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Victorian Origins of Juvenile Delinquency: A Canadian Experience

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  24 February 2017

Susan E. Houston
Susan E. Houston*
Affiliation:
Department of History, York University
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Extract

The Victorian social conscience was troubled on many accounts, and perhaps no more so than by the plight of delinquent youngsters. Few causes cut so deeply into the delicate weave of moralism and economy out of which much nineteenth-century social policy was fashioned.

Type
The Child, the Family, and the State
Information
History of Education Quarterly , Volume 12 , Issue 3: Education and Social Change in English-Speaking Canada. , Fall 1972 , pp. 254 - 280
Copyright
Copyright © 1972 by New York University 

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References

Notes

1. See Musgrove, F., Youth and the Social Order (Bloomington, 1963), chaps. 3 and 4. Much of the recent work on adolescence by American historians has tended to emphasize its peculiar appropriateness to nineteenth-century American social experience: see John, and Demos, Virginia, “Adolescence in Historical Perspective,” Journal of Marriage and the Family (November 1969), pp. 632–38; Kett, Joseph F., “Adolescence and Youth in Nineteenth Century America,” Journal of Interdisciplinary History 2 (1971): 283–98; Bakan, David, “Adolescence in America, from idea to social fact,” Daedalus (Fall 1971), pp. 979–95.Google Scholar

2. For an anthology of articles on the intellectual climate of mid-nineteenth-century Canada, see Morton, W. L., ed., Shield of Achilles (Toronto, 1970); also J. M. S. Careless, The Union of the Canadas: The Growth of Canadian Institutions, 1841–57 (Toronto, 1967).Google Scholar

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6. For an illuminating collection of documents on early welfare activity, see Edith Firth, The Town of York, 2 vols. (Toronto, 1962–1967).Google Scholar

7. Globe, June 21, 1848; also ibid., 2.Google Scholar

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9. “Report of the Commissioners on the Subject of Prisons, Penitentiaries, etc.,” Journal of the House of Assembly of Upper Canada, 1836, app. 71. The report's author, Dr. Charles Duncombe, was an American-born reformer who after the abortive rebellion of 1837 returned to the United States.Google Scholar

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11. For a general review, see Splane, Social Welfare; the essential provisions are to be found in 39 George III c. 3 (1799); 9 Vic. c. 70 (1846); 14 & 15 Vic. c. 11 (1851).Google Scholar

12. A twenty-year campaign by the officers of the Protestant Orphans Home and other charitable institutions to prevent parents from removing children from their custody succeeded in 1873 with “An Act to amend the Act respecting Apprentices and Minors,” Statutes of Ontario, 35 Vic. c. 17.Google Scholar

13. Report of the Trustees of the House of Industry for 1852 (Toronto, 1853). At the annual meeting, January 19, 1853, the managers were exonerated by an investigation into charges by Catholic, Roman, board members of discrimination against Catholic families. The Roman Catholic authorities subsequently developed a complex of orphanage, poor house, and hospital around the House of Providence.Google Scholar

14. Ryerson maintained that “separate schools were designed for … places where the then strong (more so than now) and often exaggerated, feelings between the Protestants, Irish and Roman Catholics did not permit them to unite in the school education of their children” (Special Report on the Separate School Provisions of the School Law of Upper Canada … [Toronto, 1858], p. 14). The political ramifications of the separate school issue have been thoroughly canvassed in Moir, J. S., Church and State in Canada West: Three Studies in the Relation of Denominationalism and Nationalism, 1841–1867 (Toronto, 1959) and Walker, Franklin A., Catholic Education and Politics in Upper Canada (Toronto, 1957).Google Scholar

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17. Globe, July 20, 1850.Google Scholar

18. “Draft Circular for the preliminary meeting advertising Orphans Home and Female Aid Society, Toronto, 9 June, 1851,” Toronto Public Library.Google Scholar

