Published online by Cambridge University Press: 24 February 2017
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.
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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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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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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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
22. Ryerson, Egerton, “A Lecture on the Social Advancement of Canada,“ Journal of Education 2 (December 1849): 184.Google Scholar
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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
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31. Globe, December 11, 1851.Google Scholar
32. Advertisement of the Toronto Teachers’ Association, Globe, October 1, 1850.Google Scholar
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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
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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
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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
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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
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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
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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
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74. Separate report of Meredith, E. A., S.P., no. 19 (1862).Google Scholar
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76. See the Boys Home, Annual Report (Toronto, 1861ff); The Girls’ Home and Public Nursery, Annual Report (Toronto, 1860ff).Google Scholar
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85. Globe, March 3, 1868.Google Scholar
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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
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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