Forgotten Toronto is a recurring feature delving into strange and forgotten moments from our city’s murky past. This week, we’re exploring the era of “Toronto the Good,” when perceived immorality was outlawed and police served as moral enforcers.

On a fine and cool Monday morning near the turn of the twentieth century, a Toronto courtroom was echoing with the sobs and screams of four young women.

The women, aged 19 to 22, had just learned they would spend the next six months interned within Canada’s first all-female prison — the infamous Andrew Mercer Reformatory — for the nebulous crime of “vagrancy.”

All morning, a parade of policemen had been through the witness box, testifying to what they described as the women’s poor character and moral failings. All four were “streetwalkers, f

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