She punched her. I said to her, “Aren’t you ashamed? You’re another Madame Gagnon.”
– A witness in the Montreal Juvenile Delinquents’ Court, 1925, no. 1183
Among the mothers who wrote to Colette some were in such despair about a child that they believed to be so full of every vice that they considered sending him or her to a reform school. Some had already tried severity, but without success. “I beat him so much I’m afraid I’ll drive him mad,” wrote one. Colette replied that they were in a better position than anyone to rear such boys. It was only in extreme cases, such as when children stole, that she advised sending them to a reformatory to combat the “fatal germs,” “the moral flaw that was beginning to emerge.” Other parents were reluctant to take such a decision, fearing they would ruin their son’s name. Colette reassured them: “There are outstanding citizens in society who have spent time in a reform school in their youth: I am sure that deep in their hearts they feel gratitude to their parents for having chosen such a harsh punishment instead of allowing their precocious vices to develop.” Here she was repeating the opinion expressed a few months earlier by Judge J.-O. Lacroix of the Montreal Juvenile Court to the effect that time spent in a reform school did not turn a young delinquent into a criminal, as was maintained in certain circles, but, on the contrary, was often his salvation.1
The Montreal Juvenile Delinquents’ Court (JDC), we recall, was intended to deal not only with children accused of some offence but also with those abused by their parents. From 1920 on, the records mention various associations that tried to help these families. The oldest were the Society for the Protection of Women and Children and the Salvation Army, to which were added later the Big Sisters Association,2 the Big Brothers Association, and the Irish Protestant Benevolent Society. The most serious cases were brought to the attention of the JDC. During the 1930s, psychologists began to play a more systematic part when some of the young accused were sent to the Mental Hygiene Institute or the Institut de psychologie to undergo IQ tests and psychological evaluations.
As probation officers acquired experience, they refined their methods. They developed a more detailed set of questions on which to base their reports, expanding them from one to four pages and taking care to distinguish between the parents’ version of the facts and that of the children and witnesses. This enriched documentation has enabled historians to make a more in-depth study of cases, to distinguish between the different types of violence and their consequences, and discover what evolution might have taken place in the attitudes of the outreach workers and in the sensitivity of society in general. (For obvious reasons of discretion we will continue to use fictional names, English-or French-sounding according to the case.)
Between the two world wars, probation officers were still observing some now familiar stereotypes of violence: abuse by drunken fathers and by stepmothers. But they also discovered other forms of violence that they considered excessive, whether or not they were intended to contribute to the child’s upbringing.
The situation of children who suffered as a result of alcohol abuse by their parents scarcely differed from the sombre picture painted by temperance societies in the nineteenth century. The White family provides an almost perfect example. The father, a day labourer, lived with his six children. He was unemployed, having been fired for sleeping at work because he had been drinking. This left the wages of the two eldest boys, aged seventeen and eighteen, to provide for the family. However, the father took this money to buy drink. The Irish Protestant Benevolent Society came to the assistance of the children, but since the rent was not paid their landlord finally evicted them. The father abused the children when he was drunk. He had already broken his cane over the back of the oldest boy, and then continued beating him with a piece of wood. Terrorized, the children ran away: one took refuge with his godmother and three others with neighbours. An enquiry carried out by the Society for the Protection of Women and Children found that the eldest boy had numerous bruises and that the four younger ones, aged from three to thirteen, were covered with scabies and lice. The society therefore recommended that they be completely removed from their father’s custody. On his appearance in court, the father declared, “I admit taking a drink, but I am not a drunkard.” He agreed to his children being placed in various institutions; he would pay when he found work.3
The situation was equally unpleasant for the children when it was the mother who drank to excess. The Golz family consisted of a woman separated from her husband, three children born of the marriage, and two from extramarital relationships. Maria, aged fifteen, the oldest girl, worked in a restaurant and handed over all her wages to her mother. However, the mother wanted the girl’s tips as well. She often spent the money on drink, leaving nothing to feed the children. She would sometimes remain in a drunken state for days, beating the children with a leather strap and threatening Maria with a revolver. She had already hurt her little boy by throwing a knife at his head.4 Indeed there was nothing to differentiate her behaviour from that of a drunken male apart from the fact that this kind of violence was observed much more often in men than in women (see Table 16), something explained by the social context, which made taverns a male preserve and considered the consumption of alcohol an essentially male habit.
The animosity of a step-parent toward the children of a first marriage remained the other most familiar stereotype. But sometimes this behaviour did not differ from that of biological parents. Marianne M., for instance, did not get on with her stepfather because he would get drunk, become brutal, and sometimes beat her.5 But many children could say the same of their natural parents, beginning with Maria Golz and the six children of the White family.
