From Bridewell to Federal Penitentiary: Prisons and Punishment in Nova Scotia before 1880

“Prisons played a role in the system almost from the founding of Halifax. According to contemporary accounts the first British settlers in the town included numerous ‘vagabonds’ and assorted criminals. These were the remnants of the three thousand discharged soldiers and sailors, ‘the King’s bad bargains,’ introduced to the colony by Governor Cornwallis in 1749. An influx of former indentured servants from Newfoundland and Virginia, whom some officials viewed as wastrels, helped swell the towns population to about five thousand in 1755. (Executive council minutes, 22 Dec. 1752, PANS RG1, vol. 186,276, and 27 June 1754, vol. 187, 77-9; W.S. MacNutt “The Atlantic Provinces: The Emergence of Colonail Society” [Toronto: McClelland and Stewart 1965] 53-4; T.H. Raddall “Halifax: Warden of the North” rev. ed. [Toronto: McClelland and Stewart, 1971]) Such economic and social dislocation contributed to the crime and poverty noted by observers, as did wartime conditions and the transient nature of the port city’s population.”

Rainer Baehre, “From Bridewell to Federal Penitentiary: Prisons and Punishment in Nova Scotia before 1880,”Essays in the History of Canadian Law, Vol. III, pp. 163-99