![Sample our Humanities journals, sign in here to start your FREE access for 14 days]({"type":"image" , "src" : "/sda/5939/TOC-Subject-Sample-2021-Humanities.jpg"})
Abstract
This article examines philanthropic networks created and sustained by Florence and Rosamund Hill, Caroline Emily Clark, Henry Parkes, Mary Carpenter, Arthur Renwick, the Windeyer family, and others as they travelled across the British Empire, moving between England, Australia, and elsewhere, gathering research data and sharing their ideas and resources through formal organisations like the Social Science Association as well as through their informal networks. In line with recent scholarship produced by Shurlee Swain and Elizabeth Harvey, it suggests that welfare reform and philanthropists in the Antipodes have been neglected in accounts of imperial philanthropy on policy formation in different national contexts. Charity workers were not bound by national borders as they implemented reforms and they made claims to political and social power through their transnational philanthropic work.
This article has been peer reviewed.
Disclosure statement
No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author.
About the author
Tanya Evans is a senior lecturer in the Department of Modern History at Macquarie University where she teaches Australian history and public history. Her publications include Unfortunate Objects: Lone Mothers in Eighteenth-Century London (Palgrave, 2005), with Pat Thane, Sinners, Scroungers, Saints: Unmarried Motherhood in Twentieth-Century England (2012) and Fractured Families: Life on the Margins in Colonial New South Wales (2015).
Notes
1 Letters belonging to Caroline Emily Clark, State Library of NSW, AC 47; Clark, Caroline Emily (1825–1911),’ Australian Dictionary of Biography (ADB), National Centre of Biography, Australian National University, accessed 15 September 2015, http://adb.anu.edu.au/biography/clark-caroline-emily-3212/text4837.
2 Shurlee Swain, ‘Florence and Rosamond Davenport Hill and the Development of Boarding Out in England and Australia: A Study in Cultural Transmission,’ Women’s History Review 23, no. 5 (2014): 744–59; Elizabeth A. Harvey, ‘“Layered Networks”: Imperial Philanthropy in Birmingham and Sydney,’ Journal of Imperial and Commonwealth History 41, no. 1 (2013): 120–42. See also: Mark Peel, Miss Cutler and the Case of the Resurrected Horse: Social Work and the Story of Poverty in America, Australia, and Britain (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2012).
3 Paul Smyth, ‘The British Social Policy Legacy in Australia,’ in Colonialism and Welfare: Social Policy and British Imperial Legacy, ed. James Midgeley and David Piachaud (Cheltenham: Edward Elgar, 2011); Jill Roe, Social Policy in Australia: Some Perspectives, 1901–1975 (Stanmore, N.S.W: Cassell Australia, 1976).
4 Lawrence Goldman, Science, Reform and Politics in Victorian England (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1987).
5 Arts and Humanities Data Service, ‘McGregor, Goldman and White’s Catalogue of the Published Papers of the NAPSS,’ UK Data Service, 1, accessed 24 June 2015, http://doc.ukdataservice.ac.uk/doc/5209/mrdoc/pdf/guide.pdf.
6 Goldman, Science, Reform and Politics, 32.
7 Daily News, 26 Sept 1870, 5. The phrase is the journalist’s and this report is cited in Lawrence Goldman, ‘A Peculiarity of the English? The Social Science Association and the Absence of Sociology in Nineteenth-Century Britain,’ Past and Present, no. 114 (February 1987): 137.
8 Lawrence Goldman, ‘The Social Science Association, 1857–1886: A Context for Mid-Victorian Liberalism,’ English Historical Review 101, (1986): 112.
9 These perspectives build on a rich and wide-ranging scholarship on the history of philanthropy including Anne O’Brien, Poverty’s Prison: The Poor in New South Wales (Melbourne: Melbourne University Press, 1988); Brian Dickey, No Charity There: A Short History of Social Welfare in Australia, revised ed. (Sydney: Allen & Unwin, 1990); and John Murphy, A Decent Provision: Australia’s Welfare Policy, 1870–1949 (Farnham: Ashgate, 2011).
