Voices Unheard Unveiling Women's Testimony in 19th Century Canadian and American Extradition Courts

Abstract

This paper examines the role of women's testimony in extradition cases between Canada and the United States from 1868 to 1923. In Canada, only 35 women testified in court in a total of 407 cases. In most instances, the women testifying were married and testifying to their husband's innocence or guilt. In these cases, their husband's extradition, conviction, and liberation were often determined by what they said. Women who testified as victims of crimes, often assaults, saw far more ambiguous success. Ideas about the purity of women influenced whether the courts listened to the testimony of unmarried women and girls or allowed them to testify in the first place. Finally, in rare instances, women appeared in these transnational court cases in a professional capacity (often as doctors or secretaries). While married women were treated with respect and single women with some suspicion, divorced women were scrutinized heavily. This divergence, especially in the Canadian courts, emphasizes the uneven ways the border influenced married life. Divorce was illegal in Canada at this time, and marriage was viewed as the building block of Canada's new society. As such, many divorced women who came from the United States were belittled and overly questioned compared to married women from Canada. As a result, this paper argues that Canadian and American attempts to punish criminals who fled across national borders prioritized looking at a woman's marital status above all other factors when assessing whether a potential witness might have valuable information for the courts.