Tag Archives: William Workman

Genealogy, Montreal, Quebec

Montreal Mayor William Workman

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Mayor William Workman in his robes of office, 1870.

In 1848, Montreal hardware merchant William Workman was encouraged to run for mayor. He refused. Twenty years later, Workman was elected as the city’s mayor, bringing his extensive experience in business, banking and philanthropy to the position for three years.  

A Protestant immigrant from Ireland, Workman (1807-1878) came from a middle-class family. He became a partner with the Montreal wholesale hardware company Frothingham and Workman and, after retirement in 1859, he remained active on the boards of several banks and philanthropic organizations.1

In politics, he was a liberal and, like several of his eight siblings, a member of the Unitarian Church. “All the (Workman) brothers had been instilled with a strong sense of morality, had learned skills to earn their living, possessed an ability to think through issues for themselves, and seemed to seek knowledge for its own sake,” Christine Johnston wrote in her biography of Willam’s brother Dr. Joseph Workman.2

In 1868, when Workman agreed to run, democratic institutions were relatively new. Montreal had been incorporated as a city in 1833, but its mayor was not elected by public voters until 1852, and there was no secret ballot until 1889. At first, only property owners were eligible to vote. As of 1860, renters – and in this city, most people were renters – could vote, provided they had paid their taxes. Anyone running for mayor, however, had to own property worth at least 1000 pounds.3 Thus, most of the city’s early mayors were from the business community, and about 60 percent of the people elected to city council were anglophones.

Banker and railway entrepreneur William Molson put Workman’s name forward at a nomination meeting. His opponent was Jean-Louis-Beaudry, a businessman who had already served several years as mayor. At first, there was a question as to whether Workman was eligible to run, then Beaudry claimed that Workman should be disqualified. His objections were dismissed and Workman beat Beaudry with 3134 votes to 1862.4

In 1869 and 1870, Workman was acclaimed mayor, but he did not run again in 1871.

When Workman was mayor, the municipal council met on the ground floor of the Bonsecours Market building, in what is now known as Old Montreal. In this 1870 photo, Workman was standing on the raised area at the far end of the room.

The most distressing of Montreal’s problems was the high mortality rate for young children. Some people suspected that this was linked to its water supply. Cholera epidemics had reached Montreal in 1832, 1849 and 1854, but even most physicians did not understand that cholera was caused by bacteria, spread in contaminated drinking water. Instead, they believed that disease was spread by miasma, or unpleasant vapours in the air. William Workman, however, may have had some understanding of the contagiousness of cholera because his brother Joseph had done his thesis on cholera while a medical student at McGill University.6

As president of the Montreal Sanitary Association, William realized the importance of clean water. Over the three years he served as mayor, he looked at municipal economic development and urban life as two sides of the same coin. He was the first mayor to do so.7 His administration focused on improving the city’s water system, improving sanitation and making the city more livable for residents.

Workman improved the city’s aqueduct system to ensure it could provide enough water to everyone. He ensured that the sewer system was modernized, replacing rotting wooden sewer pipes with clay ones. He also saw to it that low-lying areas, where potentially contaminated water could accumulate, were drained.7

He turned his attention to garbage collection, introducing regulations concerning the pickup of manure, dead animals, soot and ashes. People were required to store waste in boxes or barrels, and the city now picked up garbage on a daily basis. The city built public baths, since many homes did not have hot running water, and it constructed municipal slaughterhouses.

To ensure that the city benefit all residents, he advocated for the creation of large public parks, on the top of Mount Royal and on Île Sainte-Hélène, where people could breathe pure air.8 Not long after Workman left office, the city purchased the necessary land and hired famous landscape architect Frederick Olmstead to design Mount Royal Park. It was officially opened in 1876 and it is still today a much-loved feature of Montreal. Île Sainte-Hélène, in the St. Lawrence River, also remains a popular green space.  

One of the most exciting events of Workman’s time as mayor may have been the clear, crisp October day in 1869 when 19-year-old Prince Arthur, Queen Victoria’s third son, arrived in Montreal as part of a Canadian tour. Workman greeted the prince in the old port and made a short welcoming speech, then he and his guest took part in a procession through the streets. People cheered as they passed by, and homes and commercial buildings were decked out with banners and flags. The following day a lacrosse tournament took place.

