No Mercy for Camp 6 Sweetheart
(Conclusion)
CAMP SCHOOL TEACHER SHOT THROUGH HEAD
Miss Mable [sic] Jones Found Dead in Her Home Yesterday Morning Following Party
TWO NOTES ARE LEFT FRIENDS.
These were the garish headlines that greeted morning readers of the Victoria Daily Colonist on Nov. 1928. Unlike Duncan’s twice-weekly Cowichan Leader which also published that day but had been caught on the cusp of going to press, the Victoria daily’s initial report was able to give far more detail.
Mabel Jones’s photo in the Victoria Normal School yearbook. —Times Colonist
The Colonist stated that the 20-year-old, described as having been of quiet and retiring disposition, had been found in her home, “shot through the head with a rifle bullet,” after she failed to attend her classes. Going on the initial medical evidence, the morning daily reported that Mabel had placed the muzzle of the rifle in her mouth, the bullet penetrating her brain. Constable Dunbar had recovered two notes at the scene, one addressed to her fiance, the other to the Camp 6 (Caycuse) superintendent...
Dr. H.P. Swan, Coroner, who’d scheduled a viewing of the body at the Whidden Funeral Parlours and an inquest for the evening of the 16th in the courthouse in Duncan, expected that four witnesses would be called to testify.
Rendered in less than an hour, the jury’s verdict of death by a self-inflicted gunshot wound was reasonably straightforward. But that proved to be just the tip of the proverbial iceberg.
The jurors were brutally candid in their conclusion: “This jury is of the opinion that the deceased came to her death through a self-inflicted gunshot, while temporarily insane. We are further of the opinion that this mental state was the result of unjustifiable, unfeeling and underhand criticism of her work on the part of two members of the school board...” (Author’s italics.)
The Colonist account, as unveiled through testimony given at the inquest, reads like a Harlequin romance.
The “story of a young school teacher facing the responsibility of her first position and combating criticism levelled at her teaching and deportment; a story of a young man’s love for her and his efforts to dissuade her from the deed which she contemplated; a story of his offer to marry her at an earlier day than originally planned to protect her from the criticism, and a story of how, in the face of troubles, the young woman worked diligently to provide for herself and her sick mother…”
There was little melodrama in the sad facts of the case, however, beginning with the evidence of Constable Dunbar who found Mabel’s body on the floor of her sitting room. A note addressed to Pete was pinned on her breast and another addressed to “Christ. Gilson, Mg. Director, Cowichan Lake Logging Co.,” lying nearby.
Dunbar’s initial impression was that she’d shot herself through the mouth but medical examination confirmed that she’d shot herself in the heart, the bullet having entered “on the front of the chest, just to the left of the mid-line, with about it a powder burn”. Blood had rushed to her head and caused a hemorrhage and confusion on the part of Constable Dunbar.
Caycuse, aka Camp 6, in 1933, five years after the Mabel Jones tragedy. —Courtesy Tom Teer
Mabel’s letter to Manager Christopher Gilson began by reciting the complaints about raising the flag, classroom discipline and the use of scribblers as scrapbooks that she’d received by a hand-delivered note from school secretary and treasurer M. Robert Magnone.
Then she become more personal: “Dear Friend.—If you wonder at all why I did this you will find the reason above. There are a few people who would like to see me out of the way, so I am trying to please them. I tried to talk to you tonight [that would have been at the house party—Ed.]. I wanted to tell you to help me to get another school. You said I was to look to you as a sincere friend—more than that.
“I know this is a coward’s way of doing things, but what they said about me almost broke my heart. They are not true.
“Forgive me, please. Say it was an accident.
‘MABEL.” *
Next to take the stand was Dr. G.W. Bissett who’d conducted the post mortem and determined that the fatal bullet had travelled through Mabel’s heart and left lung, the muzzle of the rifle having been within four inches of her body when she squeezed the trigger.
He was followed by Manager Gilson who deposed that he’d known the deceased for 15 months, since December 1927, and that he’d been called to her house upon the discovery of her body. He didn’t think that she’d ever had “one unkind word said to her” previous to the complaints made against her teaching methods but he acknowledged that there had been “some camp gossip”.
The school inspector had assured him that everything was satisfactory. “Trivial” though the complaints were, they “hurt her very badly”. He’d discussed them with Mabel and he’d urged her to always count on him as a shoulder to lean on, to think of him as she would her father. He’d noticed that she had seemed depressed at the party the evening before her death and he’d meant to speak with her.
His failure to do so was “the greatest sorrow of his life”.
After describing her as shy and retiring, Gilson dropped a bombshell by urging the court to do what it could to prevent recurrence of the “lying, petty” and cowardly criticism that had driven Mabel Jones to suicide.
