IncorrigibleWilfrid Laurier Univ. Press, 2006 M01 1 - 172 páginas On a May morning in 1939, eighteen-year-old Velma Demerson and her lover were having breakfast when two police officers arrived to take her away. Her crime was loving a Chinese man, a “crime” that was compounded by her pregnancy and subsequent mixed-race child. Sentenced to a home for wayward girls, Demerson was then transferred (along with forty-six other girls) to Torontos Mercer Reformatory for Females. The girls were locked in their cells for twelve hours a day and required to work in the on-site laundry and factory. They also endured suspect medical examinations. When Demerson was finally released after ten months’ incarceration weeks of solitary confinement, abusive medical treatments, and the state’s apprehension of her child, her marriage to her lover resulted in the loss of her citizenship status. This is the story of how Demerson, and so many other girls, were treated as criminals or mentally defective individuals, even though their worst crime might have been only their choice of lover. Incorrigible is a survivor’s narrative. In a period that saw the rise of psychiatry, legislation against interracial marriage, and a populist movement that believed in eradicating disease and sin by improving the purity of Anglo-Saxon stock, Velma Demerson, like many young women, found herself confronted by powerful social forces. This is a history of some of those who fell through the cracks of the criminal code, told in a powerful first-person voice. |
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... waiting. We're instructed to discard our Belmont attire and change into Mercer clothing. “Put the clothes you have on in a neat pile in the corner.” The matron designates a place on the spotless floor. We undress quietly. I can see that ...
... waiting. She directs me to turn left to the east wing. I join the others going in the same direction. The matron follows as we pass through the oval entrance to the ward, which is a corridor perhaps six feet wide with about twenty cells ...
... waiting to be made up are a thin cotton mattress, sheets, two coarse grey blankets, a pillow, and a pillow slip. A white towel and roll of toilet paper are placed on a chair. At the foot of the bed is a small basin with a cold water tap ...
... waiting in the hallway and the doctor's assistant opens the clinic door and calls out each girl's name. We see Miss McGrath, a short grey-haired nurse, in the hallway and tell her we watched one another being examined the previous week ...
... wait and nothing further is said but my mother knows she'll be back. “She's from the Welfare,” my mother tells me. “They're checking up. I'll have to warn Mrs. Cottrell to come home right away.” My mother picks up the phone. Within ...
Contenido
CHAPTER 12 | 111 |
CHAPTER 13 | 121 |
CHAPTER 14 | 127 |
CHAPTER 15 | 135 |
CHAPTER 16 | 141 |
CHAPTER 17 | 149 |
CHAPTER 18 | 159 |
AFTERWORD | 165 |