Matthew Baillie Begbie
Matthew (1819-1892) was descended from Alexander Begbie (1690-1735) tenant farmer of Houston Mill Farm and Phantassie Farm, near Begbie Farmhouse. He was the son of Thomas Stirling Begbie (1782-1872) who served under Wellington during the Peninsula Wars. He attended Guernsey College and then Cambridge, where he received his BA and MA. He was a commanding man - 6 1/2 feet tall.
Matthew was born on May 9 1819, probably on board a British ship at the Cape of Good Hope. Until the age of 7 the family lived on the island of Mauritius, where his father's regiment was stationed. The family then returned to Great Britain and in 1830 moved to Guernsey, where young Matthew was enrolled in Elizabeth College.
At the age of 39, Matthew was offered a judgeship, at 800 Pounds per annum, in faraway British Columbia, Canada. He accepted and arrived there in 1858. British Columbia at that time was a pretty lawless place, much like the "wild west" in the U.S. Begbie soon became the embodiment of law and order; between his arrival from England in 1858 and B.C.'s entrance into Confederation in 1871, he conducted 52 murder trials, handing down a death sentence to 27 of those convicted. He probably didn't deserve it, but he soon became known as "the hanging judge". He was most certainly "the terror of the rowdies" - and in those faraway goldrush days, there were rowdies a'plenty here. Matthew was a firm believer in the swift, but fair, execution of justice and would sometimes hear cases dressed in his robes while astride a horse. In camp, en route to some mining town, he baked bread and chopped wood and on Sundays would lead hymn singing by the campfire. Hymns, perhaps, and a tot or two besides--one of his first registrars recorded this note after a night spent with Matthew en route to another case. "Glorious fun - drunk, drunk, drunk."
Knighted for his legal work as Chief Justice in this wild frontier, Matthew Baillie Begbie wrote in his will (in 1894) "I desire no other monument than a wooden cross be erected on my grave..." But desire it or not, a monument exists, and a big one too - snow-capped Mt Begbie, which overlooks the town of Revelstoke, B.C.
Bronze statue of Sir Matthew in Vancouver BC and (below) Mt Begbie
