Court hands down low fines to cockfight event participants

A regular weekly look back at some offbeat or interesting stories that have appeared in the Citizen over its 175-year history.

Following a tip from an anonymous telephone caller, Hull police descended upon a Notre Dame Street home on the last Sunday afternoon of February 1921, where they found three dozen men engaged in the brutal and inhuman “sport” of cockfighting.

When they arrived, according to the Citizen's front-page story the following day, police discovered 21 roosters, eight of which, having fought already, were dead. The other 13 were, the court decided, to be sold, with the proceeds going to the St. Vincent de Paul Society. One of the cocks, the Citizen noted, had been imported from Cuba, “the home of cocking mains,” and was valued at more than $50.

Despite the event's brutality, the men, most of whom were from Ottawa, got off with nominal fines of $12 each (the equivalent today of about $175), except for organizer Albert Marcoux, who was fined $22 (about $325 today).

Commenting on the light sentences, court recorder Desjardins compared cockfighting to the boxing match that Hull was hoping to host between heavyweights Jack “Manassa Mauler” Dempsey and Georges “The Orchid Man” Carpentier.

“In view of the fact that Hull has been engaged in endeavoring to secure the Dempsey-Carpentier fight, I do not see how I could treat this cockfight as a serious offence,” he said.

“It is sport just the same as the other fight.”

It might be noted, though, that in the Dempsey-Carpentier fight, which took place in Jersey City the following July, and which Dempsey won by a fourth-round knockout, neither boxer arrived in a suitcase and neither left dead.