The Sarah McDonald affair of 1911

‘Her wayward life of vice’

Lindsay’s William Street, in 1911, was supposed to be a thoroughfare of progress and respectability. At its foot was the Grand Trunk Railway’s imposing station, while a short walk north brought one to the towering edifice of St. Andrew’s Presbyterian Church. And a few blocks beyond that were the factories and opulent residences of those who ran them. These spaces represented all that was good about the little town: a thriving economy connected to the wider world, a place where a church-going populace was kept on the straight and narrow through righteousness and hard work.

But when viewed through the lens of social history, each of these spaces also play an indirect role in conversations surrounding the local sex trade. Industry and affluence in cities and towns across the country brought about economic disparities that forced many Canadian women into prostitution. The cultural clout of mainline churches had a widespread influence on discourse about what was sometimes called “the white slave trade.” And it was from the platform of the local railway station that many sex workers entered and left communities throughout Canada.

Sarah McDonald was one of them – and 115 years ago, she found herself looking for clientele on William Street. Little known today, her story has much to tell us about local attitudes towards those engaged in the provision and procurement of sexual services.

Reportage in the Jan. 21, 1911, edition of the Lindsay Daily Post revealed that Sarah and her sister, Flora, were natives of Orillia. They probably found their way to town by train and were staying at a house occupied by James Goslin in Lindsay’s south ward. Goslin, identified as a horseman in contemporary voters’ lists, lived at 63 Russell St. E. Although it was unassuming in appearance, the neighbours apparently knew that there was something suspicious afoot. “Reports, it is understood, had reached the police that this place was of questionable repute,” the Post revealed, “and it is alleged that one of the frequenters was an unfortunate female from Orillia.”

At 12:00 a.m. on Friday Jan. 20, Police Chief Ralph Vincent, accompanied by a Constable Short and High County Constable Thornbury, conducted a raid on this house. Goslin was found to be asleep; Sarah wasn’t there but would be arrested the following morning – likely on vagrancy charges.

More lurid details of the case were brought to light at a meeting of local aldermen on March 2, 1911. Chief Vincent’s testimony at this council meeting reveals that “the girl was a prostitute, and the men referred to coaxed her away with liquor and then ravished her.”

And almost immediately, Sarah McDonald’s credibility as a victim of sexual assault was called into question. “She was an unreliable character and untruthful and claimed she could not identify the men who were with her,” the Post informed its readers matter-of-factly, quoting from police witnesses. Sarah McDonald never got any justice. After being released from a short stay in the Ross Memorial Hospital, she was unceremoniously “shipped out of town on the advice of the authorities.”

Although by no means the first instance of prostitution in Lindsay, the McDonald story was perhaps the most widely disseminated in the pages of the local press. Residents who were accustomed to reading about “houses of ill repute” in distant American cities or on the Canadian prairies were now reading about someone who, “in her wayward life of vice, drifted to Lindsay and became the victim of the lusts of men who so far forgot all sense of decency, as well as the respect and honour due their wives and sisters, as to drag her down deeper in the mire.”

The Post’s editorial staff walked a fine line in their coverage of the story; simultaneously othering the victim by publicly calling out “her wayward life of vice” while also taking aim at those who sought to take advantage of her. Indeed, in its reporting of the McDonald affair, the Post waffled between being sympathetic, if not more than a little patronizing, and casting blame.

First, it was strongly insinuated that Sarah McDonald’s “life of vice” was simply the collateral damage of a bad upbringing. Second, the Post insisted that the churches needed to step up their efforts in instilling in men and women a “sense of duty to their Creator and themselves.” Better parenting and better preaching, the Post implied, was the solution to curbing prostitution.

While it might have been partially right, nothing at all was said about the sort of economic injustices that may well have forced Sarah McDonald and her sister into sex work. The Post, though, was equally adamant that laws needed to change: “What appeals to the average person as most unjust and regrettable is that a girl should be sent to a house of correction while her traducers – the men who damned her and smiled over her shame – are allowed to go free and to associate with other girls and women of chastity and grace,” railed its editorial.

Despite the progressive appeals of the Post and other advocates, the number of women convicted of prostitution-related offences in Canada continued to outnumber those of men. Sarah McDonald might have faded into history, but her story has, tragically, been repeated across space and time.