‘Meet a good boy and marry,’ teen prostitutes told
Rollicking Montreal of the ’30s and ’40s had darker side
From homes of the jobless on direct relief and into Montreal’s night life daily go girls of 17, 18 and 19 years of age to loiter in tawdry night clubs and cafes and mingle with the riff-raff of the underworld. — Gazette, July 20, 1935
The Great Depression was biting hard into Montreal, bringing misery in many shapes. A new misery, at least for the Gazette, thrust its ugly reality into Recorder’s Court for the first time in the summer of 1935. The recorder (as Montreal magistrates were then known) was called on to deal with 16 teenage girls whom morality-squad officers had arraigned on charges of vagrancy. Vagrancy, of course, was code for prostitution.
“Never have I been confronted with a problem such as that of these children — for they are mere children — who frequent cafés, clubs and the like, fall into the hands of vicious people, people of the underworld, and ruin their entire lives,” Recorder Léonce Plante said. “No court has a more serious problem on its hands than that of dealing with these girls.”
Police chief Fernand Dufresne and his senior officers had seen the problem coming and earlier that July had swung into action. The morality squad was ordered to put the heat on seedy downtown bars. Night after night, officers witnessed the shabby spectacle of men described as “undesirables” and unattached young women hustling each other, yet it was just the women who wound up being detained.
‘For their own good, the court must be severe.’
The men could not be arrested because of “legal technicalities” — perhaps no money was seen to change hands. The young women, by contrast, were advised to go home and stay there, and when many ignored this advice, 16 among them were arrested.
“Police records show that the girls come, for the most part, from homes of the jobless,” we reported. “The girls, forced to leave school and unwilling to stay at home, seek distractions elsewhere and readily become café and nightclub habitués.”
Recall that schooling was not free in those days, and even modest fees would doubtless have been too onerous for a hard-pressed family. And who knows what boredom, despair or outright abuse lay behind a girl’s decision to turn her back on home. The saddest part of this story is that eight of the 16 arrested girls “were shown to be in need of medical attention.” The Gazette did not spell it out, but it’s clear they had contracted venereal disease.
Recorder Plante seemed willing to accept that the girls were victims. Yet that wasn’t enough to excuse them. Prostitution was illegal, and even if Plante were of a mind to be lenient, the law gave him little room to manoeuvre.
“For their own good, the court must be severe,” he piously intoned. “But on the other hand, they must not be led to believe that we are their enemies.”
Eight of the girls, those found not to be ill, were sentenced to “time in jail.” Plante warned them that bars and clubs “are not good for you. Stay away and be good. Get work if you can, meet a good boy and marry. That is the best thing for you.”
Sentencing was postponed for the other eight. They were to be kept in the women’s jail on Fullum St. for anywhere from one month to three until their medical treatment was complete, after which they would be given the same advice as the first eight and sentenced to similar terms behind bars.
The story of these 16 girls is a sobering reminder that behind the Runyonesque Montreal of the 1930s and 1940s — a Montreal of late-night jazz clubs and gambling dens, of larger-than-life politicians and lovable conmen — there was a darker side of poverty, disease and despair.