The Backhouse Backlist

[We're moving up this updated post.]

Constance B. Backhouse, a Distinguished University Professor on the University of Ottawa's Faculty of Law and an immediate Past President of the ASLH, has posted some of her backlist:

"Pleasing Appearance...Only Adds to the Danger": The 1930 Insanity Hearing of Violet Hypatia Bowyer, Canadian Journal of Women and the Law 17:1 (2005) 1-13

The state's legal authority to detain individuals within insane asylums in early twentieth-century Canada was deeply influenced by factors of gender, class, and race. Violet Hypatia Bowyer, a working-class, white woman who was just twenty-two years old in 1928, was initially incarcerated in Ontario for leading a 'dissolute' life. Wrongly diagnosed as 'insane' by prison officials, she tried valiantly, but failed, to secure her release through legal challenge. The expert testimony of the prison officials, the psychiatric 'experts,' and the decision of the court all testify to the terrifying coerciveness of law in Canadian history.

'Don't You Bully Me - Justice I Want If There is Justice to Be Had': The Rape of Mary Ann Burton, London, Ontario, 1907, in People and Place: Historical Influences on Legal Culture, ed. Jonathan Swainger and Constance Backhouse (Vancouver: University of British Columbia Press, 2003), 60-94.

In 1907, Mary Ann Burton launched a complaint of rape against Joseph Gray in London, Ontario. Judicial decisions and literature at the time claimed that rape was “an accusation easily to be made”, despite the common knowledge that rape was underreported. Mary Ann Burton's case sets no legal precedent; she was treated with suspicion and hostility, and the charges were ultimately dismissed by the court. Yet Mrs. Burton resisted the antagonism she experienced – namely tactics by defence counsel to attack her character, her image as a “worthy victim”, her credibility, and her recollection of every finite detail of the incident. She remained resolute in her testimony and her right to be protected from rape, in the face of pernicious commentary from acquaintances, and a courtroom that systematically discredited and ultimately dismissed her based largely on her gender and class.

The Doctrine of Corroboration in Sexual Assault Trials in Early Twentieth-Century Canada and Australia, Queen's Law Journal 26 (2001): 297-338.

The author compares two early twentieth century criminal cases, one Australian and one Canadian, involving carnal knowledge of a child. The cases illustrate the parallel development of the doctrine of corroboration in sexual assault cases in the two countries – a doctrine which was based on the belief that the testimony of women and girls in such cases was inherently suspect. By requiring that corroborating evidence be independent of the complainant's testimony, and by interpreting that requirement in an extremely rigid way to exclude particular items of evidence that strongly supported the complaints, the courts in both cases imposed unjustified obstacles to the conviction of men accused of sexual offences. This misuse of the doctrine of corroboration contradicted the ideals of evenhanded justice and gender equality in both Canada and Australia.

'I Was Unable to Identify with Topsy' - Carrie M. Best's Struggle Against Racial Segregation in Nova Scotia, 1942, Atlantis 22 (Spring 1998) 16-26.

This paper describes a court case that was buried in Canadian legal archives for fifty-six years. In 1942, Carrie Best brought a civil action for damages against a Nova Scotia theatre, claiming that the owners were enforcing a racially-segregated seating policy. The action was ultimately dismissed. Dr. Best, an African-Canadian who was a teacher, journalist, and founder of The Clarion (a newspaper that she began publishing in 1945) had been a long-time advocate for human rights and activist against racial discrimination and segregation in Nova Scotia. Carrie Best's decorated career as a journal and activist is public knowledge, but the history of her unsuccessful litigation calls for scrutiny. Such cases help us understand Canadian history to be deeply marked with racism. 

Read more »