Regulating Public Space in Early Nineteenth-Century Montreal: Vagrancy Laws and Gender in a Colonial Context

Type of resource
Author/collaborator
Title
Regulating Public Space in Early Nineteenth-Century Montreal: Vagrancy Laws and Gender in a Colonial Context
Abstract
In the late eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries, Montreal’s justices of the peace designed police regulations regarding vagrancy to include licensed begging as a form of social welfare for the respectable poor. For those deemed unworthy of state-sanctioned begging, vagrant men and women felt the full force of the law by being apprehended and punished in the House of Correction or Common Goal. In the period between 1810 and 1842, Montreal police charged women for vagrancy at least 2,528 times, and men at least 1,369 times. Most of the vagrants were non-francophone, usually Irish.
Publication
Histoire sociale/Social History
Volume
Vol. 35
Issue
no. 69
Pages
35-58
Date
May 2002
Language
en
URL
Citation
Poutanen, Mary Anne. “Regulating Public Space in Early Nineteenth-Century Montreal: Vagrancy Laws and Gender in a Colonial Context.” Histoire sociale/Social History Vol. 35, no. 69 (May 2002): 35–58. http://hssh.journals.yorku.ca/index.php/hssh/article/view/4482.
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