Without giving names, Gilson identified the culprits as the Camp’s school trustees.
After Mrs. Jane Dick described finding Mabel’s body, it was the turn of Arthur Chester O’Neill (Pete to his friends) to briefly tell how Mabel had asked him to take her home from the party at 1 o’clock Wednesday morning. They’d talked on her steps for more than an hour. Still smarting from the trustees’ charges, she’d said she hoped to find another school.
She’d even mentioned suicide “casually,” but he’d “begged her not to, and told her it would be a selfish action on her part after the manner in which she had taken care of her [ailing] mother”.
After she declined his offer to advance their wedding to Christmas because she couldn’t afford a trousseau and continue payments to her mother, he’d left her on the porch.
He’d never seen a gun although Mabel had told him that she owned a .22.
There will be two more performances of the Mabel Jones tragedy in Messages in the Dust at the BC Forest Discovery Centre at 12:00 and 2:00 p.m., Saturday, Aug. 3, 2024.
It’s not stated in the press accounts but it takes little imagination to sense the tension in the courtroom as Robert Magnone, secretary of the Camp 6 school board, took the witness stand. After saying that Miss Jones was “the finest person” he’d ever met, he outlined how he’d had complaints of her teaching style from another trustee and his “Missus.”
Speaking for himself, he felt that her teaching skills had slipped from good to “only fair” during her second year. He admitted to having had no previous experience as a trustee and to lacking a real standard by which to judge her work. He’d held no meetings with the other trustees and had hand-delivered the itemized complaints on his own initiative. Knowing that she was “sensitive,” he’d done so in the belief that his pointing out “minor mistakes” would help her.
After she read his note in the cabin and came outside, crying, he, by then upset himself, told her to forget them.
The four contentious issues that he’d drawn to Mabel’s notice were then dealt with.
Mrs. Peck had complained to him of the flag’s not being raised and lowered daily and he’d “agreed with her”.
She’d also made the charge of the “careless manner in which the children are allowed to march into school”. He’d formed his own opinion of the lack of schoolroom discipline from listening to his children.
He also objected to Mabel’s allowing the children “to waste scribblers” by pasting pictures in them.
He admitted that he and Mrs. Peck had discussed “getting rid of the teacher and taking on a new one”.
Cross-examined by a lawyer for the Cowichan Lake Logging Co., Magnone conceded that he couldn’t really swear to the validity of any of the complaints or Camp gossip, and he’d “acted on hearsay”.
Despite that, he’d been in agreement with Mrs. Peck that Miss Jones should be replaced.
Interestingly, Magnone was rebutted on the stand by School Inspector W.H. May who was attending the proceedings to personally report on the outcome to the Minister of Education, the Hon. J. Hinchcliffe. Called as a witness, May told the court that Mabel was fully qualified, her classes had been very satisfactory and Magnone had no right as secretary to take the complaints to her without the authorization of the other trustees.
Which could only have made Malvina Peck’s unrepentant testimony, brief though it was, paint her even blacker in the eyes of those present.
Although she hadn’t noticed any recent deterioration in the teacher’s work, she had no confidence in the inspector’s passing report.
No, she hadn’t seen the note that Magnone presented to Mabel and hadn’t known that he was going to do so.
Yes, she and Magnone had discussed asking Miss Jones to resign as she’d heard of a male teacher whom she believed “would fill the position satisfactorily” because a man would be better able to maintain discipline.
She didn’t care what the children did with their scribblers (a reference to the cutting and pasting) nor had she discussed any of her concerns with the third trustee, William Miller.
She wasn’t familiar with the School Act despite having “read almost all of it”. Even after all that had happened, she apparently had no second thoughts, either, flatly stating that, had she had the authority, she’d have discharged Mabel Jones.
She had no idea why the teacher had taken her own life.
Before she could stand down, she was shown one of the tear-stained suicide notes. Asked whom Mabel referred to, “There are a few people who would like me out of the way,” she haltingly admitted that Mabel likely meant the school trustees.
Such was the testimony given at the inquest. The Colonist headline undoubtedly summed up the sentiments of many of its readers with its subheading, Jury Finds Criticism of Trustees led Girl Teacher to Kill Self.
After ruling that Mabel Jones committed suicide “while temporarily insane,” the jury suggested that the provincial education authority review the challenges faced by other young teachers who, like Mabel Jones, found themselves in isolation, distant from family and friends, and perhaps ill-equipped to adjust to and to handle difficult, even hostile, circumstances.
“…We are of the opinion that the School Act should be amended in such a manner as to place the affairs of the school board in small isolated assisted school districts in the hands of competent trustees, not necessarily elected, thus freeing the teacher from the gossip of irresponsible and petty citizens.”