The distinctive trait of abusive stepmothers was their rejection of the husband’s children from his first marriage. It is true that the obligation to look after them in addition to her own sometimes became very burdensome. It did not take Ernestine E. very long to discover this. In May 1924 she married a widower, the father of three little girls of eight, six, and three years. Nine months later she had her first baby, meaning that at the age of only nineteen she found herself caring for four children. Her behaviour with the three eldest clearly shows that she knew nothing about children and had no idea what could reasonably be expected of them. She made the little girl of eight wash the dishes, the floor, and the baby’s diapers, and beat the little three-year-old around the head with a strap because she didn’t put her shoes on quickly enough. In short, she had unrealistic expectations (something now considered a trait of abusive parents),6 and accompanied her demands with excessively severe punishments. The children could not stomach the meals she served them, and when they vomited she made them go down on hands and knees and eat what they had thrown up. When one child took the liberty of drinking the remains of the father’s eggnog she made her eat a heavily spiced slice of bread as a penitence (somewhat reminiscent of the bread spread with lye that Aurore the child martyr was forced to eat). The miserable appearance of the three children and the marks of blows on the body of the eldest girl finally attracted the attention of female neighbours and the teacher. When an unsigned report was sent to the juvenile court the father entrusted the care of his children to other family members. This outcome must have satisfied the young stepmother, who apparently remarked, “Let my husband sort out his children. I don’t want them.”7
In addition to rejection and ill-treatment, the other blame that still attached systematically to stepmothers was that they made false reports to the father so that he, too, would beat the children. This was one of the complaints made by Jane Pershing, aged eleven. Her stepmother accused her of disobedience, fighting with her brother, leaving home, and coming home late at night. Jane complained that her stepmother was never satisfied, insulted her, shut her up in a cupboard for the whole afternoon, often struck her with the strap, and told false tales to the father, who would beat her without letting her give her version. Since the child was a model of good behaviour in school and her grandparents, who had kept her for several years, found no fault with her, the members of the Mental Hygiene Institute believed her story.8
Unlike the ill-treatment ascribed to drunken parents and stepmothers, a certain amount of violence intended to teach children a lesson — thereby making it permissible — was tolerated by probation officers as long as it did not exceed reasonable limits.
Among the various offences for which parents blamed their children and sanctioned with a beating, those that occurred most frequently explicitly involved girls going out against orders (see see Table 15). A dozen such cases appear in our sample for the period between 1920 and 1939. Lucie L., aged seventeen, worked as a domestic servant. She had a great liking for the “moving pictures,” but her parents forbade her to go to them. She would set out to indulge her passion even though it meant a beating from her father when she came home toward midnight. Brigitte B., aged fifteen, worked as a maid in a religious establishment. One Saturday evening in July she was returning home with some of her workmates of both sexes. They took advantage of the beautiful weather to go for a walk, and parted at Brigitte’s door, where her mother greeted her with a blow from a broom. Sometimes a boy would also be beaten by his father for coming home too late, but this was much less common. What parents feared from such outings was the possibility that their daughters would meet boys and perhaps have sexual relations with them. This was why Mme Picard forbade Ida, her fifteen-year-old adopted daughter, to visit a neighbour’s house, and had her husband punish the girl when she came home.9
The punishments inflicted on these four adolescents resulted in their leaving the family home. This led a Protestant clergyman to express the opinion that Mme Picard did not know how to rear children, suggesting that “if she had often been more firm, but at the same time more gentle, she would have had much more success”10 — an opinion that exactly reflected the advice given by Colette in La Presse.
In the case of children under thirteen the probation officers did not so much condemn corporal punishment itself as the poor use parents made of it. Janette and Arlette Berthiaume, seven and ten years old respectively, were, according to their parents, difficult little girls who would not listen to their mother, made faces at her, spoke rudely to her, and stole from a neighbour’s house. “Their stepfather beat them when they did wrong, and he is right to do so,” wrote Marie Mignault, “but he is wrong to hit them on the head, for that is dangerous; there are ways to punish a child without that.” Mme F., accused of having ill-treated a child in her care, was aware of the limits of reasonable punishment, for she admitted correcting the five-year-old “when necessary; a few little slaps now and again, never on her head and never maliciously.” The child’s mother confirmed that the slaps were administered “justly, never unreasonably.” As for the female probation officer who dealt with Jane Pershing’s case, she did not forbid the parents to beat the girl, merely advising them not to be so harsh, “not to strap the child so much, not to be so severe.”11 None of these outreach workers questioned corporal punishment itself: everything depended on how it was administered.
