By Randy Evans and Gary Shrumm for The Sarnia Journal, 2017-03-12
The old Sarnia Jail was the site of three executions namely Thomas Cleary ( 1862), Elizabeth Workman ( 1873) and Stephen Kiyoshk ( 1941 ).
The fate of each was consequent upon a Sarnia jury finding of guilt on a murder charge and the resulting mandatory sentence of death.
Any commutation of sentence or clemency would have had to come from the Governor General in Council in Ottawa. No such reprieve was received by any.
By law only those executed could be buried within the confines of the Jail. Accordingly , at most, the historic Sarnia jail could have housed only three bodies.
Research shows however that in the cases of Cleary and Kiyoshk their post hanging bodies were claimed by loved ones and interred in local cemetaries. Currently Cleary is located at Our Lady of Mercy in Sarnia and Kiyoshk at on Walpole Island.
That leaves Workman as being the only internment on the grounds of the historic Sarnia Jail. Historical reports are consistent in stating that post execution Workman’s body was lowered into a pit previously dug for this purpose.
The issue now is whether Workman’s corpse has ever been removed from the old Jail location.
Much indignation and speculation has been expressed to the effect that her remains are still at the original burial site. However such expressions have been made with little or no actual foundation of research. So where does investigation take us.
Ms. Workman does not have a grave in the Sarnia cemetaries nor is she buried downriver at her home community of Mooretown.
When in…..the Sarnia Jail and property was sold, torn down and re-developed extensive news coverage was made of the related events. It is reasonable to think that any exhumation of her body would have been noted as newsworthy.
But nary a word was found in regard to Workman.
Perhaps the the lapse of ….since her burial on the site caused no one to think of her.
Accordingly and unless her remains were disturbed and removed by the extensive excavation which took place at the site in…………, it is a reasonable inference based upon the evidence that the site of the old Sarnia Jail still houses the remains of Elizabeth Workman.