10 Goldman, Science, Reform and Politics, 76.
11 Paper 786, ‘How May the Efficiency of Prisoners’ Aid Societies be Best Promoted?,’ Transactions of the Social Science Association (Tr.); Paper 563 786, ‘A Concise Account of the Colony of South Australia, compiled from Official Data,’ Tr.,1862; Paper 49, ‘Address on Jurisprudence and Assimilation of the Law: ‘Includes Comments on Irish Land Law and Convict System’; Paper 562 1623, ‘The Australian Gold Discovery, and its Effects upon Australia,’ Tr. 1861; Paper 612, ‘Address on the Repression of Crime’ Tr., 1882; Paper 539, ‘On the Relations between Great Britain and her Possessions Abroad: Refutes Argument that Britain would be Better Off without the Colonies,’ Tr., 1863; Paper 725, ‘The Convict System of England’ – ‘short survey of history and results of transportation,’ Tr., 1862, and Paper 872 ‘The House of Shelter for Females,’ Tr., 1860; Paper 916, ‘Review of ‘Our Convicts’ by Mary Carpenter’ Tr., 1865–6; Paper 926, ‘Address on Education’ Tr., 1859, ‘Surveys system of education in England, USA, Canada’; Paper 927, ‘Address on Education’. Tr., 1861, discusses Australian universities; Paper 1474, ‘On the Superintendence of Female Emigrants’ Tr., 1863; Paper 1475, ‘The Influence of Emigration of the Social Condition of the Highlands,’ Tr., 1863; Paper 551, ‘On the Colonies as Fields of Experiment in Government’ Tr., 1870; Paper 2096, ‘On the Healthiness of the Anglo-Saxon Race in Australia,’ Tr., 1859.
12 Presented at the National Association for the Promotion of Social Science Meeting in 1864, York, England.
13 For a flavour: Goulburn Herald and Chronicle, 13 January 1872, 3. Brisbane Courier, 9 January 1866, 3. Queensland Times, Ipswich Herald and General Advertiser, 16 December 1869, 4.
14 Perry Anderson quoted in Lawrence Goldman, ‘A Peculiarity of the English?’ 133–4.
15 Goldman, Science, Reform and Politics, 18.
16 For further discussion, see Judith Godden, ‘Philanthropy and the Woman’s Sphere, Sydney, 1870–circa 1900’ (PhD thesis, Macquarie University, 1983), ch. 4.
17 Michael Roberts, Making English Morals (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2009).
18 Quotation from Goldman, Science, Reform and Politics, xii. See also the Catalogue of the Published Papers of the National Association for the Promotion of Social Science, 1857–1886, UK Data Service. On McGregor, see Robert Pinker, ‘McGregor, Oliver Ross, Baron McGregor of Durris (1921–1997),’ Oxford Dictionary of National Biography (ODNB), September 2004, doi: http://dx.doi.org/10.1093/ref:odnb/68437; Oliver R. McGregor, ‘Social Research and Social Policy in the Nineteenth Century,’ British Journal of Sociology 8 (1957): 152–3.
19 Catalogue of the Published Papers of the National Association for the Promotion of Social Science, 1857–1886, UK Data Service.
20 The Times, 20 December 1950, 7; Allan W. Martin, ‘Sir Henry Parkes (1815–1896)’, ADB, vol. 5 (Melbourne: Melbourne University Press, 1974), 403.
21 Henry Parkes, An Emigrant’s Home Letters, with preface and notes by Annie T. Parkes (Sydney: Angus and Robertson, 1896), 9.
22 Martin, ‘Sir Henry Parkes’.
23 Henry Parkes, Fifty Years in the Making of Australian History (London: Longmans Green, 1892), 131–2.
24 Henry Parkes, Australian Views of England; Eleven Letters Written in the Years 1861 and 1862 (London and Cambridge: Macmillan and Co, 1869), Letter IV, 41; Parkes, Fifty Years in the Making, 147.
25 Parkes, Australian Views of England, Letter IV, 41.
26 Marion Diamond, ‘Henry Parkes and the Strong-Minded Women,’ Australian Journal of Politics and History 38, no. 2, (2008): 152–62. See also, Diamond, Emigration and Empire: The Life of Maria S. Rye (London: Routledge, 2013).