On the day of the 1869 lacrosse tournament, Workman, back row on the left, posed with a group of indigenous people.

Workman proved to be a very popular mayor among both English- and French-speaking Montrealers, and when he left office, citizens showed their appreciation. A public banquet was organized in his honour, and people from all classes came to thank him for his hard work and the generous hospitality he had offered to visitors. The Gazette was effusive in its description of the banquet and the expensive thank-you gifts of a diamond ring and silver dishes that Workman received.

The speech Workman gave during this dinner revealed that he had had concerns about going into politics. Addressing the crowd, and especially members of municipal council, he said, “I entered upon the duties of my office under great inexperience.… I laboured under great misgivings and suspicions as to the conduct of affairs in your corporate administration. Then, as now, the press had been sounding the alarm as to combinations, jobs and rings. I watched with great attention and anxiety in every department to discover the truth of these assertions, but I watched in vain and, after three years experience, I can truly say that, if it is one of the great blessings of a city … and of the citizens to find the corporate action of its representatives in unison with right and honest discharge of duty, then Montreal enjoys that blessing to its fullest extent.”

This story is also posted on my personal family history blog, http://www.writinguptheancestors.ca.

See also:

Janice Hamilton, “William Workman: Public Successes, Personal Problems” Genealogy Ensemble, Jan. 7, 2026, https://genealogyensemble.com/2026/01/07/william-workman-public-successes-personal-problems/

Photo credits:

Mayor William Workman, Montreal, QC, 1870, photo by William Notman, McCord Stewart Museum, 432611, accessed March 3, 2026

Archives de Montreal, Bref historique des élues et élus de la Ville de Montréal, https://archivesdemontreal.com/2021/06/01/bref-historique-des-elues-et-elus-de-la-ville-de-montreal/, Galerie photo,1870, https://archivesdemontreal.com/documents/2021/06/1870_VM166-D00015-22-5-002.jpg, accessed March 4, 2026

Kanien’kehá:ka group with William Workman, Mayor of Montreal, Montreal, QC, 1869; 1869 10 09; photo by James Inglis, McCord Stewart Museum, M6308, accessed March 4, 2026

Sources:

1. G. Tulchinsky, “WORKMAN, WILLIAM,” in Dictionary of Canadian Biography, vol. 10, University of Toronto/Université Laval, 2003–, accessed February 22, 2026. https://www.biographi.ca/en/bio/workman_william_10E.html.

2. Christine I. M. Johnston, The Father of Canadian Psychiatry: Joseph Workman, Victoria: The Ogden Press, 2000, p. 38. 

3. Archives de Montreal. Montreal: Democracy in Montreal from 1830 to the present: Electoral system. http://www2.ville.montreal.qc.ca/archives/democratie/democratie_en/expo/institutions-municipales/systeme-electoral/index.shtm, accessed Feb. 22, 2026.  

4. Claude-V. Marsolais, Luc Desrochers, Robert Comeau, Histoire des maires de Montréal, Montreal: VLB Éditeur, 1993, p. 309

5. Paul-Andre Linteau, translated by Peter McCambridge, The History of Montreal: the story of a Great North American City, Montreal: Baraka Books, 2013. p 87.

6. Johnston, The Father of Canadian Psychiatry: Joseph Workman, p. 22. 

7. Marsolais et al, Histoire des maires de Montreal, p. 87.

8. Archives de Montreal. Montreal: Democracy in Montreal from 1830 to the present: Mayors of Montreal: William Workman. (1868-1871), http://www2.ville.montreal.qc.ca/archives/democratie/democratie_en/expo/maires/workman/index.shtm, accessed Feb. 21, 2026

9. “Dinner to Wm. Workman, Esq.” The Gazette, March 8, 1871, p. 2. Newspapers.com, accessed Feb. 23, 2026. 

Montreal, Quebec

William Workman: Public Successes, Personal Problems

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The Workman family plot in Montreal’s Mount Royal Cemetery is a large one, including six large tombstones engraved with the names of almost 30 people. But William Workman (1807-1878), a successful businessman who served as mayor of Montreal for three years, is not buried there. He was laid to rest alone, in a large mausoleum some distance from the family plot.

