Doctor Oswald Charles Joseph Withrow

1878 - 1946  (68 years)

• Name	Oswald Charles Joseph Withrow
  Prefix	Doctor
  Born	12 Jan 1878	Sweaburg, Oxford Co., Ontario, Canada
  Gender	Male
  FindAGrave	https://www.findagrave.com/memorial/273556971
  Interesting	crime, medical
  Military	WW1
  Occupation	1904	New Hamburg, Wilmot Twp., Waterloo Region, Ontario, Canada
  	Doctor
  Eby ID Number	Waterloo-488435
  Died	5 Feb 1946	Toronto, York Co., Ontario, Canada
  Buried	Mount Pleasant Cemetery, Toronto, York Co., Ontario
  Person ID	I488435	Generations
  Last Modified	19 Dec 2024

  
  

• Photos

  Withrow-OswaldCharlesJoseph-001.jpg The Toronto Star Toronto, Ontario, Canada · Saturday, October 08, 1983

  
  

• Notes

  WITHROW, OSWALD CHARLES was born in Woodstock. He graduated from the University of Toronto in 1902. He went to England for postgraduate studies, and by 1903 had acquired a Membership in the Royal College of Surgeons, and a Licentiate of the Royal College of Physicians. His appearance in New Hamburg was marked by a note in the Dumfries Reformer on February 4, 1904, although the note was dated at New Hamburg on January 27: Dr. Walters has disposed of his practice to Dr. Withrow of Woodstock. Three months later the Volksblatt of April 27 said: Dr. Coates, who has bought the medical practice of Dr. Withrow, arrived last week. He went to Fort William where he practised until 1913, when he moved to Toronto. In the First War he served overseas as a medical officer. In 1927 he was involved in a trial in which he was charged with manslaughter, but was found guilty of a lesser offence. He was sent to prison for seven years, and on his release he called for a royal commission on the penal system, after writing a series of articles describing his experiences. He died in Toronto on February 5, 1946, from a heart attack sustained in a Toronto radio station. He was survived by his widow, two daughters and a son. Dr. Alexander D. Campbell, Doctors in Waterloo County 1852-1925, 1986 _________________ Wittrow: A quiet crusader for reform: By Lindsay Scotton Toronto Star Many men might have tried to forget the desperate, bitter years spent in Kingston Penitentiary. Dr. Oswald C.J. Withrow could not. Suffering from a dangerous thyroid condition, he had been locked in a dank, cold prison cell so small he could touch both walls by standing in the middle and stretching out his arms. "I don't think Withrow will live to complete his term," the prison warden told reporters in 1928. In a poem written in his cell that same year, the doctors frustrations poured out . Still protesting his innocence, he compared the judicial system to "..some great cad Or bully, who despite the pleading tears Exults with taunts and cruel bludgeonings /To keep a little while the upper hand / Because it is his humour to do so./ For thus the LAW has placed its heel on me..." Despite his own suffering, he never forgot the plight of his fellow prisoners, at a time when those who spoke out against the excesses of the system were accused of wanting to "mollycoddle" dangerous men. In 1927, Withrow described how the authorities broke a strike called by inmates over the poor quality of their food. (He noted in his diary that breakfast for 700 inmates costs only $8.75) In shackles Not only were dozens of men 'paddled' but scores were shackled to the bars of their cells for several days and the windows were opened opposite these cells so that the bitter cold January air blew in on them causing great suffering from exposure to the elements." Ironically, the warden of the day was complimented in Parliament for breaking the strike so successfully. After serving just three years of his sentence, Withrow was released on a ticket of leave" in late 1929. Immediately, he set out to change a situation that he saw as so evil as "to make the very imps in Hell weep." Withrow threw himself into the controversial field of prison reform, speaking out angrily against a system that seemed to exist only to degrade and debase the men under its control. There are political prisoners in Kingston penitentiary today, men whose only crime is opposition to those in power, he told a Century United Church ' Men's Club meeting in 1933. Kept in dungeons. "These men are no different from you and me and yet they are kept in dungeons, damp and dirty, that would not be used to hold cattle. I hope to lead a crusade throughout Canada to change the present medieval attitude that men who are sent to prison are necessarily bad and that once a convict, always a convict he said. " His tireless work in the field of penal reform led, in large part, to the setting up of a federal Royal Commission of inquiry, and the clean-up of some of the more lurid aspects of prison life of the 1930s. Withrow was asked to write a series of articles on the Inside for the Toronto Globe, and later expanded them into his influential 1933 book " Shackling The Transgressor." In the foreword to the book Dr. Clarence M. Hincks, General Director of 'The National Committee for Mental Hygiene', notes that Withrow "..utilized the most humiliating and. darkest period of his life to initiate long overdue reforms in Canada. We owe him a debt of gratitude." When Withrow left prison, he had come home to a ruined medical career, a struggling family, and the censure of the church that meant so much to him.' The Ontario College of Physicians and Surgeons had refused to reinstate his license to practice until the full seven years of his original sentence were over. And Withrow felt keenly that he had been made the scapegoat of a society in which, although sex was hardly mentioned and contraception was illegal, the eyes of the law were closed to the thriving and dangerous backstreet abortion business. He also felt the application of the law in such circumstances was desperately unfair. If attempting to procure miscarriage were to be seen as a crime for everyone involved, he noted, ironically enough, many thousands of our Canadian people, medical and lay, male and female, would serve terms in various and varied penitentiaries." …. The Toronto Star Sat, Oct 08, 1983 Page 12

  
  

• Event Map

  Born - 12 Jan 1878 - Sweaburg, Oxford Co., Ontario, Canada Occupation - Doctor - 1904 - New Hamburg, Wilmot Twp., Waterloo Region, Ontario, Canada Died - 5 Feb 1946 - Toronto, York Co., Ontario, Canada Buried - - Mount Pleasant Cemetery, Toronto, York Co., Ontario  = Link to Google Earth