Ian C. Pilarczyk

From the introduction to the issue: “Our final article, by Ian Pilarczyk, examines the phenomemon of infanticide and the legal responses to [it] in Montreal from 1825 to 1850, a period marked by significant economic, social, political, and legal flux. Working with thirty-one unpublished case files of infanticide, he illustrates that the legal and social ramifications of this heavily gendered crime were chracterized by complexity, compromise, and conflict. He finds that the Canadian response largely mirrored that of other nineteenth-century Western jurisdictions. This finding suggests that local context matters, but should also remind scholars to consider the significance of transactional patterns in policing.”

My intro, in part: “This article argues that infanticide, and the legal and social responses thereto, exhibited a compromise between conflicting sentiments, realities, and paradigms. As a result, the actions of defendants, prosecutors, judges and jurors, and the public at large were characterized by competing motives and countervailing sympathies. The infant victims were nominally the focus of the law, but in reality these acts were viewed as crimes against social conventions. The issue of infanticide during this period therefore presents a fascinating study in this heavily gendered area of nineteenth-century criminal law, reflecting stark differences between law and custom. This article will provide a brief discussion of the historiography and underlying methodology, followed by the political and historical context for the Montreal experience, before moving on to the issue of infant abandonment, coroner’s inquests, and the legal mechanics of infanticide prosecutions.”

‘So Foul A Deed’: Infanticide in Montreal, 1825-1850, 30 Law & History Review 575-634 (May 2012)

In the early nineteenth-century, before the system of private prosecutions gave way to the public prosecution system we now know –and before the rise of many civic welfare institutions and social movements dedicated to combating child abuse, spousal battery, protecting the mentally ill, animal welfare and the like–how did Montreal courts grapple with the issue of family violence? Given the sanctity of the family and the public / private sphere dichotomy, we might expect that they chose not to deal with some of these issues at all. This thesis uses the voluminous primary sources of the judicial archives to look systematically as to how courts dealt with cases involving infanticide, child abuse, family violence and spousal murder. In so doing, a clearer picture of the causes of these forms of social pathology and its similarities across jurisdictions and time periods emerges, as well as an indication that courts were willing to interpose themselves into the family sphere to protect children and vulnerable spouses against physical aggression.

Justice in the Premises: Family Violence and the Law in Montreal, 1825 – 1850
(McGill University, Institute of Comparative Law, Doctor of Civil Law thesis, 2003).

Using the judicial archives, this thesis seeks to recreate the complex and overlapping legal regime that governed master-servant relations during this formative time in Montreal’s economic life. While traditional artisan-based labor relations were breaking down, these relationships became increasingly contractual in nature. In a system that was weighed in favor of preserving employer’s rights vis-à-vis their employees, courts nonetheless enforced servants’ rights against their masters as well. This study explores the nature of the offenses related to the breakdown of labor relationship as they were enforced within the city limits, and the differences in legal approach towards these issues outside of the city. This thesis was published in two parts by the McGill Law Journal in 2001.

The Law of Servants and the Servants of Law: Judicial Regulation of Labour Relations in Montreal 1830 – 1845
(McGill University, Institute of Comparative Law, Master of Laws thesis, 1997).

Before their gradual disappearance in the middle ages, ordeals were used as a form of adjudication of guilt and innocence in criminal proceedings. Based on the supposition that divine knowledge and intervention would steer the results in such a way as to punish the guilty and protect the innocence, ordeals fell into disrepute after the Catholic Church banned clerical participation in 1215 A.D.  This article discusses various forms of ordeals, such as the ordeal of hot iron, and analyzes whether, and to what extent, these ordeals could have served as “rational” forms of adjudication during the period.

Between A Rock And A Hot Place: The Role Of Subjectivity In The Medieval Ordeal By Hot Iron
25 Anglo-American Law Review 87 (1996)

The 1833 murder trial of Rev. Ephraim Avery was one of the great 19^th century American criminal trials. Resulting in a nearly-unprecedented amount of media interest, it became one of the first trials of its kind to achieve national, and even international, coverage. Did the good Reverend seduce, impregnate and then murder the attractive, unmarried young woman who worked in a local factory, staging her death to look as a suicide? A jury acquitted him, but there is enough evidence to suggest that Rev. Avery was culpable. The narrative of the trial allows us a window into many defining issues common to the period, such as gender, religion, sexuality, and social mores.

‘The Terrible Haystack Murder’: Prudery, Piety and Paradox in Antebellum America
40 American Journal of Legal History 1 (1998)

Traces the increasingly-contractual nature of master-servant relations during this formative period in Montreal labor history, by analyzing the sometimes-competing but always-overlapping sources such as notarial contracts and indentures, oral agreements, provincial statutes, municipal ordinances, common law principles and judicial discretion that governed these relationships. By analyzing these sources and the cases brought before courts during this period, a clearer picture of the extent to which servants were able to protect their rights during this period, vis-à-vis their employers, emerges.

‘Too Well Used by His Master’: Judicial Enforcement of Servants’ Rights in Montreal, 1830-1845
46 McGill Law Journal 491 (2001)

This articles uses extensive primary source materials from the judicial archives and newspaper accounts to analyze the legal and quasi-legal aspects of Montreal labor law during the early nineteenth century. While the letter of the law favored masters, courts were relatively even-handed in adjudicating master-servant disputes. Similarities and difference in adjudicative approaches by courts within and without the city limits are also analyzed.

The Law of Servants and the Servant of Law: Enforcing Masters’ Rights in Montreal, 1830-1845
46 McGill Law Journal 779 (2001)

Written in 1998 to commemorate the formal sesquicentennial of McGill University’s Faculty of Law, this was designed to be an ‘armchair’ history book. Divided into thematic chapters, the book includes many primary sources, photos, poems, songs and graphics that help illuminate the Faculty’s legacy.

Someone at http://encycl.opentopia.com/term/McGill_University_Faculty_of_Law was kind enough to state thusly: “For a highly-informative as well as enjoyable history of the Faculty of Law, consult “‘A Noble Roster’: One Hundred and Fifty Years of Law at McGill” (McGill University, 1999), by Ian C. Pilarczyk. This work is divided thematically rather than chronologically, making it an unusual example of this genre.”  I hope you will agree!

‘A Noble Roster’: 150 Years of Law at McGill
(Montreal: Martineau-Gelfand, 1999)

Chapter I: “The Listful Lure of Legal Lore”
Chapter II: Profiles from McGill’s Past
Chapter III: “What A Lonely Business It Was To Be The Only Woman”
Chapter IV: Social Snapshots of McGill Through The Ages
Chapter V: The Peripatetic Faculty: The Many Homes of McGill Law
Chapter VI: «Mes souvenirs sont les meilleurs!» (Memories of McGill)
Chapter VII: The Social Contributions of McGill Law