Before I started researching the Workmans, a cemetery staff member told me that William had wanted family members to be buried in the mausoleum with him, but they refused. Neither of us knew why, but now I have an idea.  

William Workman, 1866, Montreal, QC, William Notman Studio, McCord Stewart Museum online collection, I-22186.1, accessed Jan. 6, 2026.

Born in 1807, William was the fifth of nine children. The family lived near Belfast, in what is now Northern Ireland, where his father was a teacher and estate manager. In 1819, William’s oldest brother, Benjamin, immigrated to Montreal. Three brothers followed soon after and, in 1829, the rest of the family moved to what was then Lower Canada.1

Before emigrating, William worked as a surveyor for the Royal Engineers, mapping Ireland for the Ordnance Survey project. In Montreal, his first job was as assistant editor of the Canadian Courant and Montreal Advertiser, a weekly newspaper owned by brother Benjamin. Soon, however, William found his true calling: as a businessman.

He found employment with a hardware firm, Frothingham & Co., and within a few years he became a partner. As of 1836, the company was known as Frothingham and Workman, and it became the largest wholesale hardware company in Canada, selling scythes, shovels, augers and nails. When William retired from the hardware business in 1859, his brother Thomas took over running the company.2

Frothingham and Workman, Iron Mongers, Montreal, John Henry Walker, McCord Stewart Museum online collection, M930.50.7309, accessed Jan. 6, 2026.

Montreal was growing rapidly, and William found opportunities to invest in fields such as banking, transportation and real estate. William was elected president of the City Bank in 1849 and served in that capacity until 1874.3 In 1846 he was one of a group of prominent Montrealers who founded the City and District Savings Bank, established to help ordinary people save their money, and he was president of that institution for several years.

William invested in Canada’s first railway, the Champlain and St Lawrence, completed in 1836 to connect Montreal to Saint-Jean on the Richelieu River.4 He was also a shareholder in the St. Lawrence and Atlantic Railroad, and he collaborated with several other individuals to found the Canadian Ocean Steam Navigation Company in 1854.

Around 1850, he and a business partner became real estate developers. They bought a piece of land south-west of Montreal’s city limits, near the Lachine Canal. The canal attracted industries such as brass foundries and rolling mills, and nearby manufacturing facilities belonging to Frothingham and Workman employed hundreds of people. The partners laid out streets, built sewers and divided the property into housing lots. The area, known as Sainte-Cunégonde, became a village in 1876 and a tiny independent city in 1890, but eventually it became part of the City of Montreal.5 Workman Street, named after William, still exists in the area.

William was also a generous philanthropist. He was president of the St. Patrick’s Society at a time when that organization was involved with both the Roman Catholic and Protestant communities. Later, he supported the Irish Protestant Benevolent Society. In 1864, he helped create the Montreal Protestant House of Industry and Refuge, serving as president from 1874 to 1877. He was also president of the Montreal Dispensary and Hospital for Sick Children.

He was not deeply involved in politics, but he was elected mayor of Montreal from 1868 to 1872 and proved to be very popular. This aspect of his life will be the topic of another story.

Around this time, wealthy merchants began building large homes on the slopes of Mount Royal, an area that became known as the Golden Square Mile. William bought a full block on the north side of Sherbrooke Street, between Drummond and Stanley, and built a mansion he called Mount Prospect.

“Plan of property belonging to the Estate of the Late W. Workman Esq. subdivided into lots.” H.M. Perrault, 20 Novembre, 1879; Bibliothèque et Archives nationales du Québec, entry for William Workman, https://numerique.banq.qc.ca/patrimoine/details/52327/3394052?docsearchtext=William%20Workmanaccessed 6 January 2026.

William Workman and Elizabeth (Eliza) Bethell were married at St. Paul’s Presbyterian Church on February 10, 1831. Eliza came from the same part of Ireland where William had grown up, so perhaps they had known each other there. They had seven children, so the house should have been full of activity, but it didn’t turn out that way.

It was all too common for children to die young in 19th century Montreal, and William and Eliza lost three little ones. Their firstborn, Elizabeth, was born in December 1831 and died the following summer. Their third child, Emma, was born in August 1837 and died in April 1839. Another girl, Malvina, was born in July 1845 and died in April 1847. Two daughters, Louise (or Louisa) and Elizabeth (Eliza), grew to adulthood, but Eliza, who married Robert Moat, died in 1871. Louisa married Joel C. Baker, a lawyer who went into the hardware business with Louise’s uncle Henry Mulholland.

