Revisiting Toronto the Good: Violence, Religion and Culture in a Late Victorian City

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Revisiting ‘Toronto the Good’ transports readers into the largely forgotten culture of late nineteenth-century Toronto, which was awash with a British evangelical Protestant religious sensibility. Based on an analysis of 1880-1899 homicide rates and close readings of the Central Prison register, this study argues that a British evangelical Protestant reforming machine produced new cultural norms, ultimately forging dense social relationships in all sectors of Toronto society. These reciprocal networks fostered high levels of empathy that in turn lowered levels of male interpersonal violence across the city. This transformation of male society reflected the larger religious-social agendas of evangelical women and men throughout North America and Britain, but on an urban-industrial frontier.