Even though they endorsed parental authority in principle, probation officers did find that some parents overstepped the mark. This was the case in the Fortier family. Charlotte, aged thirteen, who had already “deserted” several times, explained why: “Because Papa was too severe and I was working too hard.” The enquiry did indeed reveal that the father, though honest and a good worker, treated his twelve children very harshly. He would not forgive them the slightest negligence. They all wanted to leave home. What is more, Charlotte promised she would run away again.12
A father’s harshness is described in more detail in Pierre Gauthier’s file. This twelve-year-old was an apprentice in its father’s jewellery business, earning $1.50 a week. He liked his work and was good at it, but had difficulty following a regular schedule. His father accused him of being disobedient, stealing, “desertion,” and admitted having administered “a few little corporal punishments” to the boy. Pierre admitted that during the previous eighteen months he had left home five times after being beaten, or because he feared a beating. His father sometimes gave him two “hidings” a week — kicks, punches, or pulling his hair — for poor work or coming late to the shop. “When I’m playing I lose track of time,” admitted the young apprentice. He also acknowledged having sold a ring he had found among some bits and pieces, and stealing money to take a boat ride. The female probation officer concluded that if the father wanted to keep his son at home he would have to treat him more gently.13
Parents justified their severity in the name of parental authority, considered to be sacrosanct, failing to see that the approach produced sullen children. The many letters written by one such parent to the juvenile court judge exemplified this authoritarian approach, which Alice Miller would denounce, especially the desire to “break the child’s will.”
M. Pommier, a relatively well-educated man, was working in 1935 as assistant adviser for publicity in a large company. He and his wife were bringing up their five children aged between four and thirteen with care. Only the eldest gave them some concern. Jean worked very well in school, but at home he was quarrelsome, aggressive, stubborn, and untruthful; he would strike his sisters and had even attempted sexual touching with one of them. The father’s letters show that an important aspect of the problem was the boy’s challenge to parental authority, not an uncommon attitude among teenagers. Jean refused to account for his escapades and “too often” tried to argue and even behave arrogantly with his mother. His father therefore asked the judge to reprimand him and make him copy out the fourth commandment (“Honour thy father and mother …”) twenty or thirty times as a punishment.14
The following letter (addressed, like the others, to the judge) shows the extent to which this man was full of his paternal authority:
Being undermined everywhere, this prerogative of the head of the family over his wife and children is about to disappear as an inquisitorial measure. A father can no longer recognise himself in his son. Humiliated, discouraged, and defeated, he can only submit to the incomprehensible indifference, the spirit of insubordination, the preco-ciousness and the egoism of a child who is far from being a man despite his size and puppetish arrogance. Such is my situation, except that I do not intend to give in, and even less to listen to my fatherly feelings.15
Pommier’s words reflect the view of certain authorities on parenting early in the century, including Father Boncompain, that one should not allow oneself to be blinded by love but instead show severity so that children would not lead their parents by the nose. Pommier, a religious man, also sought the advice of two priests, who counselled prudence, patience, and firmness. He admitted he could not understand his son’s behaviour: “Only a psychologist could make sense of it.” Not being able to turn to such a specialist, he used force to control the young rebel, but with only limited success:
The strange thing is that he fears being beaten and reacts like an animal; he snivels, creates ridiculous scenes, and only behaves out of fear when I come home.… The only effect of physical punishment is to calm him down for a day or two.… He insistently refuses to be directed toward the right, obedience, and respect for authority.… The only thing he respects in me is my strength.16
Here the father is noting a phenomenon that specialists would later analyse systematically: that in the short term physical punishment can correct a child’s behaviour, but in the long term runs a serious risk of worsening it.17 Since Jean was much more compliant with strangers his father briefly contemplated sending him to boarding school, but he immediately rejected this solution, first of all, he said, because he could not afford the expense, but also because it seemed to him that Jean was “not made for intellectual pursuits. Perhaps too much ideology would make him a danger to society later on.” Instead, he requested that he be sent to a reform school, “the only place that can instill respect in this young rebel.… This impetuous will must absolutely be broken, this spirit of insubordination be overcome, or else it will later be a disaster for him and for us.”18
Since the father had described his son as “lucidly deranged,” the boy was examined by a psychiatrist and a psychologist who found no sign of mental illness, but a superior intelligence and an almost morbid emotionalism. They attributed his problems to family circumstances: “This is not a candidate for the juvenile court.” Jean was also given an opportunity to express his point of view: “My father doesn’t understand me at all. I can’t talk to him the way I’d like to, for I’m too afraid of him and he makes me uncomfortable, yet I like him.”19 The probation officer concluded from this that the father was too severe and was unable to understand the boy.
