Walter Bates

Walter Bates (14 March 1760 – 11 February 1842) was a British citizen living in colonial New Brunswick who wrote a popular book about a notorious criminal, Henry More Smith.

During the American War of Independence, he was captured by local rebel sympathizers, who pressured him to reveal locations of British Loyalists, including his brother.

[3] Once in Kingston, Bates became a selectman and then served several terms as the high sheriff of Kings County, New Brunswick.

The Mysterious Stranger chronicled Smith's jail breaks and comical behavior over a two-year period.

A portion of the work was eventually published in 1889 as Kingston and the loyalists of the "spring fleet" of 1783, by the historian William O.