| Book Review | The American Historical Review, 109.2

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| Book Review | The American Historical Review, 109.2 | The History Cooperative

Book Review

Canada and the United States

Patrick Brode. Courted and Abandoned: Seduction in Canadian Law. Buffalo, N.Y.: University of Toronto Press, for The Osgoode Society for Canadian Legal History, Toronto. 2002. Pp. xi, 252. $45.00.
Patrick Brode has set out to provide a history of the tort of seduction and associated actions in Canadian law in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries. His book focuses on developments in Upper Canada/Ontario.	1
The portion describing early decades of the nineteenth century relies on evidence of extramarital heterosexual activity as revealed in the reported and unreported cases for Upper Canada. The author would clearly have his readers believe that such activity, particularly premarital, was frequent throughout the colony. Such a finding is at odds with that of Peter Ward, who argued some years ago that the rate of illegitimacy in Upper Canada was notably low. While the author is aware of Ward's article, he makes no attempt to address its argument.	2
Despite this significant problem, Brode cites a broad number of seduction cases, some of which are quantified. The number of seduction cases peaked at forty-five in the 1870s, with a median number of fourteen per decade and a mean of 19.3. Whether one would consider these sort of numbers frequent or not is subjective, but they do not satisfy me—particularly when reduced to a yearly average. I would argue that these numbers do not support the assertion that civil seduction "was a regular feature of the courts of late nineteenth-century Canada" (p. 101). Similarly, no numbers or persuasive evidence is offered to support the assertion that "breach of promise and seduction cases became staple fare for the lawyers of the late 1800s" (p. 108). The numbers are derived from reported cases, unreported cases in judges' bench books, and newspaper accounts (although the methodological use of newspapers, whether systematic or not, is not revealed), so the research base is certainly broad.	. . .

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