Embodying delinquency: Boys' bodies, sexuality, and juvenile justice history in early-twentieth-century Quebec

Journal of the History of Sexuality

Volumn 14, Issue 4, 2005, Pages 383-414

  Myers, Tamara ^a  

^a UNIVERSITY OF WINNIPEG   (Canada)

Author keywords

[No Author keywords available]

Indexed keywords

EID: 33750574555     PISSN: 10434070     EISSN: None     Source Type: Journal    
DOI: 10.1353/sex.2006.0043     Document Type: Review

References (115)

1. Anne Meis-Knupfer, Reform and Resistance: Gender, Delinquency, and America's First Juvenile Court (New York: Oxford University Press, 2001);
2. Mary E. Odem, Delinquent Daughters: Protecting and Policing Adolescent Female Sexuality in the United States, 2885-1920 (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 1995);
3. Meda Chesney-Iind, Girls, Delinquency and Juvenile Justice (Belmont, Calif.: Brooks/Cole, 1992);
4. Linda Mahood, Policing Gender, Class and Family: Britain, 1850-1940 (London: University College London Press, 1995);
5. Ruth Alexander, The "Girl Problem": Female Sexual Delinquency in New York, 1900-1930 (Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 1995).
6. There are, nonetheless, studies that examine in comparative fashion the gendered nature of delinquency. See Dorothy E. Chunn, "Boys Will Be Men, Girls Will Be Mothers: The Legal Regulation of Childhood in Toronto and Vancouver," Sociological Studies in Child Development 3 (1990): 94.
7. Jean-Marie Fecteau, Sylvie Ménard, Jean Trépanier, and Véronique Strimelle, "Une politique de l'enfance délinquante et en danger: La mise en place des écoles de réforme et d'industrie au Québec (1840-1873)," Crime, Histoire & Sociétés/Crime, History & Societies 1, no. 2 (1998): 75-110.
8. Cynthia Comacchio, "Dancing to Perdition: Adolescence and Leisure in Interwar English Canada," Journal of Canadian Studies 32, no. 3 (1997): 5-35, 25.
9. In 1919 Montreal's archbishop issued a pastoral letter on the issue, encouraging a women's organization, the Fédération nationale St-Jean-Baptiste, to invigorate the Ligue des bonnes moeurs (League for Good Morals). American "talkies," like dance clubs, were targeted by the Catholic Church in its campaign to preserve the morals of young people. See Andrée Lévesque, Making and Breaking the Rules (Toronto: McClelland and Stewart, 1994), 56-60.
10. Alexandra M. Lord, "Models of Masculinity: Sex Education, the United States Public Health Service, and the YMCA, 1919-1924," Journal of the History of Medicine and Allied Sciences 58, no. 2 (2003): 123-52.
11. See, for example, Angus McLaren, The Trials of Masculinity: Policing Sexual Boundaries, 1870-1930 (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1997).
12. Steven Maynard, "'Horrible Temptations': Sex, Men, and Working-Class Male Youth in Urban Ontario, 1890-1935," Canadian Historical Review 78, no. 2 (June 1997): 191-235.
13. Comacchio, "Dancing to Perdition"; Cynthia Comacchio, "'The Rising Generation': Laying Claim to the Health of Adolescents in English Canada, 1920-70," Canadian Bulletin of Medical History 19, no. 1 (2002): 139-78.
14. Mary Louise Adams, The Trouble with Normal: Postwar Youth and the Making of Heterosexuality (Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 1997).
15. Gaston Desjardins, L'amour en patience: La sexualité adolescente au Québec, 1940-1960 (Montreal: Presses de l'Université du Québec, 1995).
16. Mahood, Policing Gender, Class and Family, 112.
