Penitentiary City - Origins
The Origins of the Provincial Penitentiary (now Kingston Penitentiary) in the Late 1820s and Early '30s
In 1826, the Member of the Legislative Assembly for Kingston, Hugh Christopher Thomson (1791-1834), recognized that the crime rates in British North America were rising at an unprecedented rate due, in part, to a tidal wave of immigration from the British Isles. His interest in penitentiaries was sparked by what he perceived as the short-comings and poor conditions existing in the number of District, or "Common Gaols" (pronounced "jails"), already in operation throughout Upper Canada and Lower Canada. Very few appear to have dealt with any form of rehabilitation or at least it was not central to their operation. In fact, Thomson cited only the Gaol of the Western District, built in 1816 in Sandwich (now Windsor), as coming anywhere close to fulfilling what a penitentiary or even a small gaol should be. In his opinion, the Western District's success was due to the gaoler's personal character. Generally, convicts were sent with ease to Common Gaols for their sentences and, in most cases, once there they did nothing but eat and remain idle, until their release.
Thomson knew about some of the well established American penitentiaries, such as the ones at Philadelphia, Pennsylvania and Sing Sing and Auburn in New York and felt that the Canadian government should consider taking this approach to handling the growing problem. Thomson's theory was ambitious, albeit perhaps naïve. He stated in his report to the Legislative Assembly of Upper Canada in February, 1831 that a penitentiary should be:
a place which, by every means not cruel and not affecting the health of the offender, shall be rendered so irksome and so terrible that during his afterlife he may dread nothing so much as a repetition of the punishment, and if possible, that he should prefer death to such a contingency. This can all be done by hard labor and privations and not only without expense to the province, but possibly bringing it a revenue. [sic]
From the early 1830s, the local reaction by certain groups to stories that a penitentiary might be established in Kingston was one of very strong resistance. The argument was not so much fear of the colony's convicted criminals being brought to the area, but more to do with economics. A significant part of the 19th-century penitentiary experience was the aspect of forced, hard labour. And what would be the result of that forced labour? A flood of products intended, in part, for use within the prison, but also as a means of generating revenue through public sale to offset the costs of operations. Local businesses feared that they would be faced with stiff competition in a limited market, and that this market would be flooded with prison-made goods. And so, when the rumour began to circulate that Kingston was the location of choice for a penitentiary, the idea was met with vocal opposition in the press (reminding one of today's all too frequent sentiment, "Not in My Backyard").
Based upon what had been happening since 1818 in the United States at Auburn, New York, and at other American prisons, local tradesmen rightfully felt that the penitentiary would represent unfair, government-funded, competition. The Mechanics Institute of the Midland District even went so far as to form a special committee to travel south of the border to gather information supporting their argument against establishing such institutions in the Kingston region. It was generally acknowledged that penitentiary-made products could be produced in higher quantities and sold much more cheaply than those made by independent tradesmen. Despite this line of thinking, the government continued with the process of establishing the penitentiary. They truly had no other option when it came to dealing with crime.
Why was Kingston chosen as the site for the first penitentiary in Canada? In a word - politics. Plenty of other reasons were tabled to justify the selection, but it really boiled down to political pull, namely that all of the Commissioners, appointed to establish the penitentiary, were Kingstonians.
If one person can be credited with bringing the penitentiary system to Canada, it is Hugh Christopher Thomson, born in Kingston in 1791 to Loyalist parents from New York. His career and life was that of an active, involved citizen as a businessman, newspaper editor and politician. He was also a justice of the peace, militia officer, Warden of St.George's Church, Secretary of the Midland District Agricultural Society, and Deputy Crown Clerk and Commissioner of the Court of Requests for the district. In his spare time, he was a freemason, an officer of the Kingston Emigration Society, Treasurer of the Midland District School Society, and a generous subscriber to the Kingston Auxiliary Bible and Common Prayer Book Society. Mr. Thomson was a busy man!
At age 28, in 1819, he became the proprietor and editor of the weekly journal, the Upper Canadian Herald, which was a rival to the Kingston Chronicle, published by John Macaulay -- the same John Macaulay who would later join him as a Commissioner appointed to establish the penitentiary.
Thomson was chosen to be the penitentiary's first Warden but it was not to be: his chronic poor health and weak heart led to his premature death at age 43 in 1834.
