The Flood: and other misadventures of the female prisoners of the St. Lawrence Market

“I bore him fourteen children and he had me down here faster than lightning.”

In 1887, women were property and could be imprisoned for any reason. Jail was considered a place for the criminal, the disabled, the mentally ill, and the marginalized.

In the basement prison below Toronto’s largest market, two women named Mary—one a shunned, pregnant Irish immigrant, the other a vilified Mississauga woman—become an unlikely pair as they form a friendship within their cold, shared cell. Their bond...