Fyson, Magistrates, Police and People

Corrigenda and clarifications

This section identifies and discusses the inevitable errors, omissions and imprecisions that occur in any complex study of the type I have undertaken. It is revised as I identify the issues, both from rereading the book (notably the thorough rereading required for translation into French) and from further research. See also the methodology section.

back flap of cover: the source should read TL32 S1 SS1

Text

44: in the last paragraph, for "a knowledge" read "a fuller knowledge"
62: I have since discovered a 1788 memorial from the Côte-du-Sud (District of Quebec) asking that the local seigneur, Lauchlan Smith, be named a JP; but it may be that what was actually meant was a small civil claims judge, as allowed by a recent ordinance.
75: in 1806, Moses Hart of Trois-Rivières asked to be named a justice of the peace and made the argument that he could swear the necessary oath of abjuration without using the words "upon the true faith of a Christian", but it appears his request was disregarded as he wasn't named to the commission
81: in the discussion of the race of JPs, it should have been noted that one métis, Jean-Baptiste Delorimier, was named a JP in Saint-Régis in the 1820s
93: the last paragraph before the conclusion is missing its references: Chaperon to Cochran, 22/1/1828, CS, v.259; Gale to Montizambert, 28/1/1825, CS, v.234; Huot to Cochran, 22/11/1827, CS, v.257.
104: Figure 3.3, identified by Pierre-George Roy in his Les juges de la province de Québec as a portrait of Samuel Gale, may well instead be a portrait of his father, who had the same name, by William Berczy, a work apparently considered lost (Mary Macaulay Allodi et al., Berczy, Ottawa, National Gallery of Canada, 1991, p. 251).
105: for "over the strong objections" read "leading to the strong objections"
115: Figure 3.10: it should have been noted that the data for 1831-1837 are based on a sample of the prison registers (for 1831-1836, an overall sample of about 25%, based on sampling the register page containing the first of each month; for 1837, a 20% sample kindly provided by Jean-Marie Fecteau) and that the data for 1837 cover only the pre-Rebellions period, up until October (in keeping with the period covered by the book and also due to methodological problems, the prison register being mute on the incarcerating authority for almost half of the prisoners incarcerated in November and December; adding the available data for the last two months does not much change the overall picture and in fact yields a slightly higher proportion of francophones).
115: Figure 3.11: in this figure, for the bars for 1771-1773, in order not to over-estimate francophone presence on the Quarter Sessions bench, I counted John (Jean) Marteilhe as anglophone only, whereas elsewhere, given the fact that in reality he straddled both linguistic communities and is impossible to classify in one or the other, I have considered him both francophone and anglophone. In figure 3.11, using the latter measure would show an even higher proportion of francophones on the bench (83%, 82% and 83% respectively for those three years). With either method, the end result is the same: francophones dominated the bench in Montreal in the early 1770s, though none were Catholic Canadiens.
124: at the time of writing, I was not aware of the abstract of English criminal law that was published in serial form in French in the Courier de Québec from June to August 1808. The work of Jacques Labrie, it was part of his more general overview of the constitution of Lower Canada, but was not included in his later published work, Les premiers rudimens de la constitution britannique (1827). Perhaps based on an as-yet unidentified English source, Labrie's text provided a very good overview of English criminal law and procedure. However, unlike Perrault's Questions et réponses, it did not address local adaptations of the criminal law. Further, as it was published in serial form in a short-lived newspaper, it is doubtful that it could have served as a reference for justices.
145: for "rural parish bailiffs seem to have been connected" read "rural justices' bailiffs seem to have been connected"
170 and 402 note 73: the "grappins" or "creepers" were not grapnels (as a direct translation of "grappin" suggested) but rather iron-spiked overshoes for walking on ice
179: for Worthers read Worthin; the paragraph is missing its reference: Kilborn and Pomeroy to Dalhousie, 22/11/1822, RG1E15A, v.43, file "Miscellaneous Judicial 1822"
179: "acting as commissioners for the trial of small causes" should read "acting for commissioners for the trial of small causes"
189: "Summary Quarter Sessions complaints" should read "Summary and Quarter Sessions complaints"
190: the population figures given for the district of Montreal for 1805, 1815 and 1830 are incorrect and should read 120,000 169,000 and 272,000 respectively. The rates per year are correct.
207: in Figure 5.5, the label for the second-last bar for Quarter Sessions cases should read "1825-1830"
213: the title for Figure 5.9 should read "1780-1835"
