had planned to murder their son in cold the Bateses were tragic victims not only of blood-was unthinkable. Scholars coming Depression relief policies but of their own head upon the story have done much the same thing. strong pride, something that many Canadians They have used the Bates incident as a kind struggled to overcome at the time. "It is this of parable that speaks to the human cost of stiff-back sense of pride," Berton observed, mean-spirited relief policies, especially when "that comes through again and again in the they came hard up against a parent's stubborn stories of those who were forced by circum pride. And who wouldn't reach this conclu stances to accept relief'5 And even though the sion? Given the economic and social upheaval Bateses were too ashamed of being sent home of the so-called Dirty Thirties, it has been easy as charity cases, it was their former friends to accept this portrayal of the troubled couple in Glidden who ironically rallied around the and what many dubbed at the time "a social family in their time of distress and paid for murder." This article, however, deliberately Jackie's funeral and started a legal defense looks beyond such assumptions to reexamine fund. In the end, the Bateses were found not and reevaluate this archetypical Depression guilty, a verdict that was applauded, accord story and its exact meaning. It still remains a ing to Berton, because people understood the parable, but a parable with a different purpose, dilemma faced by the family. a different lesson-namely, the danger of Berton noted that Ted and Rose Bates accepting such incidents at face value. Perhaps returned to obscurity once "the hot light the time has come for scholars on both sides of of publicity ... was finally extinguished."6 the border to reconsider other stories of hard Indeed, except for the brief coverage already ship and deprivation that have been embraced mentioned, the incident has never been stud as part of the Great Depression narrative.lO ied in any detail. Nor is it widely known in the historical community. Even people living THE BATESES' BACKGROUND in the area today have at best a vague recol lection of what happened.1 On one level, this Ted and Rose Bates were British immigrants. outcome is hardly surprising given that the Edward Albert Bates was born in London, Bateses' story was only one tragedy among England, on December 7, 1890. British census many during the 1930s, a decade of hopeless records for 1891 indicate that he was the son of ness that drove some to suicide and others to a printer's warehouseman, Edward Bates, living the asylum in the Great Plains.8 Jackie's death in Blackfriars Road. By 1901, his father was also happened more than seventy years ago, dead, and he and his widowed mother (Alice and those who had any direct connection to Ewin) and younger sister, Lily, were living with the incident and to the family are largely gone. another family in Byfleet.1 1 The exact year of But the murder of a child at the hands of his Ted's arrival in Canada is something of a mys parents was shocking-even for the desperate tery. His 1954 obituary reported that he had times of the Great Depression-and the tragic been living in Canada for forty years; hence, circumstances behind the incident need to be he apparently arrived in 1914. A search of the fully examined in order to understand the story large-sheet passenger-list manifests for 1914 in all its complexity. In fact, the incident needs confirmed that he entered Canada aboard the to be "interrogated" in light of new material, in SS Victorian, sailing from Liverpool in steerage particular the Royal Canadian Mounted Police (ticket 3800), through the port of St. John, A PRAIRIE PARABLE 205 New Brunswick, on April 10, 1914. But Ted's train for Saskatchewan and marriage.19 R~se, at entry listed him as a returning Canadian; he thirty-two and with limited schooling, seemed had been working in Ontario for two years, had content to be a housewife-that was the reason been engaged in farming for four years, and was she gave for coming to Canada-and she and headed to Woodstock to take up farming there. her new husband took up residence in a small A search of the passenger manifests for 1910 cottage off the main street of Glidden. and 1912 did not turn up his nameP These were heady days for Saskatchewah and Ted's first years in Canada are also difficult its wheat economy. Beginning in 1907, home to sort out. His obituary, prepared by his wife, steaders first took up land in the Newcombe Rose, suggested that he first lived in Manitoba area, along the Old Bone Trail heading west before taking up residence in Saskatchewan from Saskatoon's Eleventh Avenue. But a in the early 1920s.u But his name is not listed Canadian Northern Railway branch line did in any of the Manitoba directories for the not reach the district for another ten years. period.l4 Nor did he homestead in any of the Glidden, established the same year that the three western provinces, based on a search of steel arrived, soon boasted four elevators and these online records.l5 Given his nationality about one hundred people. Once the stub and age, Ted might have been expected to have born postwar recession finally lifted in 1924 enlisted during the First World War. But he and wheat prices rebounded, farmers began to did not serve in either the British or Canadian produce record harvests under ideal growing Expeditionary Forces, a fact confirmed by conditions. The 1928 crop, at almost a third the answer he provided on his 1940 National of a billion bushels of wheat, for example, was Registration form under the authority of the the largest ever produced by any province or National Resources Mobilization Act.l6 One state in the world. 2o The boom only encour possible conclusion is that he evaded military aged producers to grow more wheat, now with service during the First World War because the assistance of new power machinery.

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