“Seduced” Daughters: Deciphering Incest and Girlhood in Wentworth County’s Late-Victorian Criminal Seduction Trials

Abstract In late-nineteenth-century Canada, cases of incest were met with both outrage and doubt. To avoid questions of consent raised by long-term abuse, the Crown Attorney in Ontario’s Wentworth County experimented with a novel prosecutorial strategy between 1886 and 1890, trying three cases of incestuous abuse involving fifteen-year-old girls under the new criminal seduction law. Only one resulted in a conviction, and an examination of court records and contemporary commentary reveals how social taboos, discredited testimony, and requirements of corroboration rendered girls’ experiences of incest illegible to the court and community when viewed through the lens of seduction. Situating girlhood within discourses about protection, the family, and sexual morality, this study illuminates unexplored applications and limits of the seduction law, contemporary shifts in understandings of consent and coercion, and how victims serve as sites of socio-legal experimentation before being discarded once they have fulfilled that role.