The plain, unpretending structure in which Robert-Baldwin first saw light
has a history of its own. Dr. Baldwin resided in it only about three years,
when he removed to a small house, long since demolished, on the corner of
Bay and Front streets. Thenceforward the house at the foot of Frederick
Street was occupied by several tenants whose names are famous in local
annals. About 1825 it was first occupied by Mr. William Lyon Mackenzie, who
continued to reside in it for several years. It was here that the _Colonial
Advocate_ was published by that gentleman, at the time when his office was
wrecked and the type thrown into the bay by a "genteel mob," a farther
account of which lawless transaction will be found in the sketch of the
life of W. L. Mackenzie, included in the present series. The building
subsequently came into the possession of the Cawthra family--called by
Dr. Scadding "the Astors of Upper Canada"--who carried on a large and
marvellously successful mercantile business within its walls. It was
finally burned down in the winter of 1854-5.
Dr. Baldwin applied himself to the practice of his several professions
with an energy and assiduity which deserved and secured a full measure of
success. His legal business was the most profitable of his pursuits, but in
the early years of his residence at York he seems to have also had a fair
share of medical practice. It might not unreasonably have been supposed
that the labour arising from these two sources of employment would have
been sufficient for the energies and ambition of any man; but we find that
for at least two years subsequent to his marriage he continued to take in
pupils. Half a century later than the period at which we have arrived, Sir
John Beverley Robinson, then a baronet, and Chief Justice of the Province,
was wont to pleasantly remind the subject of this sketch that their mutual
acquaintance dated from a very early period in the latter's career. At the
time of Robert Baldwin's birth, John Robinson, then a boy in his thirteenth
year, was one of a class of seven pupils who attended daily at Dr.
Baldwin's house for classical instruction. Two or three days after the
Doctor's first-born came into the world, Master Robinson was taken into the
nursery to see "the new baby." Differences of political opinion in after
years separated them far as the poles asunder on most public questions,
but they never ceased to regard each other with personal respect. The late
Chief Justice Maclean was another pupil of Dr. Baldwin's, and distinctly
remembered that a holiday was granted to himself and his fellow students on
the day of the embryo statesman's birth. Doctor Baldwin seems to have
been fully equal to the multifarious calls upon his energies, and to
have exercised his various callings with satisfaction alike to clients,
patients, and pupils. It was no uncommon occurrence in those early days,
when surgeons were scarce in our young capital, for him to be compelled to
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