27 Parkes, Australian Views of England, Letter IX, 97.
28 Florence Hill letter to Parkes, 27 April 1862, Parkes Correspondence, vol. 53, Mitchell Library (ML), CYA 923.
29 ‘Middle-Class Female Emigration Impartially Considered. The Emigration of Educated Women Examined from a Colonial Point of View. By a Lady Who has Resided Eleven Years in one of the Australian Colonies,’ Transactions of the National Association for the Promotion of Social Science 10/56, 1 October 1862.
30 Windeyer Family Papers, ML, *D30 CY494.
31 ‘Windeyer, Sir William Charles (1834–1897),’ ADB, accessed 12 June 2015, http://adb.anu.edu.au/biography/windeyer-sir-william-charles-1062/text8145.
32 Letters from Menie: Sir Henry Parkes and His Daughter, ed. A.W. Martin, (Melbourne: Melbourne University Press, 1983), 48.
33 Windeyer Family Papers, 1827–1928, ML, *D159, CY2559; and the Letters of Mrs Windeyer, 1885–1888, ML, MSS 8397.
34 Martin, ‘Sir Henry Parkes,’ 441.
35 Papers of Lady Windeyer, 1829–1943, ML, MSS 186 Box 5, CY2643.
36 Letters exchanged with Hill include the following from the papers of Lady Windeyer, ML, MSS 186/13, 13 December 1873, 2 September 1874, 18 November 1874, 20 July 1890.
37 Parkes, Fifty Years in the Making, 381.
38 Pat Thane and Tanya Evans, Sinners, Scroungers, Saints: Unmarried Motherhood in Twentieth-Century England (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2012), 14, 20, 57.
39 Michael Horsbrugh, ‘Her Father’s Daughter: Florence Davenport Hill, 1829–1919,’ International Social Work 26, no. 4 (October 1983): 1–13.
40 Marion Diamond, ‘Henry Parkes and the Strong-Minded Women’, 153.
41 Brian Rodgers, ‘The Social Science Association, 1857–1886,’ Manchester School 20 (1952): 283, 305.
42 John Ramsland, ‘Mary Carpenter and the Child-Saving Movement,’ Australian Social Work 33, no. 2 (1980): 33–41. Ramsland’s major source is Jo Manton, The Life and Work of Mary Carpenter (London: Heinemann, 1976).
43 John Ramsland, Children of the Backlanes: Destitute and Neglected Children in Colonial New South Wales (Sydney: University of New South Wales Press, 1986), 164.
44 Mary Carpenter, ‘Reformatory and Industrial Schools in India,’ Transactions (1874): 348; Rodgers, ‘The Social Science Association,’ 285.
45 Goldman, Science, Reform and Politics, 44.
46 Rodgers, ‘The Social Science Association,’ 283–310.
47 Deborah Sara Gorham, ‘Hill, Rosamond Davenport (1825–1902),’ ODNB, accessed 8 November 2014, http://dx.doi.org/10.1093/ref:odnb/33875.
48 This was published in 1875 and is available digitally at https://archive.org/details/whatwesawinaustr00hilliala.
49 Parkes Papers, State Library of NSW (SLNSW), A988, 1873, 378–384; A923, 17 April 1862–1875, 446–453.
50 Gorham, ‘Hill, Rosamond Davenport,’ ODNB.
51 Godden, ‘Philanthropy and the Woman’s Sphere,’ 138.
52 Swain, ‘Florence and Rosamund,’ 752
53 Ibid., 744.
54 Florence Hill, Children of the State: The Training of Juvenile Paupers (London: Macmillan and Co, 1868).
55 Malcolm Prentis, The Scots in Australia (Sydney: University of New South Wales Press, 2008), 33, 54.
56 Noel Gash, ‘A History of the Benevolent Society of NSW’ (MA thesis, University of NSW, 1967), ch. 12, 101.
57 On England see Goldman, ‘The Social Science Association,’ 106.
58 Letter regarding loan made to Henry Parkes, A916, on joining boarding out committee A923, 12 November 1879, 67–70, ML.
