John G. Rowland
Toronto, ON / Nov. 3, 1919
At about 11:30 pm on Monday, Nov. 3, 1919, John G. Rowland was parked on the Union Station stand in Toronto. A fellow driver saw a "foreigner" get into his taxi, but was unable to give a good description.
Early the following morning the taxi was discovered on McCrae Drive near Bayview Avenue in suburban Leaside. There was blood on both the back and front seats and on the car's side curtains. Rowland's face and throat had been slashed ten times.
Although he could only speak with great difficulty Rowland was able to tell a county constable that he had been attacked by a lone passenger who was a large man and a foreigner. When the constable asked what nationality the attacker was, Rowland uttered the word "Rush". He indicated that he had picked up his last fare in Leaside.
Rowland was taken to the Davisville Military Hospital where he died of his wounds.
Rowland was honourably discharged from the 2nd Battalion Machine Gun Corps about a year before his death after being wounded and gassed in France. The landlady of the rooming house where he lived described him as quiet and retiring. He had no relatives in Canada. His mother lived in Essex, England. Rowland had recently made the last payments on his taxi and was looking forward to giving up night driving.
Police carried out a search of construction camps and "bunks" in Leaside and Agincourt. A few days later some boy scouts who seem to have been called in to search the murder scene discovered a bloodstained jackknife in some bush. The knife was of the sort issued to the Canadian Army.
Because Rowland's car was found in high gear, the police theorized that Rowland was racing back to Toronto when he was attacked. High gear required the driver to keep his foot on the accelerator, and if the accelerator were released the car would stall. This appeared to be the reason why the car had stopped.
A local resident came across the taxi some time before Rowland's body was found. The car's lights were on and the "flaps of the cover" (side curtains) were up, but the resident did not notice any blood or see Rowland. He did hear voices and the sound of woman's laughter coming from a nearby field, but thought nothing of it because "occurrences of this kind were frequent in the vicinity."
Police apparently linked this report with a report of a woman who was supposedly seen in Rowland's car on the evening of his disappearance. She was arrested for vagrancy and when her testimony at the coroner's inquest proved "unsatisfactory" she was remanded in jail for a week. When she finally told her story she denied driving with Rowland, although she admitted to having dinner with him on several occasions.
The inquest returned a verdict of death at the hands of person or persons unknown. The coroner noted that he had investigated three or four murders in the county and as yet none of the perpetrators had been found. "I don't know what it is, but I think it may be due to the foreigners coming to town."
As a rider the jury recommended that lights be placed on McCrae Drive "in order to make it freer and safer from the objectionable element who frequent it."
The murder had a major impact on the community. A Leaside minister reported that since the murder women were afraid to go out at night without a male escort. He stated that better and more police protection was necessary in "the far outlying section."
Taxi drivers were reported to be "slightly nervous" at the recent rash of crimes and holdups. Several drivers on the Union Station stand said they were refusing trips outside the city limits after 10 p.m.
Among the rash of assaults at around the same time, Mike Maynac was attacked in July, 1919 on the way to Weston by two men whom he picked up at Union Station. He was still in hospital with a fractured skull when one of the men was arrested three weeks later.
Sometime before February, 1920, Toronto driver Donald Selvege was beaten and robbed by two men and a woman who first squirted ammonia over him. At their trial one of the men and the woman claimed to have been under the influence of drugs. In February another Toronto driver, Nathan Peritz, suffered a scalp wound when he was hit over the with a whiskey bottle and robbed of thirty dollars.
In August, 1920, Hamilton driver Frank Carter was shot in the thigh by robbers. Also, at the time of John Rowland's murder, police were seeking a Toronto cab driver who disappeared after shooting a man to death on a taxi stand in an apparent dispute over a woman. According to witnesses the victim jumped onto the running board of the taxi and tried to stab the driver with a knife.
Rowland's murder was still unsolved in August, 1923, when Carman Leapello was killed. At that time the Toronto Star reported that a former British sailor convicted of killing a London taxicab driver had spent time in Canada and speculated that he might have committed one or more of the Rowland, Leapello or Harry Strom murders.
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