19. Draft report on Free Schools, Board of Common School Trustees, Globe, March 8, 1851.Google Scholar

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21. See especially the poetry of McLachlan, Alexander, (1818–1896) “the Burns of Canada”: Poems (Toronto, 1856); Lyrics (1858); The Emigrant and other poems (1861). For a general discussion of the juxtaposition of the agrarian myth and the commercial frontier, see Cross, Michael, “Dark Druidical Groves” (Ph.D. diss., University of Toronto, 1968).Google Scholar

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24. Keefer, T. C., Philosophy of Railroads (Montreal, 1850), pp. 8–9.Google Scholar

25. Brown's Toronto General Directory (Toronto, 1856), pp. xxi. The religious press was fond of bemoaning the vice and moral depravity of commercial towns; see especially the Anglican Church, April 14, April 21, May 12, 1853.Google Scholar

26. Globe, January 5, 1855.Google Scholar

27. Special Report of Dickson, Andrew, March 10, 1853, “Annual Report of the Inspectors of the Provincial Penitentiary,” Journal of the Legislative Assembly, 1852–1853, app. I.I.I.Google Scholar

28. In its report on the Prisons and Reformatories of the United States and Canada (Albany, 1867), the Prison Association of New York commented on the exhausting round of religious observance and promotion that contributed to the pervasive religious influence which characterized the Provincial Penitentiary at Kingston (p. 195). By contrast, the report was severely critical of the degrading physical punishment that, it felt, counteracted the operation of moral and religious agencies (p. 166); the incredibly cramped cell accommodation, which was the smallest encountered in the survey (pp. 102–4); and the severity of the silent discipline (p. 175).Google Scholar

29. Separate Report of O'Neill, T. J., “Annual Report of the Board of Inspectors of Asylums, Prisons and Public Charities,“ S.P., no. 14 (1865).Google Scholar

30. Ryerson, Egerton, “The Spirit in which the present educational movement should be directed“ (1852) in Historical and Other Educational Papers and Documents, ed. George Hodgins, J., 3: 27.Google Scholar

31. Globe, December 11, 1851.Google Scholar

32. Advertisement of the Toronto Teachers’ Association, Globe, October 1, 1850.Google Scholar

33. Reply of the Grand Jury to Mr. Justice Hagarty in Documentary History of Education in Ontario, ed. George Hodgins, J., 20: 73–74.Google Scholar

34. Rev. Bruyere, J. M. to Ryerson, January 27, Dr. Ryerson's Letters in reply to the Attacks of Foreign Ecclesiastics (Toronto, 1857), p. 81; A Protestant, Statistics of the Common Schools … in a series of Seven Letters to Hon. John A. Macdonald (Toronto, 1857), p. 25; Townley, Adam, Seven Letters on the non-religious Common School System of Canada and the U.S. (Toronto, 1853), pp. 12–13.Google Scholar

35. For characteristic charges to the Grand Jury by Hagarty, see Globe, January 9, 1857; October 12, 1858. For the Globe's rebuttal, October 14, 1858; January 4, 1866; February 27, 1868.Google Scholar

36. Hon. Chief Justice Draper, W. H., Globe, November 13, 1858; October 12, 1859; “Copies of Reports of the Judges of the Superior Courts for Upper Canada and Presentments of Grand Juries and other papers on the Subject of Gaol,” Journal of the Legislative Assembly, 1856, app. 34.Google Scholar

37. Globe, January 9, 1857.Google Scholar

38. Compare Henning, Thomas, “The Applicability of our Educational System to the Social Condition of Large Cities,“ Canadian Journal, 2d ser. 3 (September 1858): 422–37, and Globe, August 8, 1861, favouring the inclusion of vagrant children in the common school, with the negative argument, Globe, October 14, 1858, August 6, 1863, December 27, 1865, February 27, 1868; and Leader, July 22, 1862.Google Scholar

39. Annual Report of the Local Superintendent of the Public Schools of the City of Toronto for 1862, 1863.Google Scholar

40. Annual Report of the Normal, Model, Grammar and Common Schools, 1863, p. 6.Google Scholar

41. Journal of the House of Assembly of Upper Canada, 1836, app. 71; “Second Report of the Commissioners appointed to inquire into the Provincial Penitentiary …,” Journal of the Legislative Assembly, 1849, app. B.B.B.B.B.Google Scholar