59 Henry Parkes, Fifty Years in the Making, 177.
60 Annual Report of The Benevolent Society, 1870, 361.06, ML, 7.
61 The Lancet 94, no. 2406 (9 October 1869): 522–3; The Lancet 109, no. 2806 (9 June 1877): 859; The British Medical Journal 2, no. 352 (28 September 1867): 275–6; The Lancet 91, no. 2320 (15 February 1868): 241.
62 Prentis, The Scots in Australia, 164–5.
63 Ron Rathbone, A Very Present Help: The History of the Benevolent Society of New South Wales (Sydney: State Library of NSW Press, 1994), 8; Brian Dickey, No Charity There: A Short History of Social Welfare in Australia (Sydney: Allen & Unwin, 1987), 61–4; Stephen Garton, Out of Luck: Poor Australians and Social Welfare, (Sydney: Allen & Unwin, 1990) 91, 92, 106; Murphy, A Decent Provision, 15; John Ramsland, ‘The Development of Boarding-Out Systems in Australia: A Series of Welfare Experiments in Child Care 1860–1910,’ Journal of the Royal Australian Historical Society 60, part 3 (1974): 186, 187, 192–6; T. H. Kewley, Social Security in Australia, 1900–1972 (Sydney: Sydney University Press, 1973), 14.
64 State Children’s Relief Board Annual Report 1895, 3, cited in Godden, ‘Philanthropy and a Woman’s Sphere,’ 133, 135.
65 Annual Report of the Benevolent Society of New South Wales for the Year Ended 31st December 1892, 361.06/B, ML SLNSW.
66 Martha Rutledge, ‘Renwick, Sir Arthur (1837–1908),’ ADB, accessed 23 December 2013, http://adb.anu.edu.au/biography/renwick-sir-arthur-4467/text7287.
67 Smyth, ‘The British Social Policy Legacy,’ 176; Roe, Social Policy in Australia.
68 http://www.womenaustralia.info/biogs/PR00513b.htm. The source used to compile this entry was Brian Dickey, ed., The Australian Dictionary of Evangelical Biography (Sydney: Evangelical History Association, 1994). Additional detail on the Renwick family comes from Ruth Renwick’s scrapbook in Gosford Local Studies Collection, Gosford Library.
69 Windeyer Family Papers, ML, MSS 186, CY2645; Margaret Windeyer’s Scrapbook, ML, MSS 4653X, CY 3594. Windeyer’s mail in the US was sent care of Arthur Renwick at the NSW Government Building in Chicago.
70 Letter from Margaret to her Mother, 12 Campden Hill Road, Kensington, 1 May 1894, Margaret Windeyer Scrapbook 1866–1939, ML, MSS 4653X, CY 3594 1 (1). On these women’s leadership roles as international suffragists see Marilyn Lake, ‘Women’s International Leadership,’ in Diversity in Leadership: Australian Women Past and Present, ed. Joy Damousi, Kim Rubinstein and Mary Tomsic (Canberra: Australian University Press, 2014), 71–90.
71 Margaret Windeyer Scrapbook 1866–1939. On 19 July 1897 she attended a meeting at the Women’s Institute for thefoundation of the National Council of Women of Great Britain with her mother. See also James B. Windeyer, MargaretWindeyer, 1866–1939, Founder of the National Council of Women of NSW (Canberra: Wild and Wooley, 2008), 2, 9, 13, 21.
72 Resolution contained within a letter of sympathy sent to Lady Windeyer from the Boarding-Out and Cottage Training Homes Association (Workhouse and other Children), Westminster, 3 November 1897. Letters were also sent from other organisations including The State Children’s Aid Association 3 November 1897, Windeyer Papers 1827–1928, ML, *D159 MF CY 2559.
73 Susan Magarey, Passions of the First Wave Feminists (Sydney: University of New South Wales Press, 2001).
74 Godden, ‘Philanthropy and the Woman’s Sphere,’ 138.
75 On England see Goldman, ‘The Social Science Association,’ 95–134, 106.
76 Goldman, Science, Reform and Politics, 18.
77 On ‘informal networks’ see Swain, ‘Florence and Rosamund’ and Harvey, ‘Layered Networks’.
78 Swain, ‘Florence and Rosamund,’ 747.