Abstract
Janice Harvey's Their Benevolent Design is a comprehensive study of The Ladies Benevolent Society and the Protestant Orphans Asylum. These two Montreal organizations played a vital role in providing Protestant Montrealers with essential social services for nearly a century. They were founded during a time when the liberal state saw the provision of aid to disadvantaged groups as something largely outside the scope of government action. In tracing the history of these two groups from the middle of the nineteenth century into the first decades of the twentieth, Harvey provides readers with an invaluable contribution to several intersecting historiographies. Those with interests pertaining to the history of youth, the role of women in public life, and the complicated history of the welfare state will each find much to engage with in this exhaustively researched and well-crafted monograph, as will those with an interest in nineteenth century Montreal, Quebec, and Canada.
The founding and development of these two organizations were shaped by the particularities of Montreal society. The city was marked by sectarian tension between the Catholic majority – which was predominately French-speaking but also included a large Irish component – and the Protestant minority, whose members figured disproportionately in the city's elite but also included a significant working-class component. The provision of social services – schooling, medical care, and support for those slipping through the cracks – was a specific point of tension in this broader conflict. Elites in the English-speaking Protestant community wanted to ensure that their co-religionists would not be compelled to seek out the assistance of Catholic agencies when they fell upon hard times. Harvey outlines a few instances when the Protestant women running these agencies fought to keep children out of Catholic hands, such as in the case of mixed parentage. Another peculiarity of sorts found in this jurisdiction was that the British construct of the Poor Law had not been introduced to Lower Canada. Charity, therefore, was conducted in a more improvised style rather than having its design mapped out in a pre-ordained fashion.
Harvey convincingly reflects on the worldview and the ideological underpinnings of the women who devoted varying degrees of time to these organizations. They were not, Harvey carefully reminds us, engaged in a project of social reform. Their work was grounded in their elite milieu. As wives and daughters of Montreal's tightly-knit Anglo-Protestant business elite, they did not aspire to unravel the social hierarchies that shaped their world. Instead, they saw caring for the vulnerable and needy as a vital component of their religious duty as social elites. This was a project of relief rather than reform. This is where Harvey's gendered analysis of these organizations becomes revealing. On the one hand, the work that these women were doing was grounded in conservative constructs of maternal acumen and obligation. On the other hand, this sphere was a place where elite women could gently push at the boundaries of their marginalization in public life.
Both the Ladies Benevolent Society and the Protestant Orphans Asylum were incorporated in the early 1840s, giving them a legal status that allowed them to hold property and which required them to run their affairs through formal channels. This created a unique environment wherein men who wished to support the provision of social supports to the needy had to donate their time and resources to organizations run by women. Working at the high-water mark of liberal governance, the state paid little attention to the operations of these organizations, seldom making use of their ability to conduct inspections. The treatment of poor and orphaned Montrealers reveals the subtle impacts of larger social transformations. Harvey notes, for instance, that during this period urban artisans became increasingly reluctant to take on apprentices due to the web of social obligations this wound them into. This is an important example of the way that capitalism re-wired family structures as it ascended into its position as the dominant social ethos. Three-quarters of the children who entered the Protestant Orphans Asylum were either adopted by relatives or apprenticed to farmers in the city's hinterland. This also acknowledged a core belief that rural agricultural settings would help elevate youngsters raised in harsh conditions.
The acts of benevolence undertaken by these women, be it the hands-on care they provided for their wards or the administrative tasks that came with keeping these organizations afloat, became an anchor for elite sociability within this community. Such notions of duty were entangled in ideas about femininity, Christianity, and Britishness. The membership lists of these organizations, as Harvey points out, presents us with a who's who of the city's Anglo Protestant elite. One of the key findings of Harvey's extensive parsing of the records left behind by these organizations reveals that this work carried different meanings and different workloads. There are numerous examples of women from elite families who joined these organizations for short periods of time and attended a scattering of meetings. For a smaller group, though, these endeavours became the pillar of their adult lives: a source of camaraderie, intellectual stimulation, and prestige for decades at a time. This was not, Harvey argues, mere elitist posturing, but real labour and a vital contribution to how Montreal navigated the social turbulence of industrial capitalism. Although this point is sometimes obscured by the mountainous detail provided by Harvey's extensive research, we are reminded of the agency that these organizations provided families experiencing periods of economic instability. Harvey provides evidence that some families turned to these organizations on more than one occasion over the years as sites that could provide safe harbour during moments of strain. Harvey reminds readers that the two organizations whose histories she is tracing here were but components of a larger ecosystem of relief and support available to poor Montrealers. Harvey notes the emergence during this period of organizations dedicated to supporting disabled children and institutes established to prepare working-class children, especially girls, for careers in service. There were, however, informal channels that working-class parents turned to first, such as kin and neighbours that could be called upon at moments when supporting a family risked slipping out of their grasp.
