"Without a Forwarding Address: Marital Desertion in Early Twentieth-Century Ontario"

Professor Monda Halpern (History, Western University) - "Without a Forwarding Address: Marital Desertion in Early Twentieth-Century Ontario"

Monda Halpern is Professor of History at Western University and specializes in Canadian and American women's and Jewish history. She is the author of And On That Farm He Had a Wife: Ontario Farm Women and Feminism, 1900-1970 (2001) and Alice in Shandehland: Scandal and Scorn in the Edelson/Horwitz Murder Case (2015). Her articles have appeared in Canadian Jewish Studies, Ontario History, and Histoire sociale/Social History. She is currently writing her third book on wife-deserting and Jewish Mob-Boss Bessie Starkman.

This talk explores the topic of marital desertion in early twentieth-century Ontario, with special attention to mob-boss Bessie Starkman. It argues that wife deserting was more common than most of us assume. The talk first examines desertion's gendered meanings and its connection to Jewish life. It then focuses on wife-deserting as a neglected historical topic and on its relevance to Starkman.

For mor information about the Research Seminar Series please visit: https://history.uwo.ca/about_us/events/research_seminar_series.html