17. Bryan Richard Hogeveen, "'Can't You Be a Man?' Rebuilding Wayward Masculinities and Regulating Juvenile Deviance in Ontario, 1860-1930," Ph.D. diss., University of Toronto, 2003, 2 and chap. 5.
18. e siècles, ed. Christine Bard et al. (Rennes: Presses Universitaires de Rennes, 2002), 341.
19. Susan E. Houston, "The 'Waife and Strays' of a Late Victorian City: Juvenile Delinquents in Toronto," in Childhood and Family in Canadian History, ed. Joy Parr (Toronto: McClelland and Stewart, 1982), 131.
20. Peter C. Baldwin, "Nocturnal Habits and Dark Wisdom: The American Response to Children in the Streets at Night, 1880-1930," Journal of Social History 35, no. 3 (2002): 593-611.
21. For literature on Canada see P. T. Rooke and R. L. Schnell, Discarding the Asylum: From Child Rescue to the Welfare State in English Canada, 1800-1950 (Lanham, Md.: University Press of America, 1983);
22. Neil Sutherland, Children in English-Canadian Society: Framing the Twentieth Century Consensus (Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 1976);
23. Renée Joyal, ed., Entre surveillance et compassion: L'évolution de la protection de l'enfance au Québec (Sainte Foy: Presses de l'Université du Québec, 2000).
24. Under this act a youthful lawbreaker, defined as between seven and sixteen years of age, was relieved of the "criminal" or "offender" designation and instead labeled delinquent. A juvenile delinquent was described as "any child who violates any provision of The Criminal Code, . . . or of any Dominion or provincial statute, or of any by-law or ordinance of any municipality." Canada, An Act Respecting Juvenile Delinquents, 7-8 Edward VII, chap. 40.
25. Annual reports of the Montreal Juvenile Delinquents' Court do not exist for all years of the period under study. For boys' cases in 1919: 1,116 (81 percent) Roman Catholic; 164 (12 percent) Protestant; 93 (7 percent) Jewish; 8 (< 1 percent) Orthodox. For boys' cases in 1922: 895 (70 percent) Roman Catholic; 213 (17 percent) Protestant; 147 (12 percent) Jewish; 10 (< 1 percent) Orthodox. For boys' cases in 1926: 1,316 (78 percent) Roman Catholic; 200 (12 percent) Protestant; 130 (8 percent) Jewish; 33 (2 percent) Orthodox; 2 (< 1 percent) other. Archives nationales du Québec, Québec (hereafter ANQ-Q), Office of the Attorney General, Correspondence, E 17, files for 1919, 1922, and 1926.
26. Aggregate numbers can be found in the Québec annuaire statistique/Statistical Yearbook (1946);
27. see also National Archives of Canada, Canadian Council on Social Development Fonds, MG 110, vol. 85, File: Juvenile Courts . . . 1938-41, "Questionnaire, Province of Quebec."
28. For a breakdown of offenses committed by boys see Trépanier et Quevillon, "Garçons et filles," 343. As an example of boys' offenses, a study of 100 boys' cases (10 percent) before the Montreal juvenile court in 1918 revealed the following breakdown: forty involved theft, fourteen incorrigibility, twelve vagrancy, five breaking and entering, four assault, four desertion, four damage to property, four being neglected, three weapons, three selling papers without a license or after hours, one forgery, one firecracker violation (according to municipal bylaw), one trespassing, one indecent act, one traffic violation (according to municipal bylaw), one riding a bicycle without lights, one smoking cigarettes in a public place. Archives nationales du Québec, Montréal, Fonds de la Court des jeunes délinquants de Montreal (hereafter ANQ-M, Fonds CJDM), files for 1918.