But William found the death of his only son, also named William (1840-1865), the most devastating blow of all. By then, he and his wife may have already been living apart.

An image of the 1861 census suggests that Eliza was not living at Mount Prospect house, but with her married daughter Louisa Baker and her husband,6 so perhaps William and Eliza had unofficially separated by then. In the 1871 census, seven people were listed as living at Mount Prospect, including a cook, a coachman and a horseman. William was the only family member listed.

In a book about William’s brother, The Father of Canadian Psychiatry, Joseph Workman, author Christine Johnston remarked that Joseph did not have a high opinion of William, commenting in his diary that he thought Wiliam had damage in his head, as well as bumps outside it.7 Perhaps William was also concerned about his own mental health: Johnson wrote that William visited a phrenologist in the United States to examine those external bumps. Johnston also noted that family records suggested William was an alcoholic. If true, that might explain the difficulties in the Workman household.

Nevertheless, many people admired him. When he died, Montreal’s English-language newspapers published extensive obituaries, describing William’s many accomplishments as well as the long and painful illness that led to his death.8 According to one newspaper account, some 400 people attended his funeral at St. James the Apostle Anglican Church, and many followed the hearse to Mount Royal Cemetery.

Wiliam Workman seemed to have everything, but without his family surrounding and supporting him, his life appears to have been a sad one, and those problems followed him to the grave.

The article is also posted on my personal family history blog Writing Up the Ancestors.

Notes

William’s sister Ann (1809-1882), who married hardware merchant Henry Mulholland, was my great-great-grandmother.

Some photos of brother Thomas Workman’s house on Sherbrooke Street are erroneously identified as William’s house. I have not found a photo of Mount Prospect.

There are several photographs of a young man identified as William Workman in the McCord Stewart Museum’s online photo collection. This must the son who died in 1865.  

Phrenology was a popular pseudoscience in the 19th century. Its proponents believed that the measurements of the skull were indicative of mental faculties and character traits.

Sources:

1.   Christine Johnston. “The Irish Connection: Benjamin and Joseph and Their Brothers and their Coats of Many Colours,” CUUHS Meeting, May 1982, Paper #4, p. 2. 

 2.  John Frothingham, Obituary. The Portland Daily Press, May 24, 1870, p. 3. Newspapers.com, accessed Jan. 5, 2026.

3. Nicholas Flood Davin, The Irishman in Canada, London: S. Low, Marston, 1877, p. 334, Internet Archive, https://archive.org/details/irishmanincanada00daviuoft/page/334/mode/2up accessed Jan. 5, 2026.

4. G. Tulchinsky, “Workman, William,” in Dictionary of Canadian Biography, vol. 10, University of Toronto/Université Laval, 2003–,  https://www.biographi.ca/en/bio/workman_william_10E.html

5. Olivier Paré, “Les bâtisseurs de la Petite-Bourgoyge” Encyclopédie du MEM, https://ville.montreal.qc.ca/memoiresdesmontrealais/les-batisseurs-de-la-petite-bourgogne5 accessed Jan. 5, 2026.

6. Ancestry.ca, 1861 Census of Canada. entry for Joel C. Baker, Canada East, Montreal. Library and Archives Canada, Canada East Census, 1861, p. 4210. accessed Jan. 6, 2026.

7. Christine I. M. Johnston, The Father of Canadian Psychiatry: Joseph Workman, Victoria: The Ogden Press, 2000, p. 122. 

8. “Late William Workman”, The Gazette, Feb. 25, 1878, p. 2. Newspapers.com, accessed Dec. 30, 2015. 

Ireland, Lunatic Asylums, Montreal, Ontario, Quebec

Benjamin Workman, MD: Leading the Way

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One spring day in 1819, a young man named Benjamin Workman stood on the dock at Belfast, Ireland, trying to decide where he should immigrate to in North America. He had relatives in the United States, but before he booked his passage, he wanted to check on the safety of the vessels that were scheduled to leave soon.

