From the Baldwin Collection of Canadiana comes a new exhibit that looks at moral reform in a TORONTO facing rapid growth and industrialization at the turn-of-the-century. ‘Vice & Virtue’ explores changing attitudes and regulation of alcohol, tobacco, drugs, gambling, homosexuality, delinquency and prostitution in the late 19th and early 20th century.

ABOVE – a collection of scandal newspapers published in TORONTO, 1950’s and 60’s. Life could be ruined if you appeared in one of these.

ABOVE – ‘Of TORONTO the Good: A Social Study’ by C.S. Clark, 1898’. Clark includes vivid descriptions and addresses of popular brothels. He makes an argument for the legalization of prostitution in the city.

ABOVE – Temperance Lesson 1-12, ca1912. Temperance organizations produced this set of twelve posters featuring some questionable facts and figures about the effects of alcohol on the body. Meanwhile TORONTO’s breweries were doing a healthy business locally and internationally.

ABOVE – police raid on an ‘erotic’ art show in 1965

ABOVE – pamphlet written by social reformer J. J. KELSO, founder of the TORONTO Humane Society & Children’s Aid Society in 1891. “Most of the juvenile offenders come from the ranks of the street hawkers, the vast majority of whom have nothing before them but a vagabond life.”

The Library’s exhibition has now ended, but it gave us considerable insight into “TORONTO the (not so) Good”.

TORONTO Reference Library, 789 Yonge Street