Charles Duncombe (28 July 1792 – 1 October 1867) was a leader in the Upper Canada Rebellion in 1837 and subsequent Patriot War. He was an active Reform politician in the 1830s, and produced several important legislative reports on banking, lunatic asylums, and education.
Early life
He was the eldest son of Thomas and Rhoda Tyrill Duncombe, born July 28, 1792, in Stratford, Connecticut. He studied medicine at the college of the One Hundred and One Members of the Medical Society of the City of New York, graduating in 1819. He then settled in Delaware, Upper Canada, and in 1824 he established the first medical school in Upper Canada with Dr John Rolph, in St. Thomas, under the patronage of Colonel Thomas Talbot.
Freemasonry
Debates within Upper Canada on the nature of the relationship of the provincial Grand Lodge and the English Grand Lodge paralleled political discussions on the colony's constitution. Those Freemasons who immigrated from the United States favoured an independent Provincial Grand Lodge. Duncombe was a Freemason, serving as first master of the Mount Moriah lodge at Westminster. In 1836, in a move that presaged the Rebellion, he set up a Grand Lodge independent from the British lodges and became its first Grand Master.
Duncombe's Grand Lodge was short-lived, but he soon helped found another during the Patriot War that followed the Rebellion: the Hunters' Lodge. The Hunters' Lodge was patterned on Freemasonry.
His last known Masonic activity was to establish a Masonic lodge in Sacramento in 1852.
Reform politics
Upper Canada Legislature
Duncombe was elected in 1830 to the Legislative Assembly as a representative for Oxford County. He was originally a Reformer in the same vein as Robert Baldwin, but was attracted by William Lyon Mackenzie's more radical reform movement.
In 1836, Duncombe made extensive reports to a parliamentary committee of reformers on prisons, asylums and education based on an extensive tour of American facilities. In his report on prisons, Duncombe argued crime was the result of social injustice, and not just the product of individual error. He argued that government had the responsibility to not merely punish the offender, but to rectify the social conditions that produced the offender. This, he argued, was particularly true for juvenile offenders. He viewed penitentiaries as "schools for criminals" and sought their eradication.
"Doctor Charles Duncombe's Report upon the Subject of Education, made to the Parliament of Upper Canada, 25th February, 1836." called for a radical expansion of common school education in the province. He rejected the grammar school model pursued by the Family Compact and argued for practical education; the classics were of limited use in the real world for which education should prepare students. A bill based on Duncombe's report passed the assembly on 4 April 1836, only to be rejected by the Family Compact-dominated legislative council. Many of its provisions, however, would be introduced under after the Rebellion including elective school boards, female education, creation of normal schools, prescribed textbooks, and non-sectarian religious instruction.
The 1836 provincial elections were marked by widespread violence by the Orange Order, and claims of voter fraud. The Lt. Governor, Sir Francis Bond Head was in charge of the elections but intervened directly in favour of the Tories in the campaign. The Reformers complained that he issued illegal land patents to new immigrants to entice them to vote for Tory candidates. When the new Tory dominated Assembly refused to hear their petition, Duncombe was charged with presenting it to the British government. He travelled to London, England in the summer of 1836 but was refused an audience by the Colonial Office. Duncombe was all the more disillusioned when his 14-year-old son was killed before his return in November. Like Samuel Lount, his fellow reform assemblyman and rebellion organizer, he virtually withdrew from public life in 1837.