29. Tamara Myers, "The Voluntary Delinquent: Parents, Daughters and the Montreal Juvenile Delinquents' Court in 1918," Canadian Historical Review 80, no. 2 (June 1999): 252.
30. Montreal Daily Herald, 9 April 1909, J. J. Kelso of Ontario speaking about the need for a new juvenile court.
31. Montrent Herald, 8 June 1912.
32. Montreal Gazette, 4 October 1918.
33. François-Xavier Choquet, "The Juvenile Court," Canadian Municipal Journal 10, no. 6 (June 1914): 233.
34. See ANQ-Q, Office of the Attorney General, Correspondence, E 17, Annual Reports of the Montreal Juvenile Delinquents' Court (hereafter MJDC) for 1915, 1916, and 1924;
35. Choquet, "The Juvenile Court," 232.
36. Rose Henderson, "Child Labour, Delinquency, and the Standards of Living," Social Welfare 2, no. 1 (October 1919): 16. While most of the juvenile court appointees, like Choquet, were Liberal Party supporters who followed the model of juvenile justice in Progressive era Chicago and Denver, Henderson was one of the few socialists who worked at the court.
37. Choquet, "The Juvenile Court," 232.
38. Choquet, "The Juvenile Court," 232 Ibid.
39. ANQ-M, Fonds CJDM, Annual Report for 1916, 4.
40. Jean Trépanier, "Protéger pour prévenir la délinquance: L'émergence de la loi sur les jeunes délinquants de 1908 et sa mise en application à Montréal," in Joyal, Entre surveillance et compassion.
41. ANQ-Q, Office of the Attorney General, Correspondence E 17, Annual Report of the MJDC for 1916, 4;
42. Choquet, "The Juvenile Court," 232.
43. See Sylvie Ménard, Des enfants sous surveillance: la rééducation des jeunes delinquents au Québec (1840-1950) (Montreal: VLB, 2003).
44. On the reaction of the Jewish community see Tamara Myers, "On Probation: The Rise and Fall of Jewish Female Anti-delinquency Work in Interwar Montreal," in Negotiating Identities in Nineteenth- and Twentieth-Century Montreal, ed. Bettina Bradbury and Tamara Myers (Vancouver: University of British Columbia Press, 2005).
45. See Michel Foucault, The History of Sexuality, vol. 1, An Introduction, trans. Robert Hurley (New York: Random House, 1980);
46. Robert Darby, "The Masturbation Taboo and the Rise of Routine Male Circumcision," Journal of Social History 36, no. 3 (2003): 737-57.
47. See Carolyn Strange, "From Modern Babylon to a City upon a Hill: The Toronto Social Survey Commission of 1915 and the Search for Sexual Order in the City," in Patterns of the Past: Interpreting Ontario's History, ed. Roger Hall et al. (Toronto: Dundurn Press, 1988), 255-77;
48. and Carolyn Strange, Toronto's Girl Problem (Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 1995).
49. Andrée Lévesque, "Éteindre le Red Light: Les réformateurs et la prostitution à Montréal entre 1865 et 1925," Urban History Review 17, no. 3 (February 1989): 191-201.
50. Lévesque, Making and Breaking the Rules, 54.
51. Lévesque has demonstrated that the Church rigorously worked against this rejection of motherhood (Lévesque, Making and Breaking the Rules, ibid., 55).
52. Joan Sangster, "Creating Social and Moral Citizens: Defining and Treating Delinquent Boys and Girls in English Canada, 1920-65," in Contesting Canadian Citizenship: Historical Readings, ed. Robert Adamoski, Dorothy E. Chunn, and Robert Menzies (Peterborough, Ontario: Broadview Press, 2002), 337.
53. This location was changed to the Detention House in subsequent years.
54. ANQ-M, Office of the Attorney General, Correspondence E 17, Annual Report of the MJDC for 1924.