In the ten or so letters M. Pommier wrote to the judge there was not a single word of affection or praise for Jean. He mentioned no talent or quality in his son. Blinded by the idea of paternal authority, he failed to see that he was himself the cause of the boy’s revolt:
Eight days in detention had the beneficial effect of instilling a salutary fear in my son. I was unfortunate enough to have to tell him that if he refused to follow the rules of the household he could spend some more time in the detention centre. He rebelled. I had to give him a hard slap.20
Infuriated by his father’s threats and violence, Jean did not dare return the blows, though he had no scruples about striking his younger sisters. His fits of anger even frightened his mother. His words — “I’m big and strong, I’ll beat you all and make you give in” — show that he was reproducing the relationship between his father and himself. Later, this phenomenon would be analysed statistically, finding that children subjected to corporal punishment were twice as likely to assault their siblings. Failing to understand Jean’s reaction, his father, like most nineteenth-century authorities on parenting, attributed his behaviour to natural depravity. This was why he spoke of the “inborn need of this boy to display his superiority over his younger sisters, using his strength if he has to.”21
When the judge opted for a suspended sentence, the father felt that he had “lost face.” For a while, respecting the will of the court, he adopted a type of behaviour he found “incompatible with the dignity of the head of a family: let him do what he wants, influence him by kindness and persuasion. Disastrous!” Since the strife continued, M. Pommier remained convinced that Jean’s “odd behaviour” resulted from “his bad character and refusal to submit to any discipline” — not that the family environment was to blame but rather that Jean was impervious to it.22 He therefore requested and was granted a longer detention in Mont Saint-Antoine.
As specialists in Mental Hygiene have known since the 1930s, rigid discipline applied without understanding runs the risk of provoking teenage revolt.23 But sometimes the father’s authority was supported by a son who had reached adulthood. In the Mallet family, following an argument during which the father slapped his eighteen-year-old daughter twice, the eldest son was called as reinforcement. The latter reprimanded his mother and sister, telling her, “Father … is Father and he is the ruler of the household.”24 Here, the attitude of a severe patriarch25 was reinforced by a display of male solidarity in dealing with the female family members.
Some mothers displayed an authoritarianism equal to that of these men. Mme Chartier, a factory worker, forbade her fifteen-year-old daughter to go out in her absence, and struck her on the head with a shoe when she disobeyed. “Alice won’t listen, she answers back and wants to have the last word against her mother, but she can’t win.” This was a very similar relationship to the one between Jean Pommier and his father. One evening, when Alice was coming home from a forbidden outing, she went to throw herself into her mother’s arms, but the latter rejected her, wanting to maintain her authority. Like M. Pommier, this mother refused to let herself be moved, preferring instead to put her daughter into a convent school, even during the holidays.26
Parents like M. Pommier and Mme Chartier were excessively severe and authoritarian, but their violence did have an educational purpose. They were motivated by good intentions, even if they used questionable means. The same thing cannot be said of parents described as irritable, quick-tempered, and brutal.
Claire Martin has drawn an unforgettable portrait of an irascible father in describing the behaviour of her own. Like many people of her generation (she was born in 1914), the novelist attributed his violent character to an innate predisposition and blamed her paternal grandmother for not correcting her son when he was small. She believed she could see in her father a constant state of latent anger (“He never stopped being angry”) that was just waiting for an opportunity to explode. Mealtimes were particularly critical: “The drama developed by itself.… Suddenly, voices would be raised, knives would fly, and the baby at the time, still unaccustomed to the family ways (but it would soon learn) would begin to cry.”27
M. Martin beat his children to punish them for the slightest misdemeanour, real or imaginary: breaking something, a rebellious attitude in school, or a suspicion of indecent intentions. He was also extremely impatient: “Playing tennis, he would throw his racket at our heads as soon as he hit his ball out.… Once, he tried playing cards with us: as luck would have it he had no trumps so we got his cards in our faces.” In addition, according to his daughter, he would look for excuses to get into a rage: “Anger, for him, was like morphine for an addict. He needed his drug as soon as he got out of bed every day.”28
During their investigations probation officers had the opportunity to encounter similar cases. When M. Trudeau, a man of difficult temperament, scolded his wife for some trifling reason, their fifteen-year-old daughter would come to her mother’s defence. Her father, in a fury, threw a knife at her face, striking her in the eye. Céline Desbordes’ father was also very quick-tempered. During a dispute with his daughter about going out, he slapped her twice in the street. Marie Mignault disapproved: “He wants his daughter to behave properly, but that is no place to strike her.”29 Even if such parents subsequently tried to justify their actions by citing a desire to correct their children, the context makes it clear that their impulsive natures were the principal cause of their violent behaviour.
