Researching Supreme Court records at the BC Archives

Genealogists are interested in a wide variety of court records from adoption to wills. I don’t know about you, but I learn best by doing. In this series, I’ll share what I learned about researching Supreme Court records at the Royal British Columbia Museum and Archives, Victoria, in April, 2025. For the record – haha see what I did there? – I’ll be discussing an 1885 criminal case, and then a 1955 probate search. Like everything worthwhile in genealogy, both of these cases had unexpected brick walls. This is my third post on the 1885 criminal court case of WON (温) Alexander Cumyow. If you’d like to start at the beginning, see Was Won Alexander Cumyow framed?

Supreme Court record types

In British Columbia, the Supreme Court handled divorce, probate, civil cases, and criminal cases. Here is a list of the possible records:

• Assize Court calendar – a ledger of the cases and charges, by date and location
• Bench Books – a judge’s overview of a case; could contain documents and notes
• Cause books – a summary of a case, including details such as case file number, date, style of cause, judge, order, judgement
• Chambers applications – an application for a decision or order, generally before or during a trial
• Court proceedings – could include evidence, arguments, testimony
• Civil Case files
• Criminal Case files
• Divorce Case files
• Judgements: Index to judgements, Reasons for judgement
• Orders [Court orders] – the decision of the court
• Minute books – like a diary of the court proceeding
• Probate / estate files
• Record books – could include trial records, appeal records, judgements, orders, case files, court proceeding notes
• Registrar – Registrar’s notes, Registrar’s minute books
• Wills

Get ready to research court records

Regardless of your desired court record type, avoid wasting time and money at the archives with some preparation. I’d recommend a deep dive into newspaper research with the following questions:

• Who is involved? Is it a person or an organization? If it is a person, what are all the spellings of their surname? if you have the surname plus initials, try to determine what the initials stand for. My case involved Edwin Johnson, judge, and E.M. Johnson (no relation), plaintiff.
• Who else is involved? Don’t limit your work to the plaintiff and defendant. There were registrars and sheriffs – look for their collected books of correspondence (letterbooks).
• Who presided? You might find bench books, correspondence, and notes from the judge about the case, and in a criminal case, there might be more than one judge. There might be a jury (jury presentment records).
• When did the event occur? You would not believe how many court cases happen every year, by people with similar sounding names. Sometimes people were litigious and appeared in court multiple times in the same year. You need at least the year, and preferably the month and year.
• Where was the case held? Court records are organized by jurisdiction, even if that jurisdiction no longer exists today. For example, there are court records for the gold rush courthouse at Richfield, Barkerville, B.C.¹
• Is what you want to see onsite or will you need to pre-order? Archives often keep records off-site. Save grief by requesting the records ahead of time.

Court records – things to know

Highly recommended: first review the BC Archives guide to court records.²

I’m not new to finding probates, wills, and divorce records but was new at researching criminal records. Here are some things that I learned about court records on this trip:

1. A knowledge of legal process helps in researching court records, because otherwise the blur of record types can be confusing: indices, judgements, memos, orders, and much more.
2. Civil cases are different than criminal cases. A presumption of innocence only applies to criminal cases.
3. Indices are your friend. Regardless of record type: always first check if there is an index. Because court cases are filed by style of cause, be sure you have all the names at your fingertips, and pro tip: have alternate spellings on hand.
4. What is the case called? Try to figure out what the legal case name might be: the style of cause. The first party is the plaintiff and the second party is the defendant. It could be surname vs. surname, such as seen in divorce records: Brown vs. Jones. It could be surname vs. company: Brown vs. Canadian Pacific Railway. In Supreme Court cases, the style of cause will name the British monarch because it is being argued on behalf of the Crown, e.g., Regina vs. Cumyow.
5. A plaintiff is the one bringing the suit.
6. A defendant is the party answering the suit.
7. Records are scattered. Records might or might not exist at any step of the legal process from arrest to conviction and incarceration. For civil cases, it might be from subpoena to judgement. For all: If you can’t locate records at a lower level, it may be they were compiled for a later action, such as an appeal.
8. Time passing does not mean open access. Just because records are old doesn’t mean they are available. Some folks assume that since they are researching records one hundred years or older, they will be open access, but this is not the case. I was told, for example, that cases about children had an indefinite privacy wall.
9. Access might be open, private, or indeterminate. Some records are indeterminate access. This means that open records and private records might be interfiled together, and the archivist must make a determination at the fonds level whether a researcher may see a particular set. This is the reason why I was able to see some indeterminate records and not others. One set of fonds were paper records interfiled with private records – these were detached and provided to me. One set of fonds were microfilmed, and since a film cannot be detached, access was denied.
10. Records are incomplete. Just because they are court records doesn’t mean the archives received everything from the court system.
11. Don’t overlook bench books. Bench books, which are records created by judges during a trial, are the personal property of the judge and as such, incomplete sets of bench books are held at archives. In other words, judges who donated their notes to archives are the exception, not the rule.
12. Records might be misfiled. In the court systems, scribes were careful but not perfect. If you are looking for Alexander John Brown and you can’t locate your style of cause under “B for Brown,” check “A for Alexander” and “J for John.”