217 and passim: the wording of the text may sometimes give the impression that prostitution was in itself an offence; this was incontestably so only for brothel-keeping. For street prostitution, the formal charge was usually "idle and disorderly" (in Quebec City) or "loose, idle and disorderly" (in Montreal), the latter a morality-tinged variant of the standard statutory English vagrancy charge; but as Mary Anne Poutanen has shown, in my period, insofar as women were concerned, this was essentially a catch-word for prostitution (and in a number of cases prostitution was explicitly mentioned as a justification for the charge) or at the very least, loose morality. See also Prostitution, morality and "loose, idle and disorderly" in the methodology section
217: it appears that the gaoler began once again recording summary imprisonments of seamen from late 1830
220: for "between 1770 and 1795" read "between 1770 and 1794"
243-244: the form de mediate is incorrect and should be de medietate, though the former is occasionally found (for example, Dickinson, Practical Guide to Quarter Sessions, 3d edition (1829), p.64)
246: for attorney's read attorney
254 and elsewhere: the more usual term is "clearance rate"
255: for "summarily impose a fine" read "summarily impose a fine or other punishment", this paragraph referring to proceedings in Quarter Sessions
256: for "in perhaps half of cases" read simply "in cases"
260 and elsewhere: for "statutory offences" read "statutory and regulatory offences" (though the regulations established by the justices were mostly based on their statutory powers)
260: for "act or ordinance" read "act, ordinance or regulation"
279: for "constituted compounding" read "were tantamount to compounding"; the argument here is not as clear-cut as different commentators had different views on the matter
288: for Betrand read Bertrand
290/292: the overview of the seven socio-professional groups does not exactly correspond to the breakdown used in the figures. In the latter (which are correct) farmers and rural yeomen are conflated in the same group; petty traders such as peddlars are grouped with artisans; and there is a separate category for seamen and ship labourers (who are not classed among marginals)
291: in Figure 7.1, the label for the second group of bars should read "Quarter Sessions defendants"
293: "based on plaintiff-defendant pairs, with unskilled labourers and marginals grouped together. About 40 per cent of these pairs" should read "based on plaintiff-defendant pairs. With unskilled labourers and marginals grouped together, about 40 per cent of these pairs"
300: in Figure 7.4, the category "Morality" should read "Morality/Public Order", as stated in the text
303: regarding the problem of identifying Blacks from court records, adding individuals identified in Frank Mackey's Black Then and Done with Slavery has allowed me to identify an additional number of Black parties (about a third again as many as from the court records alone). Since these additional Blacks were more likely to be plaintiffs (as suggested in note 50), this changes the proportion of Black plaintiffs and defendants: the Blacks identified from all sources were thus between twice and three times as likely to be defendants as to be plaintiffs, not about four times as calculated from the court records alone
311: for "lath'd and lastered" read "lath'd and plastered"
314: for "as was another building chosen" read "as another building was chosen"
324: the construction dates for the Quebec City gaol are rather (most likely) 1808-1813, though the exact history of its construction remains to be clarified
325: for "three decades" read "three decades after the creation of the district"
325, 327: for priories read presbyteries
354: Plinius Secundus was, it seems, an English lawyer, John Rumsey, who apparently made a brief stay in Canada.
358: the comparison of district magistrates and rural JPs is based on an incorrect analysis of the judicial statistics, which included the police magistrates of Montreal among the JPs; in 1890, JPs outside of the main cities (though including some in smaller towns) received about as many complaints as district magistrates, not four times as many.
363: "though his mark" should read "though his name" (Dubois neither signed not marked the recognizance, as was usual by this time for defendants; the current formulation gives the impression that he did)

Notes and bibliography

370 n.24: the Quarter Sessions documents are TL32 S1 SS1
370 n.26 and 433: for Sweeney read Sweeny
374 and 430: for W. Woodfall read M. Woodfall; at 430, Burn's Justice of the Peace and Parish Officer should read 13th rather than 14th ed.
387 n52: the note should also include Wilcocke, History of the Session: 154 (Papineau's declarations)
398 n.30: the final deposit of Lawrence Ostola's thesis was in fact 2007
413 n.48: the historiographical references belong with 410 n.16
417 n.37: the reference to translations of Blackstone should be in 394 n.37
429: for James Reid fonds read John Reid fonds
431: the dates for the printed Journals of the Legislative Council of Lower Canada should read 1792-1837; for the printed Journals of the House of Assembly of Lower Canada, 1792-1837 (in both cases, however, there was nothing of relevance in 1837).
431: before "Rapport de l'archiviste de la province de Québec 12 (1931-2) and 13 (1932-3)" should be noted "Correspondance de M(sgr) Joseph-Octave Plessis"

Index

due to last-minute typesetting changes without corresponding index corrections, there are a few pagination errors in the index with regards to pages 210-215
466: the index entry "Special Sessions" is superfluous as it duplicates the same entry under "courts"