Beginning in the 1920s violence was sometimes attributed to parents’ nervosity. Julie Lebel said that her mother was often on edge, would run after her to strike and scratch her.30 During the 1930s, the economic crisis affected the working class cruelly. Ruth Mallet found that her father was more touchy after losing his job, explaining in part why he was so hard on his children.31 Unemployment had the same effect in country parts. In 1936, in the Beauce, a farmhand, was accused of having beaten and even burned his baby of fifteen months. To the detective who asked him if he had “something against the child,” he replied, “You know what it is, I wasn’t working, it was the discouragement …”32 Today, specialists know that unemployment is an important cause of stress-related family violence.33
Next came acts of brutality and cruelty committed by parents who did not even have drunkenness or anger as an excuse, for they acted quite lucidly. M. Couture had the bad habit of beating his children as if they were criminals, kicking them, punching them, hitting them with a poker wherever he could reach. His daughter of twelve complained that he beat her until she lost consciousness. Another of his daughters, who married and left home, confirmed her father’s brutality. He had almost killed two of his children by throwing them into a river with logs floating down it. A third child was mentally handicapped because his father had beaten him repeatedly on the head and stamped on him with his heel.34
The brutality could also come from the mother, even if this was observed less frequently. In 1925, some neighbours accused Mme Fortin of ill-treating Marceline, her four-year-old daughter: she beat her every day, hitting her with her fist, a broom, or pinched her, pulled her hair, and threw her on the ground. In addition, she insulted her and deprived her of food. Her husband, to whom the neighbours had shown the marks of blows on the child, was said to have answered, “She’s already caused the death of one.” From her kitchen window a neighbour shouted to this woman, “Aren’t you ashamed to treat your own child like that? You’re another Mme Gagnon.” The answer shot back: “It’s none of your business. I hate that child and I hate my husband.” The indignant neighbour then lodged a complaint with the Juvenile Delinquents’ Court. The judge, convinced by the agreement between the witnesses, gave the accused a suspended sentence. He ordered her to treat little Marceline “the way a Christian mother should treat her children.” Marie Mignault was to visit the family from time to time: “And at the first information I get … that the accused is ill-treating her little girl or other children in the same way I shall condemn her to two years’ imprisonment with hard labour.”35
The judge, as will have been noticed, did not formally forbid this mother to strike her child. Would the order he gave her, combined with a threat, be enough to ensure the child’s safety? Would the probation officer have the time to keep an effective watch? One thing is certain: the memory of the Gagnon case, which was still fresh in people’s memories, had sensitized public opinion enough to make neighbours intervene to protect a child.
Only a minority of cases of violence came before the courts. Claire Martin’s account of her life and the letters to Colette show clearly that more than one father abused his children without getting into trouble. It was only when the consequences of violence became obvious outside the home that they attracted attention, especially when the children ran away. But how many other consequences remained hidden within four walls?
Not all children reacted in the same way to their upbringing, nor to the violence inflicted on them. Their possible reactions ranged from resigned acceptance to open revolt, with a variety of disturbed behaviours in between, as probation officers and other workers were gradually discovering.
Some children raised in a violent environment adapted to this situation in a way that amazed those who wished to help them. In 1925, a group of neighbours accused Mme Plante, a carter’s wife, of ill-treating her adopted daughter of fourteen. They stated they had seen her beating Rose with the heel of her shoe and a leather strap, making her so weak that she lay down, giving her “blows right in the face” for “simple things” that a mother should accept in a child, bashing her head against a wall with all her strength, and insulting her, calling her a “chienne” [bitch] and a “bâtarde” [bastard], and doing so every day.
Mme Plante, backed up by her mother and sisters, tried to show that she treated Rose like her own daughter. She acknowledged she had a quick temper and sometimes used bad words. She also admitted beating Rose when the girl resisted her, answered her rudely, or took too long to do the shopping. The blows to her head and face had left traces of nails, but “not scratches as scratches,” meaning that she had not scratched her intentionally, that the marks were only the chance result of reasonable punishment, a few slaps. The work required of Rose was not beyond her: she had to do housework, but never the laundry. Finally, she was well cared for (a doctor was called in when she was ill) and well behaved; she never went out in the evening and never went to the “moving pictures.”
