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Formal government apologies for historic state crimes have always seemed a hollow gesture to me. Words of regret are cheap. But, on the other hand, when the government has imposed cruel and arbitrary suffering on a large group of its citizens, how can those people attain a sense of justice?
Take the case of Velma Demerson, now 80. I knew, but had forgotten until Demerson reminded me, that for nearly 70 years, until 1964, the province of Ontario arrested and jailed, without trial or appeal, girls and women between the ages of 16 and 35 whom a magistrate deemed to be incorrigible. You needed only to be female, poor and sexually active to qualify for arbitrary punishment inflicted by male authorities in the name of protection. (Lower-class boys werent punished for sex; they were deemed incorrigible only for theft).
It was spring, 1939 and the depression still lingered. Velma was 17 and living in her mothers rooming house on Church St. across from Maple Leaf Gardens. "My mother liked excitement," Velma says dryly. She was English, divorced from my father, a Greek businessman in New Brunswick, and she told fortunes by reading tea leaves. Velma, a pretty blond teenager, was tired of the fights, the uproar and the bedbugs in her mothers rooming house. Soon after she fell in love with the handsome young Chinese waiter at the Commodore Restaurant, she discovered the quiet escape of his room on Walton St. He gave her the key, bought her a pair of Chinese slippers and soon the two were living together.
Velmas father came storming to Toronto, determined to separate the pair. He felt his reputation was at stake, Velma says. By now, Velma was 18, rapturously in love ("I used to go through Harrys clothes while he was at work and just, oh my dear, smell them!" she exclaimed) and planning on marriage.
She and Harry were in their pyjamas one morning when the police, led by her father ("Thats her!" he barked) burst in the door. It was the last time she would see Harry for more than a year. By the time they were rejoined, her life was permanently embittered and their relationship doomed by circumstance.
Velma was taken to Womens Court at City Hall where a social worker questioned her. Velma made three strategic mistakes. When she was asked how many men she had slept with, she tried to protect Harry from accusations of seducing her by falsely saying Two. And then, thinking that impending motherhood might save her, she blurted out that she was pregnant. The social worker immediately slammed her file shut and left the room. Taken before Judge Robert Browne, Velma, in her innocence, made one last error. "Just let me out and I'll marry him!" she begged.
She didnt know that promiscuity, being illegitimately pregnant and consorting willingly with a Chinese man were all grounds for imprisonment under the Female Refuges Act of 1897. Indeed, anyone at all could charge a woman aged 16 to 35 with being dissolute under the act, and she could be packed off to serve years as a laundress or seamstress in a church-run refuge or reform school.
In less than an hour, with no trial, lawyer or due process, Velma was remanded one week for sentencing. She spent the week sleeping on a bench in the Don Jail. Brought back to court, she was told by Browne that she was to spend one year in the Belmont Home for incorrigibility.
The Belmont Home, now a swanky retirement residence in midtown Toronto, was then an industrial refuge for incorrigible girls, run as a commercial laundry by the Protestant church. But only six weeks after Velmas arrival, the money-losing laundry was shut down and the 47 young women inmates were transferred, many of them weeping in terror, to the notorious Mercer Reformatory.
On arrival at Mercer, the women were issued a bundle of ill-fitting clothes (huge skirts, cotton stockings) and locked up in barred, windowless cells with an enamel bucket to serve as a toilet.
"There were no clocks, so we never knew the time, and no newspapers. We were forbidden to talk. We had to walk in strict lines to the sewing machines and to the dining room. They purposefully broke up any friendships."
Velma Demerson, who looks 20 years younger than her age, speaks with clarity, intelligence and restraint. She doesn't embroider. When she says that the frequent gynecological examinations in prison were abusive, she clamps her mouth shut and says no more. The young women, many of them pregnant, were forced to line up and watch the pelvic examinations until it was their turn.
It is clear that Velma deliberately numbed herself to the horror that she was living through, including her lonely childbirth, an abortive attempt to escape from the maternity ward (clad in hospital gown and a bedsheet) and the months back in prison when her baby boy spent the days on a sleeping porch while Velma laboured in the sewing factory.
One day, her baby was gone, removed to hospital as she was laconically informed. She knew nothing more until she retrieved him after her release.