55. Houston, "The 'Waifs and Strays,'" 131.
56. Mahood, Policing Gender, Class and Family, 118.
57. Mahood, Policing Gender, Class and Family, Ibid., 136. Mahood notes that Frank Mort suggests that this is the moment when "militarized conceptions of male sexuality" emerged.
58. Choquet, "The Juvenile Court," 233;
59. Henderson, "Child Labour," 17.
60. Basrien Pelletier, "Les agents de probation à la cour des jeunes délinquants de Montréal, 1912-1949," master's thesis, Université du Québec à Montréal, 2000, 88.
61. Tamara Myers, "Deserting Daughters: Runaways and the Red Light District of Montreal before 1945," in Child Welfare and Social Action, 19th and 20th Centuries, ed. Pat Starkey and Jon Lawrence (Liverpool: University of Liverpool Press, 2001), 15-35.
62. ANQ-M, Fonds CJDM, 10 December 1918, Case #5595, William S., fifteen years old, charged with incorrigibility. I have changed the name of the accused and the accusers to conform with access requirements.
63. Joan Sangster, "'Pardon Tales' from Magistrate's Court: Women, Crime, and the Court in Peterborough County, 1920-50," Canadian Historical Review 74, no. 2 (June 1993): 161-97.
64. ANQ-M, Fonds CJDM, 29 July 1918, Case #5166, Théodore F., fifteen years old, arrested for vagrancy.
65. ANQ-M, Fonds CJDM, 27 March 1918, Case #4759, Thomas D., thirteen years old, arrested for desertion. All translations from French are my own.
66. Carolyn Strange and Tina Loo, Making Good: Law and Moral Regulation in Canada, 1867-1939 (Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 1997), 85-86.
67. Steven Maynard, "The Emergence of the Homosexual as a Case History in Early Twentieth-Century Ontario," in On the Case: Explorations in Social History, ed. Franca Iacovetta and Wendy Mitchinson (Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 1998), 67.
68. Steven Maynard, "Through a Hole in the Lavatory Wall: Homosexual Subcultures, Police Surveillance, and the Dialectics of Discovery, Toronto, 1890-1930," Journal of the History of Sexuality 5, no. 2 (1994): 207-41.
69. The inquiry is in the confidential files of the ANQ-Q, Office of the Attorney General, Correspondence E 17, 5608/16, entitled "Enquête tenu par le Dr. F. H. Daignault, Inspecteur des Prisons, Asiles et Bureaux Publics de la Province de Québec, conformément aux instructions contenues dans une lettre de M. Charles Lanctot, C.R., Assistant-procureur général, 6 décembre 1916."
70. See Michel Dorais, Don't Tell: The Sexual Abuse of Boys (Montreal: McGill-Queen's University Press, 2002).
71. See Tamara Myers, Caught: Montreal's Modern Girls and the Law, 1869-1945 (Toronto: University of Toronto Press, forthcoming).
72. See Tamara Myers, "Qui t'a débauchée?: Female Adolescent Sexuality and the Juvenile Delinquents' Court in Early Twentieth-Century Montreal," in Family Matters: Papers in Post-Confederation Canadian Family History, ed. Lori Chambers and Ed Montigny (Toronto: Canadian Scholars Press, 1998), 377-94.
73. ANQ-M, Fonds CJDM, 26 September 1918, Case #854, Romulus M., fourteen years old, charged with vagrancy.
74. Tamara Myers, "Women Policing Women: A Patrol Woman in Montreal in the 1910s," Journal of the Canadian Historical Society n.s. 4 (1993): 229-4-5.
75. ANQ-M, Fonds CJDM, 10 November 1943, Case #5319.
76. The Montreal Juvenile Delinquents' Court's smaller, non-Catholic, English-speaking committee, which served Protestant and Jewish children, had accepted in the 1920s the involvement of the Montreal Mental Hygiene Institute. These psychiatrists were called upon by the Anglophone probation officers, and they also conducted research into delinquent populations through the court.