When invited to tell her side Rose admitted that she had been beaten, but only “when she deserved it,” and she denied there had been any abuse. She added that her parents took good care of her and that she would be very sad to leave them. The judge therefore acceded to her wish.36 The evidence cited in this file attested to the crude language and manners prevailing in a working-class environment, but this coarseness did not exclude a concern for the children’s well-being. Apparently Rose adapted to these rough manners and preferred to continue to live in this environment rather than risk losing her adoptive family.
Fear, the natural reaction of a beaten child, as Dr Marcotte stressed again and again, was mentioned in nine files of our sample between 1920 and 1939. In the Fortier family, where the father was “severe in the extreme” toward his children and did not forgive them “the slightest oversight,” they feared him so much that they would tremble just feeling he was near. Some children became resigned to “toeing the line” with a violent parent37 and were ready to obey to escape a beating. Such children usually left few traces in the judicial archives unless, in spite of their obedience, they were beaten to death, like Aurore Gagnon.
“A beaten child risks becoming a liar, sly and secretive.”38 Colette and others advisers on child-rearing warned parents about this, and probation officers found ample confirmation of it during their investigations (six references in our sample for 1920–1939).
Mme Dubé, who earned her living as a domestic servant, was a mother “of a determined sort, such as is rarely encountered among to day’s mothers of that class.” She kept as close a watch as possible on her fifteen-year-old daughter’s evening outings, and did not hesitate to beat or even slam her against a wall as a punishment. Marie Mignault noted that Caroline was a “bit of a liar” in attempting to escape her mother’s harsh supervision. Mignault found the same reaction in Estelle Simpson, a thirteen-year-old orphan who was first beaten by the nuns who brought her up and then by the farming couple with whom she was placed. To avoid being beaten she had “contracted the habit of lying, which has become second nature for her.” As for Janine J., she admitted that “sometimes she felt obliged to lie to avoid being beaten by her mother, who often beat her for no reason.”39
Alice Chartier, whom we discussed earlier, resorted to concealment rather than lying properly speaking. She appeared to accept the punishments she was given: “Mama sometimes punishes me quite hard: she beats me on the head and shoulders with the heel of her shoe, but I deserve it.” However, her fear of her mother did not stop her from having sexual relations with four boys. She confessed this to the probation officer, adding, “I wouldn’t want Mama to know.” In spite (or because) of her severity, Mme Chartier was unable to instill in her daughter the norms of behaviour she wanted, or to win her confidence. Some specialists would also turn their attention to this phenomenon, for the practice of corporal punishment risked hampering the moral development of the child.40
Some children rebelled when beaten, and became unmanageable. One mother commented to Colette in 1932, “My husband has used the stick to punish the children for some time. Now it’s only when there’s the threat of a beating that you can get the oldest to obey.”41 This child was only five years old. Corporal punishment, which experts on parenting advised using only in exceptional circumstances, risked becoming systematic, worsening the child’s behaviour until the parents, at the end of their tether, would board out the recalcitrant child.
One of the nuns who taught Claire Martin outlined the problem to her: “It’s not easy, you know. Often parents send us children that they themselves have made intractable, and the instructions they give us about them are unlikely to make them compliant.”42 In the most difficult cases, or simply when these parents were unwilling to pay the cost of boarding, they depicted the child as “incorrigible and uncontrollable” and asked that he or she be sent to a reform school. This was the preferred solution of Jean Pommier’s father, as we saw above.
Étienne Perrot’s case was similar. His father brought him before the court, accusing him of being disobedient and incorrigible, but the thirteen-year-old complained that his father kicked and punched him brutally, and his mother confirmed it. The surveillance officer expressed the opinion that the child had become very nervous and stubborn thanks to his father’s treatment. He wanted to place him in a boarding school, but the father refused to pay, preferring to send him to reform school at the State’s expense.43
In common between all these cases was the fact that the early behaviour of the child was made worse because the initial corporal punishment led to a vicious circle of violence and revolt that the parents attributed to the rebellious nature of the child, reinforcing their conviction that only harsh treatment could overcome it. This process was well described by Mental Hygiene specialists in the 1930s, as it would be by American sociologists sixty years later.44
Leaving the family home offered a radical solution to a violent situation, but it was more readily available to adolescents than to younger children. It was also the kind of behaviour that attracted most attention from probation officers, for these young people aged under eighteen risked being accused of “desertion” by their parents and brought before the Juvenile Delinquents’ Court.