A more damning indictment of the Camp 6 school board can’t be imagined. Too late to help Mabel Jones, alas, but, if the jury’s recommendation were followed, in time to spare others her ordeal.
The tragedy had drawn widespread attention including an editorial in the Vancouver Province which lamented, “poor little Mabel Jones” had been driven to taking her own life “because it became intolerable to her in that lonely settlement in the deep woods of Vancouver Island”.
But there was a silver lining: “Her pitiable history has done more to arouse public interest in the problems of our rural schools than anything else that has been done or said in this province for years.”
At its November meeting the Victoria chapter of the Council of Women approved a motion to have a deputation call upon the Minister of Education, to ask for “better protection of young teachers sent into the remote rural areas”.
Mrs. William Grant, seconded by Mrs. Hopkins, moved, “That we, the Victoria Local Council of Women, deplore the recent occurrence at Cowichan Lake, and appoint a committee to interview the Department of Education asking that steps be taken for the better protection of young teachers in isolated districts.”
Just a day later, the Colonist reported that the school trustees at Nixon Creek (Caycuse) had been removed from office by a government order in response to the findings of the coroner’s inquest. Provincial School Inspector A.C. Stewart had been appointed official trustee of the Camp 6 school and Miss Elaine Fox of Victoria was the new teacher.
Mabel Jones’s headstone in the Cumberland cemetery. —Find a Grave
There was another startling sequel to the case with word from Manager Gilson that he’d received a telegram informing him that Mable’s fiance had been seriously injured in an auto accident on the Mainland. After attending her funeral in Cumberland, Pete O’Neill had quit his job and was driving to Seattle in search of work when he was hurt.
The tipping point in Mabel Jones’ decision to shoot herself is revealed in her plaintive note to her fiance: “If only I could have married you at Christmas, then perhaps I wouldn’t have cared what was said.”
But she couldn’t marry him, she believed, because of the financial support she was giving her parents. Meaning that she’d have had to endure seven more months of the trustees’ carping and small-town gossip. For a young woman who apparently had never known such mental anguish, even suicide appears to have been preferable.
The irony for Mabel Estelle Jones is that from the emotional hell that claimed her life came revised provincial policy and increased overview of the workplace conditions under which her fellow teachers, most of them young and unworldly like her, found themselves.
The Colonist proclaimed the government’s decision with headlines as lurid as those which announced Mabel Jones’s suicide:
YOUNG GIRL TEACHERS TO BE GUARDED
Minister of Education Will Determine Areas Unsuitable for Employment of Beginners
THREE LISTS ARE TO BE PREPARED
Action Taken by Provincial Department Sequel to Tragedy at Nixon Creek School
For five years until her dismissal by a change of government which cancelled the oversight program, Miss Lottie Bowron, as the Rural Teachers’ Welfare Officer, visited outlying schools and offered herself as a “friend and good counsellor who will ever be ready to respond to any call that may come for advice or assistance”.
Bowron issued her first report less than two months after the Jones tragedy and would later declare that the teachers under her purview felt “a sense of security in the fact that there is a woman to whom they may appeal and who from time to time visits them”.
* * * * *
Testimony at the inquest revealed that, just three weeks before her death, Schools Inspector A.C. Stewart had approved Mabel’s classroom deportment and noted that she’d clearly demonstrated her interest in her students’ welfare and progress.
How ironic that, the year before in his annual report to the Dept. of Education, Stewart had been moved to urge school trustees, particularly those of isolated rural communities, to be more tolerant of young teachers’ frailties:
“We all have the same burden of human defects and need all the helpfulness, sympathy, and encouragement possible from the community...that we may rise in some measure and in some degree to the height of the service required and demanded of us. Whatever the baffling conditions, whatever the adverse and unjust criticism [author’s italics], if we honestly and sincerely try and strive we shall at least enjoy the luxury of self-respect.”
Could Stewart have had Mabel in mind when he wrote that? Or were other harassed young school teachers being held to account, unjustly, in other rural communities throughout British Columbia?
* * * * *
* NOTE: Most old news accounts use the correct spelling of Mabel despite confusion likely caused by her mis-captioned photo in the Victoria Normal School Yearbook. Hence, no doubt, the initial articles in the Cowichan Leader using Mable. A School District Information Form filled out in February 1928 clearly shows, possibly in her own neat handwriting, Mabel E. Jones.
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Caycuse/Camp 6 closed for two years at the start of the Depression but reopened in 1933. By then a larger schoolhouse was needed and continued in operation, teaching kindergarten to Grade 6, until 1987.
A road connection to Lake Cowichan was finally completed in 1955 and later continued to Nitinat, also known as Camp 3, at the head of the lake.