42. British Colonist, January 9, 1849.Google Scholar

43. Journal of the Legislative Assembly, 1856, app. 34. For the Toronto-York county problem especially, see presentments of the Juries, Grand, Globe, January 19, 1850, November 6, 1854; editorials, October 12, 1854, July 14, 1855.Google Scholar

44. “First Report of the Commissioners appointed to inquire …,” Journal of the Legislative Assembly, 1849, app. B.B.B.B.B.Google Scholar

45. Globe, July 20, 1850.Google Scholar

46. Brown's role on the Commission contributed substantially to the bitter emnity between himself and Macdonald, John A., political leader of the opposing Liberal-Conservative forces. See Careless, J. M. S., Brown of the Globe 1 (Toronto, 1960).Google Scholar

47. Church, September 1, 1853.Google Scholar

48. Christian Guardian, December 26, 1860.Google Scholar

49. “Second Report of the Commissioners …,” Journal of the Legislative Assembly, 1849, app. B.B.B.B.B. In 1850 and 1851, bills were introduced to provide for two Houses of Correction for Juvenile Offenders; in both years they were dropped.Google Scholar

50. Ryerson, Egerton, “Elements of Social Progress; a speech reported by the London Prototype ,“ Journal of Education 13 (1860): 51.Google Scholar

51. Globe, July 11, 1863.Google Scholar

52. Ibid., January 19, 1850.Google Scholar

53. Ibid., April 13, 1850.Google Scholar

54. Ibid., July 5, 1853. See also the separate reports of Ferres, J. M., “Annual Report of the Board of Inspectors of Prisons, Asylums, etc. for 1861, 1862,“ S.P., no. 19 (1862), S.P., no. 66 (1863).Google Scholar

55. Globe, December 27, 1868, January 26, 1869.Google Scholar

56. “Address on the subject of Prison Discipline,” by Brown, George, Globe, April 30, 1850.Google Scholar

57. See especially the “Annual Report of the Board of Inspectors of Asylums, Prisons, etc. for 1862,” separate report by Ferres, J. M., S.P., no. 66 (1863).Google Scholar

58. In their preliminary report for 1860, the newly appointed Board of Inspectors characterized the reformatory population as “these poor children, orphans for the most part, whose greatest crime is, not unfrequently, that of an unfortunate parentage” (S.P., no. 32 [1860]). See also separate report of Meredith, E. A., S.P., no. 19 (1862); and general report for 1865, S.P., no. 6 (1866).Google Scholar

59. “Report of a meeting interested in the formation of an Industrial School, May 20, 1868,” Journal of Education 21 (May 1868).Google Scholar

60. Gwynne, Mr. J. W., Charge to the Grand Jury, Globe, April 9, 1868.Google Scholar

61. By the mid-1860s, the frustration that moved the Globe (January 4, 1866) to contemplate extending the magistrates’ powers prompted O'Neill, T. J. in his separate report as prison inspector to argue, “It is clearly the duty of society to call on the State to supply, by legislation, to the truant vagrant child, that place which there is either no natural parent to fill, or which the parent, by reason of his immorality or negligence, is incompetent to fill” (S.P., no. 14 [1865]).Google Scholar

62. The years 7, 14, and 21 were defining ages under common law. Children under 7 years were deemed absolutely incapable of crime; a child under 14 years was unlikely to be convicted on his own confession unless there was strong evidence “that he was perfectly conscious of the nature and malignity of the crime” (Keele, William Conway, The Provincial Justice or Magistrate's Manual, 2d ed. [Toronto, 1843], pp. 129–30). Also Lewis, Israel, A Class Book for the Use of Common Schools and Families In the United Canadas, entitled Youth's Guard against Crime (Kingston, 1844), pp. 20–21.Google Scholar

63. Established under “An Act for Establishing Prisons for Young Offenders,” 20 Vic. c. 28 (1857).Google Scholar

64. Special report of Dickson, Andrew, March 10, 1853, “Report of Inspectors of the Provincial Penitentiary,” Journal of the Legislative Assembly, 1852–1853, app. I.I.I.Google Scholar