Some adolescents ran away on impulse, not always actually knowing where they would go and when they would return. Such brief escapades45 were carried out by fifteen girls and nine boys between 1920 and 1939. We saw above that Marie-Jeanne Gagnon made off in the same way when her stepmother threatened to beat her. In less tragic circumstances, Pierre Gauthier, the twelve-year-old apprentice jeweller, did likewise. When his father announced, “There’ll be a good hiding for you when I come home,” he became frightened and stayed out until a policeman brought him home in the middle of the night. Other escapades of this kind lasted as long as three days, during which he wandered the streets, slept on the ground under verandas, and ate whatever he could find. Janette and Arlette Berthiaume, aged only seven and ten, who were beaten by their stepfather, also took their chances, staying out all night and sleeping under stairways. But this kind of behaviour remained unusual in such young children. Instead, it was teenagers who had been beaten (or feared a beating) who ran away after some forbidden excursion. Caroline Dubé, aged fourteen, spent two days at a neighbour’s house for that reason. Arrested after being reported by her mother, she promised to be well-behaved if she went home, but did not want to be beaten any more by her mother or brother.46
Occasionally, too, a spontaneous escapade, perhaps intended to be brief, became permanent. Alice York, for instance, took refuge with her grandmother after being beaten by her father. Since the latter had someone tell her over the telephone that “she should come right away and I’ll be waiting to give her another hiding,” it is understandable that the seventeen-year-old was not eager to return home. After an investigation that found her behaviour to be irreproachable she was allowed to live with an uncle who had a daughter of the same age.47
Other girls planned their departure carefully. They found work and a place to live ahead of time and refused to return to their parents because of the violence inflicted on them. Ida Picard, aged fifteen, explained to Marie Mignault that she had left home because her parents beat her repeatedly. She had a job as a sales clerk at $8 a week and would easily find lodgings near her workplace. Her adoptive mother wanted to send her to the Soeurs du Bon-Pasteur, but the probation officer felt that the girl did not deserve that. Flora F., aged fourteen, the daughter of Austrian immigrants, also moved out because her father had beaten her and threatened to kill her, as her sisters and neighbours confirmed. For a year she had been working with a family as a nurse. Since her employers gave the assurance that she was well behaved, she was allowed to remain with the family.48
Between 1920 and 1939 there were twenty-three such planned escapes, all carried out by girls and none by boys. This anomaly is probably due to the fact that parents were fairly ready to accept a boy of fifteen or sixteen leaving to earn a living while they preferred that girls remain in the home. Independence for girls was accompanied by the risk of premarital sexual activity, and especially of a pregnancy, bringing shame on the whole family.49 It was a justified fear, for nine of these adolescents did in fact have sexual relations, almost half in return for money. This turn of events caused a probation officer to say, “You have to let children get away with a little to keep them attached to the home. Too much severity drives them out of the house and exposes them to risks.50
Another form of violence that could make adolescent girls flee the family home was sexual abuse by a father or brother. But even in such cases the parents sometimes accused them of “desertion” and managed to have them sent to reform school.51
Some of these escapades provided an opportunity for children to become aware of their rights. The first to make this discovery was Pierre Gauthier, the twelve-year-old jeweller’s apprentice. After hearing the stories of the father and son Marie Mignault felt that the former was too severe and did not conceal some sympathy for the latter: “Pierre is quite willing to go back to his father and the shop, but on one condition: he doesn’t want to be beaten any more. He states that he will make a complaint to the probation officer the first time he is struck. He is an intelligent, determined boy. He speaks like a young man of twenty who knows his rights.”52 This story had an unfortunate ending, however, for after committing various thefts the youth was declared a ward of the court and sent to reform school.
In the case of Marceline Vanasse, on the other hand, it was the parents who discovered to their horror that their children had rights.53 Control over the girl’s wages was at the root of this dispute. At that time, in Montreal as in the rest of Canada, it was usual for children to hand over their wages to their parents. Janette Bertrand, the Quebec television star, recalled that in 1928 her family’s maidservant, who had been hired at the age of thirteen, received $2 a week, of which she kept 25 cents for herself and gave the rest to her mother. A survey carried out among women who had lived through the economic crisis of the 1930s confirmed that parents thought themselves entitled to their children’s earnings. Any attempt to hold back a portion was considered theft.54 Marceline (aged eighteen) had been working for four years, making cigars. She earned $12 a week of which she gave $9 to her mother, who had five younger children. One day, after having some teeth pulled, Marceline asked for more money to buy a denture. Her mother refused, for, she said, she needed the money to cover the household expenses. When Marceline insisted, she got a slap. Some weeks later a new dispute arose for a similar reason. This time the father beat his daughter. She consulted a priest and then a lawyer, who told her that her parents no longer had the right to beat her at her age, and that she could even leave the paternal home as long as she went to live in a respectable home and was well-behaved. As a result the girl found lodgings with a neighbour.
