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Essays in the History of Canadian Law, Volume IX, Two Islands: Newfoundland and Prince Edward Island
2005 
edited by Christopher English, Department of History, Memorial University of Newfoundland. Published with the University of Toronto Press, 2005.
Voices from the East beyond the Northumberland and Cabot Straits. This volume of essays on the legal histories of Prince Edward Island and Newfoundland opens with innovative essays on the historiography of two ‘island’ jurisdictions of Atlantic Canada. Eleven essays examine legal themes, developments and disputes drawn from the distinctive jurisdictions they investigate. The essays offer a framework for comparison of the administration of justice through the courts or examine contested cases in common law (criminal, libel, property and inheritance), and in Chancery, with a comparative excursion into New South Wales. Several pose intriguing questions about women’s legal status and their access to the courts and reach revisionist conclusions.
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Contents
Contents
Foreword ix
Acknowledgments xi
Contributors xiii
Introduction 3
CHRISTOPHER ENGLISH
Part One: Historiography
1 The Legal Historiography of Newfoundland 19
CHRISTOPHER ENGLISH
2 The Legal Historiography of Prince Edward Island 39
J.M. BUMSTED
Part Two: The Administration of Justice
3 Politics and the Administration of Justice on Early Prince Edward Island, 1769-1805 49
4 Surgeons and Criminal Justice in Eighteenth-Century
Newfoundland 79
JERRY BANNISTER
5 The Supreme Court on Circuit: Northern District,
Newfoundland, 1826-33 115
NINA JANE GOUDIE
Part Three: Property Law and Inheritance
6 Formal and Informal Law in Two New Lands:
Land Law in Newfoundland and New South Wales
under Francis Forbes 147
BRUCE KERCHER AND JODIE YOUNG
7 Defining Property for Inheritance: The Chattels Real
Act of 1834 192
TRUDI JOHNSON
8 ‘The Duty of Every Man’: Intestacy Law and
Family-Inheritance Practice in Prince Edward Island,
1828-1905 217
MICHELE STAIRS
Part Four: Legal Status and Access to the Courts by Women
9 ‘Now You Vagabond [W]hore I Have You’: Plebeian
Women, Assault Cases, and Gender Relationships on
the Southern Avalon, 1750-1860 237
WILLEEN L. KEOUGH
10 Women in the Courts of Placentia District, 1757-1823 272
KRISTA L. SIMON
11 ‘Out of Date in a Good Many Respects’:
The Legal Status and Judicial Treatment of
Newfoundland Women, 1945-9 300
LAURA BROWN
Part Five: Litigation in Chancery and at Common Law
12 Bowley v. Cambridge: A Colonial Jarndyce and Jarndyce 323
DAVID M. BULGER
13 The Judges Go to Court: The Cashin Libel Trial of 1947 357
CHRISTOPHER ENGLISH
Index
Reviews
Two Islands will be welcomed by those interested in Canadian legal history, and those interested in the social, cultural, and political histories of Newfoundland and P.E.I. R. Blake Brown, Dalhousie Law Journal, Vol 31, 2008, p. 463.
This collection of historical essays should disabuse political scientists of any idea that the judicialization of politics and the politicalization of the judiciary are strictly contemporary phenomena.... [I]t is important to understand that judicial power has been an enduring feature in political societies founded on the English tradition of governance. This book helps us appreciate that this power can be as much a force for good as for ill.... Besides giving us many insights into the law and justice system of Canada’s island provinces, the volume provides useful accounts of their legal historiography – Christopher English writing on Newfoundland’s and J.M. Bumsted on Prince Edward Island’s. Newfoundland and Labrador and Prince Edward Island may be Canada’s only two provinces without a law school, but this collection of essays by scholars, young and old, from a variety of disciplines, show that these provinces do not lack a talented legal academy. Peter H. Russell, Law and Politics Book Review, Vol 16, 2006, p. 536.
Two Islands... signals the arrival of Newfoundland and Prince Edward Island into the field of Canadian legal history. While there remains more to be done in elaborating and expanding our legal historical understanding of those two islands and their peoples, these future enquiries can be founded on an essay collection that successfully provides compelling examples of the quality scholarship that can be produced. Jonathon Swainger, Newfoundland and Labrador Studies, Vol 23, 2008, p. 263.
This collection of essays spans the legal history of two colonies of the British Empire, Newfoundland and Prince Edward Island, from the eighteenth century to the middle of the twentieth century. In both jurisdictions, legal history is a relatively new topic of interest, not yet a field.... [T]he authors of these essays are opening up previously unexamined avenues of dialogue....[T]his volume contributes to our understanding of the law's place in ...key social developments.... Nearly all of [the essays]... set out specific instances in which British common law and imperial statutes are modified by local practice. Jeff A. Webb, American Journal of Legal History, Vol 48, 2006, p. 233.
Sean Cadigan, Canadian Historical Review, Vol 27, 2006, p. 695