Early judicial systems – police and magistrate courts

• Prior to the establishment of provincial court systems, the lower court system was by police / magistrate court.³ The presiding magistrate was often, but not necessarily, a lawyer. In some jurisdictions, the magistrate was a police officer. Each province had different years for changing to a provincial court system, and knowing this date aids a genealogist in knowing which records to review.
• In Vancouver, the Police Court existed from 1886-1962, before being replaced by the Magistrate’s Court (1962) and the Provincial Court (1969).⁴ These records are likely held at the City of Vancouver Archives.⁵
• Records for cases attributed to “police court” in British Columbia prior to 1886 are unlikely to be held at the City of Vancouver Archives because Vancouver was incorporated 6 Apr 1886. Search instead at the BC Archives.
• If the police or magistrate’s court determined the case was too serious to adjudicate, they would recommend a future hearing by judge and jury with the Supreme Court. In British Columbia, these trials were held on the assize system (a periodic court), usually in spring and autumn. “Assize” records could include bench books, calendars of hearings, judgments, minute books, and record books.

Getting started – Court records

I was researching the 1885 criminal case of Won Alexander Cumyow. In the below list I’ll provide the details and possible search terms in square brackets like this [judgements]. Rarely will a court case be searchable by the style of cause, which means to find the records, a researcher will need to request calendars, indices, ledgers, notebooks, and more:

• Won Alexander Cumyow was arrested Sep 1885 [sheriff and registrar letterbooks].
• The trial was held before magistrate Edwin Johnson [bench books, judge’s notes, Edwin Johnson].
• The style of cause was possibly Johnson vs. King Tye Co., 1885 [judgements, orders].
• Johnson vs. King Tye Co. was referred to the Autumn Assizes [assizes records] before Justice Gray [bench books, judges notes, Justice Gray] in Nov 1885.
• The grand jury voted to indict Cumyow [jury presentments, grand jury] on charges of embezzlement.
• The new case, Regina vs. Cumyow, was held Dec 1885 before Chief Justice M. Begbie [bench books, judge’s notes] and Cumyow was convicted [judgements, orders, Supreme Court, Begbie].
• Cumyow served three years in New Westminster Gaol 1885-88 [New Westminster Gaol records, return of prisoners].

Go to the BC Archives Collection Search / Advanced Search.

Here’s a search example: “Supreme Court” in Title, not “probate” in Creator, for a date range 1884-1886.

Search Process

Here is a list of all the records was able to see, and the results:

• Series GR-1727 Bench books, 1864-1964, Justice Matthew Baillie Begbie, British Columbia, Jun 1885-May 1887, ledger – pages 172-77; Fonds PR-1653 – Matthew Baillie Begbie fonds, 1858-1913 – nil
• Series GR-1827 – Series GR-1827 – Victoria Supreme Court letterbooks – nil because too blurry to read
• Series GR-1863 – Victoria Supreme Court index to judgements, 1885-1895
• Series GR-1926 – Assize calendars from various locations, 1870-1965 – private but acquired on request
• Series GR-2727 – British Columbia Supreme Court orders 1881-1888 – nil
• Series GR-2783 – Correspondence and other material removed from benchbooks, 1864-1964 – nil
• Series MS-2599 – Johnson, Edwin. Victoria; Barrister., ca. 1870-1890 – nil; Fonds PR-0722 – Edwin Johnson fonds, 1870-1890 – nil

And here is a list of all the records I was unable to see due to privacy laws:

• Series GR-1590 – Victoria Supreme Court judgements, 1880-1977
• Series GR-0309 – New Westminster Gaol records, 1875-1917
• Sub-series GR-0309.B – Return of prisoners confined in New Westminster Gaol, 1875-1917

The Results

Researching an 1885 criminal court case was harder than I’d expected. Despite researching newspapers and then the archive’s finding aids, privacy legislation kept me from the gems: the judgement, gaol, and prisoner fonds. I’d hoped the case would have been memorable enough to be noted in the personal legal files, but neither E. Johnson nor Justice Begbie appeared to have made any notes of the case. I was baffled by the nil results in the British Columbia Supreme Court orders and can’t explain why Cumyow’s Dec 1885 conviction is missing. I also struck out with the Victoria Supreme Court letterbooks, because the microfilmed images were too dark and blurred to read.

I was able to locate two records. In the Calendar of the General Assize for the Supreme Court of British Columbia, held at Victoria, on Monday, 23 Nov 1885, Cum Yow [Cumyow] pled not guilty to a charge of embezzlement.⁶ A second page shows the charges as being “Endorsing without cause,” and “Endorsing note,” but was revised to read, “Endorsing feloniously.” The record shows his sentence was, “Three years in the Penitentiary.”

The real prize was locating Justice Begbie’s bench book.⁷ These six pages are a full record of the case but were not easy to read. Justice Begbie’s handwriting is challenging and he used abbreviations: CY for Cumyow; doc^t for document; M^r for mister; ptner for partner, pris^r for prisoner; and much more. Here is an example and a transcript.

