Foreigners, Felonies, and Misdemeanours on Niagara’s Industrial Frontier, 1900–30

Abstract

This article examines the subject of immigrants and crime by focusing on the ethnically diverse towns and villages of the Niagara Peninsula during the period of rapid industrialization in the early twentieth century. Relying on the jail registers of Welland County, local newspapers, and oral testimonies, the study analyzes the complex encounter between immigrants from outside Britain and its white settler colonies and the Canadian justice system. It explores both the criminalization of immigrants by hegemonic Canadian groups and institutions and the nature, extent, and significance of unlawful behaviour by immigrant workers and small-scale entrepreneurs. The article is guided by the works of historians of labour, immigration, and ethnicity, leisure and recreation, and crime.