Her mother, who was displeased, made a complaint under Section 33 of the Juvenile Delinquents’ Act. She accused her daughter of “committing acts that resulted in making young delinquents of her brothers and sisters by maintaining scandalous behaviour, refusing to obey her parents, and running away for no reason.” A letter addressed to the probation officer provides a good picture of the disarray of a mother unable to understand her daughter’s desire for freedom: “She seems so proud, so sure of herself, so stubborn that I do not recognise her any more. I am sure she was given bad advice, turning her back on her family like this. We wonder what she can have been thinking.”55 Her mother also feared the effect her example might have on her younger siblings: “I was scolding the eight-year-old. She told me she would run away. You can see it will not be long until she thinks of following the bad example.” Finally, she was concerned about the question of money: “I really miss what she gave me. I can no longer make ends meet.”
After a summary hearing, the judge left the girl free on parole and postponed the case sine die. In other words, he considered that she was in the right. In a letter to the judge, the mother expressed her stupefaction on discovering that there were limits to her rights over her children:
Today I have learned that if my children take the notion to leave I have no right to bring them back. Really, it would drive you crazy.… I am so distraught at the way the Court has treated me. It seems I am considered a bad mother. Marceline is heartless to hurt me like this after seeing me so often in tears.56
In a final letter, addressed to her daughter, the mother insisted again on the rights of parents: “It is from you, the eldest, I am entitled to expect the most affection. And just think of the example you are giving the others.” Then, referring to the dispute with the father, she reminded her about the duties of children, even after they become adults: “I could not approve you because there is no age [sic] and you should have used a less arrogant tone when you spoke to us.” Finally she returned to the money issue, which was as important as ever: “What you gave me each week helped me to cover my expenses. In that way too you are causing me great harm which, although secondary, leaves me short.”57
But if this girl won her case and had her right to leave her family confirmed by a judge, we should not think it was an easy solution. In 1944 Colette wrote to a correspondent of the same age who was miserable at home: “There is no indulgence in this world, and nasty remarks are almost always made about a girl who breaks with her family. The ugliest motives are attributed to the absentee, and possible suitors are all too ready to believe them.”58 In other words it was best for a girl who cared about her reputation and future to seek a solution to her problems without abandoning the family circle.
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Between 1920 and 1939 new organizations appeared to help young people and families in difficulty. Some were secular in nature, others religious. They supported and sometimes took over from the traditional temperance societies that were campaigning against the consumption of alcohol, a major cause of family violence. Several of them collaborated with the juvenile court to ensure the protection of abused children. Simultaneously, Mental Hygiene specialists and psychologists were called upon more and more frequently to evaluate the young people who appeared before the court. This helped probation officers uncover new causes of violence toward children, especially parents’ nervosity.
Despite all the types of ill-treatment revealed to probation officers, and in spite of the awareness of the negative consequences of even moderate corporal punishment, parental violence did not at all represent a pressing problem for the judges of the juvenile court. None of them entirely forbade parents to beat their child, even when excesses were proven. In a lecture given in 1930, Judge Lacroix did blame parents for the delinquency of their children in 40% of cases, but it was because, in the judge’s opinion, the couples were too ready to separate, leaving their children free of all control, which amounted to setting them on the path to crime.59 This judge was clearly more uneasy about changes threatening the social order than about abuses that might result from practices allowed under the law.
What was the explanation for this stubborn attachment to corporal punishment, when knowledge of child abuse was growing steadily? First, it was not easy to break with age-old tradition. Second, between the world wars Quebec observers felt that the family was in crisis. They believed that parents were treating their offspring too indulgently and that paternal authority had lost its former prestige.60 This alarmist view hardly encouraged denying parents the traditional means of enforcing their authority.
In the realm of parenting, English Canada was experiencing a development that seems to have been little different from that in French-speaking Quebec. During the 1920s authorities advocated rigid methods that were relaxed during the following decade, especially under the influence of Drs Blatz and Laycock.61 These specialists particularly disavowed corporal punishment, while conservative thinkers remained convinced that it helped to mould character.62 According to the survey carried out by Neil Sutherland it was only after World War II that this type of punishment really declined in both frequency and severity.63