“The Disorderly Conduct of a Few”: Crime and Hamilton’s Racial Geography in the Early 1850s 1

Abstract

Abstract Drawing on a series of criminal cases that took place in Hamilton in late 1852, this paper explores the operation of race in law during the period against the backdrop of Hamilton’s geography. The paper sheds light on the living conditions of a segment of the population that has left scarcely a trace in the historical records. As well, a close examination of Hamilton’s census records and physical space reveals that those found guilty in these trials were linked to a particular racially and ethnically charged, vice-prone space rather than the more respectable central part of the city. The author argues that the construction of Prince’s Island, which lay in the marshes just west of Hamilton, as a “den of vice” probably conditioned the findings of guilt and innocence in one of the trials while promoting the impression that justice was “colour-blind.”