One of the first officers of the newly formed North-West Mounted Police, Francis Dickens, son of novelist Charles Dickens, was noted for his famous parentage, if not much else.
Having barely survived the trenches of World War I, returning Canadian soldiers — and the public at large — were greeted with a horror of a different ilk: the Spanish Flu. Weapons were no defence.
Today, the wrongfully convicted can win their freedom and compensation. But when the death penalty was still in place, no one at the gallows got a second chance.