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Throughout the nineteenth century poor relief in Quebec was private and sectarian. In Montreal bourgeois Protestant women responded by establishing institutional charities for destitute women and children.
Their Benevolent Design delves into the inner workings of two of these charities (the Protestant Orphan Asylum and the Montreal Ladies’ Benevolent Society), sheds light on little-known aspects of the community’s response to social inequality, and examines the impact of liberalism on changing attitudes to poverty and charity. Seeing charity as a class duty, elite women structured their benevolent design around the protection, religious salvation, and social regulation of poor children. Janice Harvey explores how these philanthropists overcame the constraints of social conventions for women in polite society, how charity directors devised and implemented institutional aid, and how that aid was used by families and experienced by children. Following the development of the charities through the end of the nineteenth century and into the early twentieth, the book explores the conflict that arose between these institutions and other social services, including those that advocated for foster care and so-called scientific charity. The 1920s marked a major social shift in how child poverty was understood and managed in Protestant Montreal.
Despite the gendered obstacles facing women in charity organization, Their Benevolent Design celebrates the remarkable ingenuity and independence of a group of Canadian women in shaping social aid and improving the grim realities of child poverty.
"Harvey has devoted her career to providing this narrative with crucial nuance, particularly regarding how, for whom, and why charity was administered in nineteenth-century Montreal. Their Benevolent Design is a magisterial and highly engaging account that explores human agency with empathy and insight." Canadian Historical Review
"Harvey’s first chapter provides an exceptionally valuable overview of Montreal’s complicated network of Protestant poor relief. The author has mined the core archival sources available for every bit of insight they can provide, and wrestled the results into a solidly researched, thoughtfully analyzed portrait of these two women-run charities." Historical Studies in Education
« Le livre braque le projecteur sur plusieurs générations de femmes de l'élite montréalaise qui, durant plus d'un siècle, se sont consacrées à la protection des enfants déshérités et au soutien des femmes en situation de précarité … Il faut souligner le soin avec lequel cette étude restitue l'expérience de ces femmes. Il en va de même pour les enfants qui trouvent refuge au sein des institutions caritatives, depuis leur admission jusqu'aux différentes circonstances de leur départ. Le livre se distingue aussi par l'attention portée à la dimension genrée du pouvoir, sans complaisance, et sans négliger les inégalités au cœur de l'interaction sociale en jeu dans l'œuvre caritative. Attentif aux malheurs qui frappent les familles des classes populaires, Their Benevolent Design jette donc un éclairage précieux et nuancé sur les réponses que la communauté anglo-protestante de Montréal a apportées à la pauvreté jusqu'au milieu du 20e siècle. » Remarques tirées de l’éloge du jury, Prix Paul-André Linteau de l’Institut d’histoire de l’Amérique française