Sex Cells: Women's Paths to Institutionalization in the Hospital for the Insane, Cobourg, 1902 -1935

Focussing on twelve womens experiences culled from patient files of the Hospital for the Insane, Cobourg, this thesis interrogates the use and abuse of the alternative dispositions that were available in gendered statutes between 1902 and 1935, which diverted women away from or out of Ontario jails and into reformative and correctional facilities, and ultimately into mental health institutions. The examination of federal and provincial legislation, specifically The Hospitals for the Insane Act, the Juvenile Delinquents Act, The Industrial Schools Act, the Criminal Code, The Andrew Mercer Reformatory Act, and The Female Refuges Act, demonstrates the complicated, and occasionally contradictory, interrelationship of the statutes which enabled the process of committing and transferring women into consecutive institutions, resulting in more severe and lengthier confinements than would have followed if detained under the provisions in the Criminal Code.