When Velma was discharged early after nine months, she didn't even smile at the news. Not until the matron brought her her street clothes. "When I put on my own silk stockings, then I knew I was free."
In telling me her complicated, painful story, Velma lost her composure only once, when describing how she walked away from Mercer Reformatory, suitcase in hand, and stopped to look back.
She covered her eyes at the grim memory. "I never talked about it again, until now," she said.
The frightening incarceration and the alienation of her feelings took a long-lasting toll on Velmas life. Although she was reunited with Harry, their marriage tormented by the babys severe eczema and asthma, and the lack of money for his medicines lasted only a couple of years. Harry Jr. had a difficult, disrupted childhood, and drowned at the age of 26.
"I want justice," Velma says now, sitting up straight, tiny and fiercely determined. "I was estranged from my family to this day. Im on the books as guilty, and so are the other girls. Some of them lost their babies."
Velma Demerson and the thousands of other women who were criminalized because of their sexuality are certainly owed some form of redress even though Velma herself isn't sure what it would take to remove the sting of injustice.
As for the rest of us, we should remain alert to the potential for terrible harm and abuse when men in power pass laws to protect girls and women.
THE END
THE FEMALE REFUGES ACT
This article appeared in the Elizabeth Fry Society of Toronto's "Out For Change" Newsletter: Fall 2000 Vol.18#2
From the late nineteenth century until 1958, the Female Refuges Act was part of the network of pervasive control society exerted over women, particularly working class women, who did not fit the strict standards of conduct for women at that time.
Under the broad committal provisions of the Act, women could be imprisoned in a refuge having committed no real offence except for staying out late, or for behaviour that was considered promiscuous. All refuges operated some type of industry in which the women worked for long hours for no pay. The Toronto Elizabeth Fry Society saw the injustices caused by this Act and was primarily responsible for the repeal of the offensive provisions of the Act in 1958.
In 1991 Velma Demerson was invited to speak at our annual general meeting about her personal experiences with the Female Refuges Act under which she was arrested and put in jail for almost a year for the offence of associating with a Chinese man. Although the events took place when Velma was 18 years old, the impact of her treatment at that time has remained with her to the present day. The following is a partial reprint of her speech at our meeting in 1991 as well as information that she recently gave us about her ongoing search for justice.
It was spring of 1939, World War Two would commence in September. Most of my life had been spent with my English mother who divorced my father in 1928. I was 18 years and 8 months old. My mother had a rooming house on Church Street with a tearoom in the front room where she read teacups for 25 cents each. The excitement which plagued a rooming house on Church Street during the depression jangled my nerves and it was decided I should visit my father.
My father was an established businessman in a New Brunswick city. He had married a woman of his own ethnic background and was highly respected in the Greek Community.
I had lived in my fathers home when I was 15 years old, working four hours a day after school and on Saturdays as a cashier in his theatre. Later, I worked full-time in his restaurant behind the soda fountain.
While visiting my father I was secretly corresponding with my Chinese boyfriend in Toronto. We had been going around together since I was 17 years old. We agreed when I returned to Toronto I would join him and get married. However, when I arrived he had gambled his money away so we postponed our plans.
On learning I had run off with a Chinese man my father came to Toronto. There was a loud banging at the door when my boyfriend and I were having breakfast. Two policemen came in followed by my father. I was ordered to get dressed and taken to a place where I was put in a barred cage. Shortly, I was taken into a room and interviewed by a woman. She asked if I had ever slept with anyone else. I felt I would have to damage my character to save my boyfriend from any blame. I said, "Yes."
She asked, "How many?" I said, "Two." She asked me their names and I gave them. Although I wasn't sure, I told her I was pregnant, hoping that would help. I had never told anyone I was pregnant before. Almost immediately I was taken to a courtroom. I stood with my back towards the judge who sat about 10 feet away. We could hear each other distinctly. There were no seats in the courtroom and I didn't see anyone else until a policeman spoke. He was standing half-way down the room on the left-hand side. He related the address where he found me, my boyfriends name and that he was wearing a bathrobe and I was wearing pyjamas. The judge asked me, "Are you pregnant?" I said, "Yes." He asked, "How far along?" I said, "Three months. I'll get married if you'll just let me out of here long enough." The judge said, "Remanded one week for sentence." I was taken in a black van to a jailhouse. I sat and slept on a bench in a barred enclosure and ate greasy stew at a long table with male prisoners. When I returned to court, the judge said, "You are charged with being incorrigible and I sentence you to one year in the Belmont Home."