65. A general review of prison economics: an essay appendix to “Report on District and Other Prisons in Canada East,” Journal of the Legislative Assembly, 1852–1853, app. H.H.; see also the report of the Chaplain, Roman Catholic, “Report of the Inspectors of the Provincial Penitentiary,“ Journal of the Legislative Assembly, 1852–1853, app. I.I.I.Google Scholar

66. Journal of the Legislative Assembly, 1859, app. 29.Google Scholar

67. See Protestant Chaplain's report, Journal of the Legislative Assembly, 1854–1855, app. D.D.Google Scholar

68. Assembly, Legislative, May 5, 1857, Globe, May 6, 1857.Google Scholar

69. Separate report of Meredith, E. A., S.P., no. 19 (1862).Google Scholar

70. The incidence of punishment rose dramatically in the Penetanguishene Reformatory. In 1860, with a total population of 70 inmates, 55 under punishment consumed 271 meals of bread and water, and 7 inmates received a total of 60 lashes. In 1865, with a total population of 134, 89 under punishment had 1,643 meals of bread and water, and 35 inmates received 546 lashes.Google Scholar

71. Separate report of Ferres, J. M., S.P., no. 19 (1862).Google Scholar

72. Separate report of O'Neill, T. J., S.P., no. 14 (1865).Google Scholar

73. Globe, July 11, July 15, 1863.Google Scholar

74. Separate report of Meredith, E. A., S.P., no. 19 (1862).Google Scholar

75. Globe, September 19, 1859.Google Scholar

76. See the Boys Home, Annual Report (Toronto, 1861ff); The Girls’ Home and Public Nursery, Annual Report (Toronto, 1860ff).Google Scholar

77. Meredith, , S.P., no. 19 (1862); also General Report of the Board, S.P., no. 6 (1866).Google Scholar

78. Porter, Rev. James, “Child Neglect,“ 7th Annual Convention, Teachers’ Association, 1867, Journal of Education 20 (October 1867): 165. Also the legislative petition of the Public School Board of the City of Toronto for an Industrial School Act, 14th Annual Report of the Local Superintendent of Schools … 1872, pp. 120–21.Google Scholar

79. Report of the Warden, Penetanguishene Reformatory, S.P., no. 66 (1863), and Ontario S.P., no. A (1871–1872).Google Scholar

80. Ibid., S.P., no. 39 (1864); General Report of the Board, S.P., no. 14 (1865).Google Scholar

81. Ontario S.P., no. 4 (1871–1872), reports by the warden and the inspector.Google Scholar

82. Report of the Warden, S.P., no. 40 (1867–1868); Ontario S.P., no. 13 (1868–1869).Google Scholar

83. Ontario S.P., no. 6 (1870–1871).Google Scholar

84. Separate report of Ferres, J. M., S.P., no. 66 (1863).Google Scholar

85. Globe, March 3, 1868.Google Scholar

86. Ontario S.P., no. 2, (1872–1873).Google Scholar

87. Ontario S.P., no. 6 (1870–1871).Google Scholar

88. Ontario S.P., no. 2 (1872–1873).Google Scholar

89. Ontario S.P., no. 4 (1871–1872), no. 2 (1874). The reformatory in 1872–1873 absorbed less than ten percent of the juvenile population committed to the common jails.Google Scholar

90. Ontario S.P., no. 4 (1875).Google Scholar

91. Ontario S.P., no. 2 (1874).Google Scholar

92. Ibid.Google Scholar

93. Juvenile Delinquency in Canada: The Report of the Department of Justice Committee on Juvenile Delinquency (Queen's Printer, 1967), §96, 109.Google Scholar

94. Ibid., §68–70, 138–40. Ontario legislation, The Children's Protection Act (1893) exemplified the interest of Canadian “progressives.” See also, McGrath, W. T., ed., Crime and Its Treatment in Canada (Toronto, 1965) and Platt, Anthony M., The Child Savers: The Invention of Delinquency (Chicago, 1969).Google Scholar