Bad Girls: Central Prison
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Toronto Central Prison
Central Prison, Strachan Avenue, 1953. Courtesy of the Toronto Public Library.
Inmates in the paint shop, Central Prison, 1903. Image from the Ontario Sessional Papers, 1903, No. 36-42. Courtesy of the Ontario Legislative Assembly and the University of Toronto.
The Factory, Mercer Reformatory, 1948. Image from Part 1 of the Annual Report of Reformatories, Industrial Farms, Common Gaols. Ontario Department of Reform Institutions, 1948.
Veronica Foster, also known as “Ronnie, the Bren Gun Girl” posing with a Bren light machine gun, Bren Factory, 1941. Courtesy of the National Film Board of Canada.
The Men’s Prison
The Toronto Central Prison, which typically housed male convicts, once stood at the corner of Strachan Avenue and King Street West from 1873 to 1915. The prison housed around 350 inmates and was particularly known for its brutality. The original structure contained a centre block that housed the guards, administrative rooms, the library, and a dispensary. Inmates’ cells were located in the north and south wings on four different tiers.
Very grand in scale, the prison’s design was known for its intimidating and imposing appearance. While it was not the first penal institution in Toronto, it was one of the biggest and had a wider range of activities than the others. The emphasis on prison labour as a way to keep up with the industrializing city was reflected in the inclusion of many shop spaces in the complex. This included a woollen mill, tailor shop, shoe shop, machine shop, blacksmith, and paint shop.
The Men’s Prison and Women’s Crime
The Central Prison is significant in women’s history of criminalization. Before the creation of the Mercer Reformatory, many women were placed at the men’s prison due to overcrowding at women’s penal institutions. It was this dynamic of having men and women together that prompted the idea for an entirely separate prison for women.
The Toronto justice system, ranging from local police to prison administrators, treated crimes committed by men and women very differently. Women’s crime was often considered a moral issue, linked to activities associated with women entering the public sphere. This included living alone in cities, interacting with men outside of their families, interacting with different races outside their own, or choosing not to marry. Given the moral implications to many “female crimes”, convicted women were often sent to reformatories, refuges, or “homes”, many of which focused on teaching gender-based morality and trades, such as sewing and cleaning.
“Protective” Institutions
Increased anxiety around women’s independence played out in the evolution of policies intended to “protect” women. The Female Refuges Act (FRA), first enacted in 1893, was among the first to outline specific sentencing for women convicted of crimes; it was later revised and expanded throughout the early 20th century. Some of the crimes that could send a woman to a reformatory included “leading an idle and dissolute life” or “proving un-manageable or incorrigible.”
In the wake of the Female Refuges Act, the Toronto Women’s Court was created in 1913. Intended to be a court run by women for women, the court was often responsible for determining whether a convicted woman should be sent to a prison, refuge, or reformatory. The Women’s Court was pitched as a maternal, caring operation: removing fallen women from the public sphere and “protecting” them from further deviancy.
Dr. Margaret Patterson was magistrate of the Women’s Court from 1922 to 1934; a controversial figure known for issuing harsh sentences to female convicts. Shortly after Patterson stepped down from her role, use of the Women’s Court dropped sharply and was closed by the late 1930s.
Liberty Storage Warehouse
By 1915, the Central Prison was abandoned due to widespread controversy over its practices, and replaced by the Ontario Reformatory in Guelph, Ontario. Following its closure, the A.R. Williams Company acquired a portion of the paint shop grounds. Some of the buildings in the former Central Prison complex were re-purposed as factories to produce weaponry, such as the Bren machine gun, during the Second World War. Approximately 17,800 people worked at the factory during this time, including Veronica Foster (the “Bren Gun Girl”), often considered Canada’s version of Rosie the Riveter.
The east wall of the Liberty Storage Warehouse, and the Liberty Towers Presentation Centre, is actually made up of a portion of the paint shop from the Toronto Central Prison. Aside from the Toronto Prison Chapel, it is one of the only remaining pieces of the Central Prison complex.