Women and the Law in Nineteenth-Century Canada

Abstract

This article describes the prosecution of Anna Balo, a Finnish immigrant in Nanaimo British Columbia, for the infanticide of her infant in April 1896. Constance Backhouse contextualizes the case in a time when contraception and termination of pregnancies were criminal offences. Anna Balo had been abandoned by her husband. Abandoned wives had little recourse to regain the property rights they forfeited when they married, and the law created onerous barriers to obtaining a divorce. Anna Balo was unrepresented at trial, and spoke through an interpreter. In the face of conflicting medical evidence, the coroner's jury concluded the Anna Balo's child died during childbirth. She pled guilty to “concealment of a birth,” an offence whose historical purpose was to criminalize mothers who killed their children when the Crown could not prove infanticide. Mrs. Balo was given a nominal sentence, which suggested that legal officials tolerated the secret disposal of dead infants' bodies, if not outright infanticide. Anna Balo's case reflects the court's tendency to be lenient toward mothers who killed their children. Judges assumed these were desperate women who killed as a last resort, and were sympathetic toward their situation. The court also considered infants to have less status than other humans, minimizing the severity of killing a newborn.