During the following year the Society continued to co-operate with the probation work, and endeavoured to effect regulation of newspaper selling on the streets by small children and girls, and to secure suppression of the deleterious features of the moving picture shows, which were just beginning to overrun the city.
In 1910, the Juvenile Delinquents’ Act was formally proclaimed by the provincial authorities, and arrangements as to division of expenses, etc., having been adjusted between the province and the municipality, a house at No. 209 Champ de Mars Street, was acquired and fitted up by the city for use as a detention home, the formal opening taking place on the 22d March, 1912.
In accordance with the provisions of the Juvenile Delinquents Act two Juvenile Court committees were appointed from the membership of the Children’s Aid Society, consisting of the following persons:
For the Catholic Juvenile Court Committee:—Madame Beïque, Lady Hingston, Mesdames Crevier, Moreau, Ethier, Miss Quigley, Miss Murphy, Mlle. Marie Mignault, Rev. Canon Gauthier.
For the Protestant Juvenile Court Committee:—Rev. F.R. Griffin, Reverend Doctor Symonds, Messrs. Owen Dawson, K.J. Hollingshead, Lyon Cohen, Maxwell Goldstein, Mesdames F.H. Waycott, H.W. Weller, W.S. Maxwell.
The society sent in a unanimous request to the provincial authorities for the appointment of Judge F.X. Choquet as judge of the Juvenile Court, for Mr. O.C. Dawson as clerk, and for the retention of acting probation officers, Mlle. Clément, and Mrs. Henderson, in a permanent capacity, and all of these appointments were made, as asked for.
In 1912 the Children’s Aid Society cooperated with the executive of the Child Welfare Exhibit by taking charge of the subsection of that exhibit dealing with delinquent and dependent children.
MONTREAL SOCIETY FOR THE PROTECTION OF WOMEN AND CHILDREN
An association which has done very effective work since 1882 among the sufferers at the hands of the delinquent classes is the Montreal Society for the Protection of Women and Children. Its work is largely preventative and has succeeded in the protection of women and children from every kind of wrong, abuse and cruelty, arising from nonsupport, wife beating, desertion, assaults, child cruelty and miscellaneous causes. The society has steadily pursued the aim of reform regarding prison labour wages in favour of those who suffer from the incarceration of the delinquent husband, the breadwinner.
THE CANADIAN SOCIETY FOR THE PREVENTION OF CRUELTY TO ANIMALS