Open Daily: 10am - 10pm | Alley door pickup 10am - 7pm 3038 Hennepin Ave Minneapolis, MN
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  • Open Daily: 10am - 10pm
    Alley-side Pickup: 10am - 7pm

    3038 Hennepin Ave Minneapolis, MN
    612-822-4611

Open Daily: 10am - 10pm | Alley-side Pickup: 10am - 7pm
3038 Hennepin Ave Minneapolis, MN
612-822-4611
Making a Killing: Murder and Life Insurance in 1890s Ontario

Making a Killing: Murder and Life Insurance in 1890s Ontario

Radforth, Ian

Hardcover

Series: Osgoode Society for Canadian Legal History

EconomicsCanadian HistoryGeneral Law

Publisher Price: $90.00

PREORDER - Expected ship date October 20, 2026

ISBN10: 1049808983
ISBN13: 9781049808987
Publisher: University of Toronto Press
Published: Oct 20 2026
Pages: 264
Weight: 0.99
Height: 1.00 Width: 6.00 Depth: 9.00
Language: English

In late nineteenth-century Canada, the life insurance industry expanded impressively, offering policy-holders a greater sense of security. However, insurance fraud quickly followed in the footsteps of this boom, with murder sometimes being a deadly outcome.



Making a Killing examines six legal cases in 1890s Ontario, where the Crown alleged that the accused had resorted to committing murder to obtain life insurance payouts. The scenarios varied widely, from a staged logging accident to conceal a murder, to a farmer's wife who allegedly sought to collect the insurance on her husband by putting arsenic in the rhubarb she fed him. Newspapers eagerly reported these and other sensational crimes. Whether farmers or city dwellers, prosperous or poor, all the alleged perpetrators latched onto the quick money promised by the murder of an insured person.

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