I suppose there are at least a score of persons living in Toronto at
the present moment who remember that queer old house on Duchess street.
Not that there was anything specially remarkable about the house
itself, which indeed, in its best days, presented an aspect of rather
snug respectability. But the events I am about to relate invested it
with an evil reputation, and made it an object to be contemplated at a
safe distance, rather than from any near approach. Youngsters on their
way to school were wont to eye it askance as they hurried by on their
way to their daily tasks. Even children of a larger growth manifested
no unbecoming desire to penetrate too curiously into its inner
mysteries, and for years its threshold was seldom or never crossed by
anybody except Simon Washburn or some of his clerks, who about once in
every twelvemonth made a quiet entry upon the premises and placed in
the front windows announcements to the effect that the place was "For
Sale or To Let." The printing of these announcements involved a useless
expenditure of capital, for, from the time when the character of the
house became matter of notoriety, no one could be induced to try the
experiment of living in it. In the case of a house, no less than in
that of an individual, a bad name is more easily gained than lost, and
in the case of the house on Duchess street its uncanny repute clung to
it with a persistent grasp which time did nothing to relax. It was
distinctly and emphatically a place to keep away from.

The house was originally built by one of the Ridout family--I think by
the Surveyor-General himself--soon after the close of the war of 1812,
and it remained intact until a year or two after the town of York
became the city of Toronto, when it was partly demolished and converted
into a more profitable investment. The new structure, which was a
shingle or stave factory, was burned down in 1843 or 1844, and the site
thenceforward remained unoccupied until comparatively recent times.