“IF MY WIFE HAD BEEN HOME THIS WOULD NEVER HAVE HAPPENED”: INCEST IN SASKATCHEWAN, 1901 TO 1931
Date
2025-01-16
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ORCID
Type
Thesis
Degree Level
Doctoral
Abstract
In 1918 Regina District Court Judge James Hannon presided over a case the Leader-Post described as “one of the most heinous offences under the criminal code” – a father was charged with incest against his 16-year-old daughter. During the trial, the victim revealed her father started sexually abusing her at the age of 12, and she became pregnant twice as a result. Throughout both pregnancies her father made attempts to induce miscarriages, which scarred the victim. Despite this physical evidence and corroborative witness testimony, Judge Hannon found the father not guilty.
This disturbing incident is one of 166 incest cases that were processed through the Saskatchewan criminal courts between 1901 and 1931. This dissertation is the first to examine these cases in detail, showing how the prosecution of incest reflets the larger attitudes of Saskatchewan’s white Anglo Protestant society. These trials reveal more than the history of filial sexual violence – they also expose how migration patterns, anxieties about federal and provincial nation-building, classism, racism, and patriarchal power intersected with one another through the prosecution of sex crimes. Judges’ perceptions of the morality of victims influenced their sentencing, not merely the evidence presented in the court of law. Victims, as in other histories of sex crimes, were put on trial with conviction rates and sentences varying widely. Race, class, and gender biases shaped these legal processes, along with how well integrated (or not) these perpetrators were in the community. Ultimately, Anglo Protestant incest victims had a higher chance of having their claims recognized and their perpetrators convicted compared to ethnic, racialized, and/or Indigenous women.
Using a legal and social history analysis, this research offers original insights into the history of Saskatchewan’s settlement era through to 1931. Building on foundational scholarship on the history of rape and sex crimes in Canada, I used legal records, court proceedings, newspaper reports, and census data to show that incest was not an extraordinary or rare crime. Rather, incest was an extension of domestic violence committed by “ordinary” people. This analysis contributes to historical explorations of colonization and gendered violence in Prairie, legal, and gender histories.
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Keywords
Prairie history, legal history, Canadian history, history of sexuality
Citation
Degree
Doctor of Philosophy (Ph.D.)
Department
History
Program
History