77. See, for example, R. P. Valère Massicotte, La délinquance juvénile et la guerre (Montreal: Oeuvre des Tracts, 1944), 6. In assessing rising juvenile delinquency rates he asks if the boy is mentally behind or "abnormal" and "unable to repress his perverted instincts."
78. Frederick Wright, director, Municipal Services Bureau, Montreal, "Juvenile Delinquency," Municipal Review of Canada 40, no. 3 (March 1944): 1.
79. See also Jeffrey A. Keshen, Saints, Sinners, and Soldiers: Canada's Second World War (Vancouver: University of British Columbia Press, 2004), chap. 8.
80. Montreal Gazette, 22 January 1941;
81. Mary Brechin, "Danger: Child Growing Up," Maclean's Magazine, 15 August 1943.
82. Baruch Silverman, director of the Mental Hygiene Institution, noted restlessness and moodiness among young people in Montreal (Montreal Gazette, 20 January 1943).
83. Wright, "Juvenile Delinquency," 1.
84. Massicotte, La délinquance juvénile, 10.
85. Keshen, Saints, Sinners, and Soldiers, 136.
86. ANQ-M, Fonds CJDM, 20 February 1943, Case #3371.
87. ANQ-M, Fonds CJDM, 31 March 1943, Case #3696. Rosaire's case came back to the court in 1946 because of his refusal to take his medication for VD.
88. Montreal Police Juvenile Guide, ed. Dollard Baudoin, no. 1 (Montreal: Privately printed, November 1950), 169.
89. See David Niget, "Jeunesses populaires sous le regard de la justice: Naissance du tribunal pour enfants à Angers et Montréal (1912-1940)," Ph.D diss., Université d'Angers, 2005, 420-21.
90. ANQ-M, Fonds CJDM, 17 April 1944, Case #6362. Reports of Dr. Marcotte, Dr. Plouffe, and O'Reilly.
91. ANQ-M, Fonds CJDM, 6 November 1944, Case #7557.
92. ANQ-M, Fonds CJDM, 20 September 1944, Case #7309, Armand C., sixteen years old; 18 September 1944, Case #7276, Roger D., seventeen years old.
93. ANQ-M, Fonds CJDM, 7 November 1942, Case #2572, Jean G., thirteen years old.
94. ANQ-M, Fonds CJDM, 26 September 1944, Case #7345. Report of probation officer René Dupuis. No evidence that Dr. Marcotte performed the evaluation.
95. ANQ-M, Fonds CJDM, 31 March 1944, Case #6266.
96. ANQ-M, Fonds CJDM, 24 March 1944, Case #6214.
97. ANQ-M, Fonds CJDM, 28 June 1943, Case #4424.
98. ANQ-M, Fonds CJDM, 13 October 1944, Case #7435.
99. ANQ-M, Fonds CJDM, 4 July 1944, Case #6845.
100. ANQ-M, Fonds CJDM, 23 August 1943, Case #4761.
101. ANQ-M, Fonds CJDM, 7 September 1943, Case #4843 and Case #4848.
102. ANQ-M, Fonds CJDM, 1 February 1943, Case #3141 and Case #3144.
103. ANQ-M, Fonds CJDM, 9 August 1943, Case #4686.
104. ANQ-M, Fonds CJDM, 19 July 1940, Case #1333 and Case #1312.
105. ANQ-M, Fonds CJDM, 12 December 1940, Case #2416.
106. ANQ-M, Fonds CJDM, 31 August 1944, Case #7147, Jean-Paul B.
107. ANQ-M, Fonds CJDM, 23 March 1940, Case #538.
108. ANQ-M, Fonds CJDM, 26 February 1943, Case #3420.
109. ANQ-M, Fonds CJDM, 1 March 1940, Case #375.
110. ANQ-M, Fonds CJDM, 9 February 1944, Case #5877; see also 20 June 1944, Case #6773.
111. ANQ-M, Fonds CJDM, 5 December 1940, Case #2378.
112. ANQ-M, Fonds CJDM, 3 November 1944, Case #7549
113. ANQ-M, Fonds CJDM, 1 April 1940, Case #591.
114. ANQ-M, Fonds CJDM, 4 March 1943, Case #3476.
115. Tamara Myers and Mary Anne Poutanen, "Cadets, Curfews, and Compulsory School: Regulating Youth in WWII Quebec," Histoire sociale/Social History (forthcoming).