Transcript:

X Cum you was introd^d [introduced] by Tai Soong man^r. [manager]

of King Tye as man^r. of

~ I did not understand pris^r [prisoner] = ptnr [partner]

but manager with great powers

Justice Begbie’s bench book notes are a record of the evidence presented against Cumyow. The case hinged on whether or not Cumyow was a partner who had the authority to sign promissory notes on behalf of his employer, King Tye Co. Begbie noted the clerk as being Wong Shuen Sue, then crossed that out and wrote Wong Soy Shoo. For the proprietor, Begbie wrote Wong Soy Sheen, then corrected that to Wong Sui Chu. The astute reader will note the four different spellings for two men and wonder who in fact was proprietor of King Tye Co. Whoever the proprietor was (Wong Sui Chu?), he described the partnership as having three partners and nine total shares (Wong held seven shares while the other two partners held one share each). Cumyow had said he was offered one share of ten total shares. Unfortunately, Cumyow had no evidence to prove his partnership, and as an employee, was judged guilty of embezzlement for signing notes as though he was a partner.

Postscript

I have been thinking about the 1885 conviction of Won Alexander Cumyow for years. I first came across it when working on my 2022 four-generation study for genealogical accreditation, the Lee, Cumyow, Won Family of British Columbia (1823-2018), and while I couldn’t derail my study to focus on this case, I was also unable to forget it. Researching was equal parts fascinating and frustrating. The case caused a sensation in 1885 and was well covered by the daily newspapers, but it was maddening to sift through the prejudice. Researching criminal records initially had me excited at the possibility of a new cache of records, but uneven archival acquisition, blurry microfilm, privacy restrictions, and unexplainable nil results had me building a picture with missing puzzle pieces.

The question I posed – was Cumyow framed – remains open. To be fair, it’s an accusation that is difficult to prove, and I was unable to locate conclusive evidence. What struck me about his trial and conviction was how few witnesses were called in his defence. Where were his character witnesses? He seemed almost alone. Abandoned. In one year, Cumyow went from a man of great promise – the community’s choice for Chinese interpreter and a man who associated with the inner circles of power – to a man accused on multiple fronts.

I feel I’ve done reasonably exhaustive research on this case, but records and access are admittedly scarce. Perhaps I’ll uncover an unusual source in future (while doing work on something else) and find more evidence for this one. That is genealogy in a nutshell.

Thank yous

Huge thanks to Charlayne and Phil Thornton-Joe for hosting me in Victoria, BC, and treating me like family. It was fantastic to spend time with the two of them, and I will always be grateful for the generosity they showed me.

If you’re visiting Victoria, don’t miss the Victoria Chinatown Museum, where Charlayne is the Visitor Experience Manager.⁸

References

1. Canada, British Columbia Judiciary, Colony of British Columbia, “Series GR-0598 – Richfield Magistrate’s charge and sentence books,” 1862-1917, finding aid, Royal BC Museum and Archives, accessed 1 May 2025. ↩︎
2. BC Archives, “Guides, Indexes and Inventories,” undated, museums and archives, “BC Archives Research Guide, Court Records,” last updated May 2022, downloadable PDF, Royal BC Museum and Archives, accessed 2 May 2025. ↩︎
3. “Magistrate,” edited 16 Dec 2013, online encyclopedia, The Canadian Encyclopedia, accessed 1 May 2025. ↩︎
4. “Police Court,” updated 30 Aug 2024, British Columbia, website, Courthouse Libraries BC, accessed 1 May 2025. ↩︎
5. “Search Archives,” undated, Vancouver, BC, searchable database online, City of Vancouver Archives, accessed 1 May 2025. ↩︎
6. Canada, British Columbia, Supreme Court of British Columbia, Victoria, “Series GR-1926 – Assize calendars from various locations,” 1870-1965, microfilmed, accession no. G84-172, microfilm no. B11356(1), Supreme Court of British Columbia General Assize Calendar before Hon. Mr. Justice Gray, 23 Nov 1885, Victoria, BC, 2 images, Royal BC Museum and Archives, 655 Belleville St., Victoria, BC V8W 1A1; microfilm access restricted, requested 4 Mar 2025, received by email 13 Mar 2025. ↩︎
7. Canada, British Columbia Judiciary, British Columbia, “Series GR-1727 Bench books,” 1864-1964, 780 volumes, archives code no. G81-050, accession nos. G81-050, G88-135, 2021.253, Royal BC Museum and Archives, 655 Belleville St., Victoria, BC V8W 1A1; Justice Matthew Baillie Begbie, British Columbia, Jun 1885-May 1887, ledger, GR-1727-0735, box 735, pgs. 172-177. ↩︎
8. Victoria Chinatown Museum, Fan Tan Alley, 10 Fan Tan Alley, Victoria, BC V8W 1W3 at https://victoriachinatownmuseum.com/ ↩︎