He noted that the captain of the New Orleans-bound ship appeared to be drunk, the mate of the ship going to New York swore profusely, and the crew of vessel going to Philadelphia ignored his questions, but the captain of the Sally, bound for Quebec, impressed him favourably, so that’s the ship he chose. He later noted that this had been a lucky choice since yellow fever was widespread in American port cities that year.1

Benjamin left Ireland on April 27 and arrived in Montreal a few weeks later. He was 25 years old and had 25 guineas (a coin worth one pound, one shilling) in his pocket.

This photo of Dr. Ben Workman appears in Christine Johnston’s book The Father of Canadian Psychiatry, Joseph Workman. 

His choice of Canada turned out to be a good decision: within 10 years, all of his eight younger siblings and both of their parents had followed him. The Workmans were all hard-working, ambitious and smart, and they took advantage of the opportunities available to them in their new homeland. Four of Ben’s brothers (Alexander, Joseph, William and Thomas) became prominent in business, medicine and politics. His only sister, Ann (1809-1882), married Irish-born Montreal hardware merchant Henry Mulholland and was my great-great-grandmother.

Benjamin’s parents were Joseph Workman (1759-1848) and Catherine Gowdey (1769-1872). Ben was born on Nov. 4, 17942 in the village of Ballymacash, County Antrim, near Lisburn, where the family lived in a small house near the top of a hill.  

Joesph was a teacher in Ballymacash, but he left teaching for a job as a manager for a local landowner, and as a deputy clerk of the peace for the area. Without its only teacher, the local school had to close, so young Ben started studying on his own, reading the Bible and geography books while his father helped him with arithmetic. When Ben was 11, Joseph apprenticed him to a linen weaver, but it soon became clear that Ben had no talent in that field. What he really wanted to do was study. Eventually, Ben went back to school, where he excelled in grammar and the classics. After he graduated, he found a teaching job in Belfast, then another position near Lisburn.   

Ben’s decision to leave Ireland was influenced by an event that took place in 1817. As he was eating his evening meal at his parents’ home, a dozen beggars came in the gate and asked for food and money. Perhaps realizing how widespread poverty was in Ireland, he began to think about going to North America.3

Montreal suited Ben well: other Irish and Scottish immigrants arrived there around the same time, and there were work opportunities for all. He immediately found a teaching job, but after that school’s owner disappeared with its funds, several parents who had noticed what a good teacher Ben was started a new school, with Ben as headmaster.

The Union School, as it was called, was unique. For one thing, girls were admitted, although they were taught separately by a female teacher. It was also successful. By the spring of 1820, it had 120 pupils, and it remained the largest English school in Canada for 20 years.4 Several of its graduates went on to have distinguished careers in business and politics. In 1824, Ben became the sole owner of the school, but he eventually turned over the responsibility of running it to his brother Alexander, who had come to Montreal in 1820.

In 1829, Benjamin switched careers and became a newspaper editor, partnering with a friend to purchase a weekly Montreal newspaper, the Canadian Courant. It had been founded in 1807 as the Canadian Courant and Montreal Advertiser. Ben published the newspaper until 1834, using it to promote his liberal religious views, social welfare issues, and the temperance movement. When the paper ceased publication, Ben blamed distillers, saying that their advertising had dried up because of his support for temperance.

Meanwhile, Ben experienced several tragedies in his personal life, as he was married twice and became a widower twice. He married Margaret Manson, a teacher at the Union School, in 1823. The couple had no children and Margaret died seven years later. He married Mary Ann Mills on October 14, 1838, in Franklin, Michigan, and the couple had three children: Mary Matilda, born in July 1840; a son, Joseph, who was born in November 1841 and died at age 10 months; and Annie, born in July 1843. Mary Ann died two months after Annie’s birth, and Ben’s mother, Catherine, looked after his two daughters.

Soon after that, Ben took up his third career — as a druggist. For several years in the 1840s, Lovell’s city directory of Montreal listed “B. Workman & Co., chemists and druggists”, located at 172 St. Paul Street, corner Customs House Square.5 Meanwhile, he studied medicine at McGill University, graduating in 1853, at age 59. He was henceforth known as Benjamin Workman M.D., which helps differentiate him from several other Benjamins in the family.

