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Andrew Mercer Reformatory for Women
Canada’s First Women’s Prison
Located in today’s Liberty Village, the Allan A. Lamport stadium is the former site of Canada’s first women’s prison: the Andrew Mercer Reformatory for Women. J.W. Langmuir, the Ontario Inspector of Prisons (1868-1882), came up with the idea of having a women’s-only reformatory in Toronto. As its name suggested, the Toronto reformatory would emphasize “reform” of its female inmates over the methods of punishment common at the city’s existing prison, known as the Toronto Central Prison.
Mercer was partially seen as a solution to overcrowding at the Central Prison; however, the Reformatory also reflected concerns about a growing number of “female criminals” in the city at the time. As Toronto’s population grew in the late nineteenth century, many worried that young or unmarried women would be increasingly susceptible to vice and crime in the big city.
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Andrew Mercer Reformatory for Women
Rising Female Crime
The growing concern over female crime rates in Toronto resulted in increasingly strict legislation and the targeting of women for arrests. However, it was not that more women were necessarily committing crimes, but rather the definition of crimes committed by women was expanding. And, it was often lower-class, racialized and queer women who were the specific targets of these new laws.
First enacted in Ontario in the 1890s, “incorrigibility laws” gave the courts the power to declare a woman “unable to be improved or fixed,” and sent to a house of refuge, such as the Mercer Reformatory. The definition of incorrigible crimes was vague and could mean anything from vagrancy to disorder, drinking, or suspected prostitution. Hardly any of the women at Mercer were imprisoned for violent crimes against another person, but instead punished for public moral offences.
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Andrew Mercer Reformatory for Women
A Building of Maternal Control
The Reformatory was a large, red-brick building designed in a Gothic Revival style by architect Kivas Tully, who also designed the Central Prison in Toronto. Built using labour from male inmates at the Central Prison, the Reformatory’s main building had tall, decorative towers with large windows and raised ceilings. The central structure housed the main entrance, office, and staff quarters, while the rear of the main building housed the inmates’ cells. The architecture of Mercer was meant to imply a feeling of openness and care, as the reformatory’s administration emphasized a maternal atmosphere rather than one of physical intimidation.
With a strict daily schedule and an emphasis on routine tasks, Mercer’s program was intended to teach discipline and “feminine” qualities to its inmates. At the same time, inmates were also harshly disciplined for offenses, such as bad language and disobedience, which often resulted in increased isolation, as well as physical and verbal abuse by the guards of the Reformatory.
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Andrew Mercer Reformatory for Women
Colonial Abuse
Much of Mercer’s history reflects Canada’s history of colonial state violence, and the abuse of Indigenous women. Alongside an increase in laws that targeted women, Indigenous women also had to endure the ongoing impact of colonial legislation, such as the Indian Act, which discriminated against Indigenous populations. Indigenous women would come to represent a disproportionate portion of the Mercer population, growing from 4% of the inmate population in the 1930s to 10% in the 1950s.
One example of the Indigenous female experience at Mercer was that of Florence Chalifoux, a member of the Swan River First Nation. In 1937, Chalifoux was arrested in Edmonton because she was not carrying her identification papers, a requirement at the time for Indigenous individuals who travelled outside of their reserve. Over the next decade of her life, she faced charges of alcoholism, vagrancy, prostitution, and assault, which eventually landed her at Mercer Reformatory in 1948. While only there a few months, the abuse and poor treatment Chalifoux endured at Mercer helped to spark a riot at the Reformatory.
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Andrew Mercer Reformatory for Women
Abuse, Riots and Closure
The abuse and terrible conditions at the Reformatory occurred for decades, leading to several riots that took place on its grounds. In June 1948, approximately 100 Mercer inmates protested the mistreatment of a seventeen-year-old inmate who was brought to solitary confinement and abused by guards. As part of a wider protest against the Reformatory’s widespread mistreatment of its inmate population, the protesting women demanded that the young girl be released from her punishment immediately. Many of the inmates, including Florence Chalifoux, used the bricks from their cell walls to defend themselves against the police brought in to quell the riot.
The 1948 riot brought increased media and public scrutiny to the Reformatory’s long history of abuse and mistreatment of its inmates. Following a grand jury investigation, the reformatory officially closed its doors in 1969 and, later that year, the building was demolished. The remaining inmates were transferred to the Vanier Centre for Women, then located in Brampton.
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