On arrival at an immense house I was shown my quarters in a 6-bed dormitory. I was also shown the toilets and told which ones to use, and not to use the one for girls with venereal disease. The girls I met were sentenced to two years or to 18 months definite and six months indefinite. They were 14 to 24 years old. Most of the girls worked in the Homes large commercial laundry. My job was dry-mopping the hardwood floors, and folding sheets with another girl as they came out of the mangle. There was no pay, just bed and board.
When I had been there about six weeks we became alarmed when girls started disappearing. I was among the last batch to be sent to the Mercer Reformatory. The Home was closing down. I was taken to the Mercer with other girls in the back seat of an automobile.
Over the years I have thought that some day I would search for the reason why such a thing could happen. Fifty years later I am able to request my Mercer records under the Freedom of Information Act. Only the Mercer admission register survives.
I learned that I had been sentenced under the Female Refuges Act. Section 15 states: "Any person may bring before a judge any female under the age of 35 years whois leading an idle and dissolute life."
It further states that: "Any parent or guardian may bring before a judge any female under the age of 35 years who proves unmanageable or incorrigible and the judge may proceed as provided in Section 15."
I found that the official name of the Belmont Home was Toronto Industrial Refuge. The Refuge had been located on Belmont Street since the late 19th century.
I found that the date of my transfer did not coincide with the newspaper reports. The newspapers reported the incident three weeks later and there had been opposition after the fact. I found that no notice of a closure of a penal institution had been published in the Provincial or Canada Gazette as required by law. I found there was no Act covering this transfer and it is presumed it was done under the Female Refuges Act.
I found that a neglected girl could enter an industrial or training school without appearing before a magistrate. She could be transferred to an industrial refuge and again to the Mercer Reformatory. A girl could wind up in a barred cell without having been in court.
The Ontario Female Refuges Act indicates it was taken from the Canada Prisons and Reformatories Act. This Act provides rules for incorrigible offenders. Refuge means an institution for young or adult females. In the 19th century, industrial refuges were for girls under 14 years and a house of refuge was a place adult female prisoners could be transferred to from jails operated by men.
Churches or their affiliates were given the privilege to lock up females. An order-in-council dated May 1917, gave the right to operate industrial refuges to the Toronto Industrial Refuge for Females and to the Good Shepherd Female Refuge in Toronto. The refuges were included in Charitable Institutions under the Department of Welfare. In 1939 there were five in Ontario. They were receiving ten cents per day per inmate from the province and about three cents from the city.
Section 15 was brought in at the time of the Royal Commission of the Feebleminded and Venereal Disease in 1919. The church, the military, and elitist women requiring cheap domestic help, supported the Commission.
There was intense propaganda that the population was threatened by mental degeneracy. Through the exploitation of female labour, social legislation could be postponed. The professionals also benefited in their decision-making capacity on feeblemindedness. A closed court and prison system contributed to the fact that the average person didnt know refuges existed. Yet, thousands of women in Canada worked for years as domestic slaves in reformatories, industrial refuges, and homes for the feeble minded.
-by Velma Demerson
Since her speech at our annual meeting Velma has written to the Minister of Justice for Canada, the Attorney-General of Ontario, the Ombudsman, and the Lieutenant Governor of Ontario advising them that she has never been involved in any criminal activity and requesting an apology. Their responses were varied but no apology was ever given. As a last resort, Velma is bringing forth an application to have the Female Refuges Act declared unconstitutional. A declaration would effectively vindicate her and make it possible to seek compensation for the way that she was treated.
An application to the Superior Court of Justice in Ontario is expected to be heard in approximately three months. The hearing will give her an opportunity to clear her name and obtain justice. As Velma states, the seizure, stigma and family turmoil that ensues from confining a woman in prison passes through the generations. At 80 years of age, Velma is anxious to right the wrongs that were perpetrated against her over 60 years ago and to reduce the shame and hurt that time has not erased.
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