During these years as a pharmacist and doctor, Ben demonstrated compassion and generosity, often providing care to people who were too poor to pay. Then, in 1856, he reinvented himself again and moved to Toronto, where he assisted his brother Joseph run the Provincial Lunatic Asylum, the largest and most progressive psychiatric hospital in Canada at the time.

Benjamin is buried in Montreal’s Mount Royal Cemetery, near the Workman family plot. JH photo.

Benjamin Workman is probably best remembered as the founder of the Unitarian Congregation in Montreal.  In Ireland, the Workman family had attended the Non-Subscribing Presbyterian Church of Ireland in Dunmurry. Its members strongly believed in freedom of thought in religion.6

When Ben first arrived in Montreal, there were not enough Unitarians to organize a congregation, so he attended the St. Gabriel Street Presbyterian Church. When the city’s Unitarian congregation was permanently established in 1842, he played a key role.7

In 1855, Ben got into a disagreement with the congregation’s minister, Rev. John Cordner, a man he himself had recruited for the job. Benjamin argued that Cordner had excessive authority, and when the rest of the congregation sided with their minister, Ben withdrew from the church. Soon after, he moved to Toronto, joining the Unitarian congregation his brother Joseph had helped to found there. He got along well with the Toronto congregation’s members and their minister, and he ran the Sunday School there for many years.

Ben lived with his daughter Anne in Uxbridge Ontario at the end of his life, dying there on Sept. 26, 1878, several weeks short of his 84th birthday. He was buried a few days later next to the large Workman family plot at Montreal’s Mount Royal Cemetery.

This article is also posted on http://www.writinguptheancestors.ca.

See also:

Janice Hamilton, “Dr. Joseph Workman, Pioneer in the Treatment of Mental Illness” Writing Up the Ancestors, Oct 26, 2017, https://www.writinguptheancestors.ca/2017/10/dr-joseph-workman-mental-health-pioneer.html

Janice Hamilton, “Henry Mulholland, Hardware Merchant” Writing Up the Ancestors, March 17, 2016,  https://www.writinguptheancestors.ca/2016/03/henry-mulholland-montreal-hardware.html

Notes:

The children of Joseph and Catherine Workman were: Benjamin (1794-1878), Alexander (1798-1891), John (1803-1829), Joseph (1805-1894), William (1807-1878). Ann (1809-1882), Samuel (1811-1869), Thomas (1813-1889), Matthew Francis (1815-1839).

Benjamin kept a journal in which he recorded his memories of growing up in Ballymacash, and an account of the Workman family’s 200-year history in Ireland.  A large online database called A Family Orchard: Leaves from the Workman Tree, https://freepages.rootsweb.com/~database/misc/WORKMAN.htm, includes a family history going back to the 1600s, that was part of Ben’s journal. The late Calgary researcher Frederick Hunter prepared this site and database. 

Catherine Gowdey’s name has been spelled in various ways, including Gowdie and Gowdy.

Thank you to Christine Johnston, former archivist and historian of the First Unitarian Congregation of Toronto, and author of a biography of Ben’s brother Joseph.

Sources: 

1. Christine I. M. Johnston, The Father of Canadian Psychiatry: Joseph Workman, Victoria: The Ogden Press, 2000, p. 16.

2. A Family Orchard: Leaves from the Workman Tree, https://freepages.rootsweb.com/~database/misc/WORKMAN.htm, accessed Jan. 31, 2025.

3. The Digger, One Family’s Journey from Ballymacash to Canada, Lisburn.com, http://lisburn.com/history/digger/Digger-2011/digger-19-08-2011.html, accessed Jan. 31, 2024.

4. Nicholas Flood Davin, The Irishman in Canada, London: S. Low, Marston, 1877, p. 334, Internet Archive, https://archive.org/details/irishmanincanada00daviuoft/page/334/mode/2up, accessed Jan. 31, 2025.

5. Lovells Montreal Directory, 1849, p. 246, Bibliothèque et Archives nationales du Québec (BAnQ), https://numerique.banq.qc.ca/patrimoine/details/52327/3652392, accessed Jan. 31, 2024.

6. Christine Johnston, The Father of Canadian Psychiatry: Joseph Workman, p. 15.

7. Christine Johnston. “The Irish Connection: Benjamin and Joseph and Their Brothers and Their Coats of Many Colours,” CUUHS Meeting, May 1982, Paper #4, p. 2.