Over 20,000 women & girls were incarcerated at the Mercer Reformatory in Toronto, ON from 1880-1969. What happened to the children of imprisoned mother’s or their babies born while incarcerated?.Follow as we explore #HiddenHistories & #adoption. Annual Report 1948. No. 18, p. 36

Transfers between Mercer & Good Shepherd (GS) were common. Many tried to escape both. Today, we remember Mildred Daniels—released from Mercer by order of an inspector, later detained at GS Detroit, where she fell to her death while trying to escape on Sept 5, 1906.#NeverForgotten

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Race paternalism is a system under which the dominant group take authority to supply needs and regulate conduct of a minority group.

2/2.Notably, these stats reflect only those transferred that year — NOT the 204 girls on placements who remained wards under state supervision til age 21. Carceral births per year are likely high but hidden from adoptees, obscuring the true nature of their births.

1/2.At the Training School for Girls, pregnant girls were transferred to CARCERAL institutions, including maternity homes. The report records 8 pregnant upon admission that year. No adoptee would know if their mother gave birth behind bars — labeled a juvenile delinquent.

8/8.To understand Mercer’s legacy, we must confront the full system that fed into it. These were not isolated failures—they were deliberate structures of control. #InstitutionalAbuse #MercerHistory.

7/8.Years of institutional control and poor education led many straight to Mercer. It wasn’t a new beginning—it was a continuation of a life shaped by surveillance, punishment, and exclusion.

6/8.These laws didn’t protect. They punished. Girls were criminalized for being “unmanageable” or “incorrigible”—labels often applied to those experiencing trauma, poverty, or simply resisting authority.

5/8.If these girls became pregnant, they faced further incarceration in maternity homes—or were sent directly to Mercer—where pregnancy was yet another reason to control and punish them.

4/8.From there, many were incarcerated at Ontario Training Schools for Girls—institutions shaped by the Juvenile Delinquents Act and the Children’s Protection Act.

3/8.As children, many were labeled “feebleminded” or “unfit” and placed in Auxiliary Classes rooted in eugenic ideology—promoted by figures like Dr. Helen MacMurchy. These programs aimed to segregate, not educate.

2/8.As descendants and former Mercer babies continue to contact us, one thing is clear: many of the women and girls incarcerated at Mercer had already faced oppressive systems of control long before they got there.

1/8.There’s a clear pipeline of control linking childhood labels, eugenics-based schooling, training schools, and finally incarceration at Mercer. This thread unpacks that system. 🧵

Punishment at Mercer meant prisoners were locked in windowless, pitch-black basement cells. Further punishment involved a special diet—no variation, just bread and water alongside it. Here’s the recipe, shaped into a loaf and split into three portions to sustain her for the day:

Only recently are researchers asking:. “Frist, we haven’t answered that most important question. What is the impact of being exposed prenatally to a mother’s incarceration on child development?”.🧵 (2/2).

On this day, Aug 28, 1880: The first two women were incarcerated at Mercer. Over the next 80 years, more than 20,000 women and girls—many of them pregnant—were held there before it closed in 1969. 🧵 (1/2)

The 1958 annual report by the superintendent of Mercer Reformatory notes 26 prenatal examinations that year for Training School girls. If these girls’ babies were forcibly adopted, no adoptee would ever know they were born to an incarcerated mother. 2/2.

🧵In 1965, a 13-year-old girl, labelled a 'prostitute.' In the 1950s, she would have been incarcerated in the west wing of Mercer, designated as the Ontario Training School for Girls Toronto. Many of the girls were pregnant. 1/2

The Ontario Female Refuges Act allowed officials to imprison women aged 15 to 35—who were unwed and pregnant or deemed to be troublemakers—in reformatories, where they were held against their will and subjected to questionable medical experimentation.

RT @TorontoStar: Forgotten Toronto: How Liberty Village got its name — and the brutal legacy of Canada’s first women’s prison https://t.co/….

/end/.Had you heard of this part of Canadian history? These policies still echo today—in adoption records, family histories, and the idea of “fixing” people through removal. 🧬🏛️.