'Terror to Evil-Doers': Prisons and Punishments in Nineteenth-Century Ontario

Christopher English is a professor of history at Memorial University of
Newfoundland.

Proposed as a preliminary survey of the history of prisons, jails, and
punishments, and offering much interesting anecdotal evidence
complemented by statistics, Oliver’s study focuses on institutional
governance and administrative imperatives. This is the story of why,
how, and with what success the conservative elite of Upper
Canada/Ontario imposed a penitentiary (Kingston, 1835), an institution
for the criminally insane (Rockwood, 1865), and intermediate prisons for
males (1874) and for females (the Mercer Reformatory, 1880) sentenced to
terms of less than two years on an admittedly ramshackle and
underfinanced system of local jails, which was nevertheless popular,
responsive to local needs, and arguably more enlightened than the new
prison system imposed upon it.

This is a work of a historian at the height of his powers. Evenhandedly
he subjects the work of former mentors, colleagues, and former students
to critical, sometimes acerbic, appraisal. Then with skill,
understanding, and insight he reconstructs a carceral system limited to
punishment and discipline. A legislative agenda was framed by men like
Chief Justice John Beverley Robinson in the 1830s. Reform of the
criminal law, a prison, and separate facilities for youth, the poor, and
the insane were achieved at mid-century. Thereafter the system fell
victim to rigidity, official and public indifference, scarce resources,
and conflict between the central government’s desire to see local
jails improved, reformed, and rationalized and cash-poor municipalities
calling for roads and schools. Administrators were not cruel; nor was
the system class-biased. But it was unresponsive to calls for reform,
especially to the prospects for rehabilitation. Those convicted deserved
their fate.

For Oliver, the key to solving institutional problems lay in
institutional reform. It was not popularly demanded, and the price was a
century (to the 1950s) of stasis, which was both deplorable and
understandable in the context of the times.