The facilities that these two organizations provided were not luxurious. In fact, Harvey points out that their sparse furnishing was part of their moral pedagogy, which grappled with a central tension of the welfare state from the elite perspective: how to provide assistance without nurturing dependency. This tendency towards economy crept into the social activities of the group. Fundraising activities, for instance, did not make use of events like lavish balls, which were construed as excessively sumptuous for the aesthetics of these organizations. Women involved in these organizations were dedicated, Harvey argues, to notions of “quiet usefulness.” They did not seek to have attention lavished upon them for their efforts. Still, Harvey does not sugarcoat the experience of the children who landed in the Protestant Orphans’ Asylum: their arrival was greeted with washing, de-lousing, and the issuance of a stark uniform. In other words, there was an important component of alienation that occurred here. The pedagogical emphasis was clearly placed on deference, order, and respect. These conditions did, at regular intervals, foster acts of resistance: boys would frequently escape the grounds and run away. While some would interpret this as evidence that this was an innately hostile environment, Harvey nudges us towards a more nuanced position by pointing us towards evidence that the women who ran these institutions and the staff that they hired did find ways to quietly express their affection towards their young charges.
Amongst the most compelling sections of Their Benevolent Design comes towards the end of the monograph, when Harvey delves into struggles these organizations faced transitioning into the twentieth century. This era saw the emergence of university-educated experts whose efforts to cast themselves as legitimate authority figures in the realm of social assistance often hinged on denigrating the work of the elite women who had been running organizations like the Ladies’ Benevolent Society and the Protestant Orphans’ Asylum for decades. This means of providing aid to the needy was not grounded in scientific expertise, they argued. It was this emerging sphere of experts – predominately but not exclusively male – that lamented the child raised in institutionalized settings and called instead for needy children to be streamed into what would become the foster care system. The women who had put decades of work into running these institutions, however, had already witnessed the potential pitfalls of sending children to live with new families, including cases of abuse and neglect. Women who had dedicated their lives to these organizations found themselves defending the very notion of philanthropy from accusations that it was irrational, spasmodic, and prone to creating dependence. This section of the book reminds readers of just how fraught policies about caring for needy children have long been. The evidence that Harvey unearthed about former residents of these institutions staying in contact with the women who ran them and about the ability of parents to visit their children in the orphan asylum also speaks to crucial differences between these institutions and the residential schools and tuberculosis hospitals that thousands of Indigenous youth were being funnelled into during these same years. There is evidence here of measures being taken against employees of these organizations who abused their authority.
Their Benevolent Design is massive in its scope. At times, the scale of its inquiry – two large organizations over the course of nearly a century – threatens to drown its narrative in details. On the other hand, the staggering scope of Harvey's study provides readers with a crucial analysis of social change in Montreal over the course of a transformative century. It grapples with a question of great historical and contemporary significance: How did elites respond to the social, cultural, and economic turbulence of capitalism? There is complexity here: Harvey explores the way that the women involved in these organizations, despite devoting so much of their lives to this work, continued to view poverty as fundamental evidence of moral failing. This ignored the reality of what Harvey's archival sources reveal: that the Montrealers who turned to these institutions often did so when navigating life challenges sharpened by the lack of a social safety net, such as serious illness, death, and unemployment. Responding to this question through a gender-based analysis makes Harvey's contribution here an important one. While outside the scope of a monograph that is already heavy with detail, readers might catch themselves wondering what became of the people who filtered through these institutions, and how sojourns within their walls might have been woven into people's personal narratives. Those with an interest in women's engagement in public life, in the conceptualization of children and of care, and of the local particularities of an emergent welfare state will find much to reflect upon here.