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A Public Space for Women: The Case of Charity in Colonial MelbourneAuthor(s): B. J. GleesonSource: Area, Vol. 27, No. 3 (Sep., 1995), pp. 193-207Published by: The Royal Geographical Society (with the Institute of British Geographers)

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Area (1995) 27.3, 193-207

A public space for women: the case ofcharity in colonial Melbourne

B J Gleeson, Department of Geography, University of Otago, PO Box 56,

Dunedin, New Zealand

Summary Traditionally, historians of Britain and its colonies have assumed that nineteenth

century middle class women were largely, if not exclusively, confined to the home as domestic

'helpmates 'formale relatives. In thishistorical view, men were presumed todominate the 'public

sphere 'of capitalist societies through economic activities and formal political involvement. This

paper contributesnew support to the theoretical and empirical evidencewhich has been raised in

objection to sucha rigidlygenderedview of nineteenth-centurysocial space. The paper isa case study

of charity in colonial (nineteenth-century)Melbourne,Australia, and demonstrates hatmiddle class

women in thiscityplayed an important role inphilanthropy.Moreover, as the narrative shows,such

women were able to defend theirpublic role in charity successfully against a male power structure

which sought to reduce their considerableinfluenceinphilanthropy.

Introduction

A considerable tradition of social scientific analysis has assumed that middle class

women in nineteenth-century capitalist societies were confined to domestic realms,

whilst men dominated the 'public sphere ' of social and political life (Rose 1993).

Williams (1987), for example, argues that the rise of the bourgeois home in

nineteenth-century Britain signalled a 'privatisation' of women and their

withdrawal from public life:

'The disappearance of women from public life included their removal from local

politics and their consequent displacement into good works and charity ..

(Williams1987, 176).

In this view of history, the middle class woman was a passive, retiring 'lady' who

maintained the home as a refuge for her husband from the harsh, competitive outside

world in which he daily struggled (Branca 1975). Traditionally, historians of the

colonial period inAustralia have also assumed a gendered dichotomy of middle class

social space (for example Davison 1978; Fox 1991; Godden 1982; Serle 1971).

Cannon, for example, in his history of land development in late colonial Victoria,

tells us that

'Until late Victorian times, woman's place remained very definitely in the home,

where she was expected to rear a huge family and be prepared to see almost half

die in infancy' (1966, 9).

Fox (1991, 87) also sees the social space of the colonial middle class couple as rigidly

gendered

'Each had their space, their sphere. The public sphere of paid work and politics

was the husband's. The private sphere of the home that of the wife and mother'







194 Gleeson

In the colonies, just as in the 'Mother Country ', the public sphere was apparently

dominated by middle class man, leaving woman as thefemme d'interieur whose social

influence was confined to the home. In recent times, this twin dichotomy of gender

and social space has been questioned by feminist geographers for, amongst other

things, its empirical inaccuracy and for its tendency to reify the notion that both

politics and work only occur in 'public' realms (McDowell 1983, 1991, 1993;

McKenzie and Rose 1983; Rose 1993). Feminist historians have also challenged this

presumed gendering of social space through historical analyses which have demon

strated the important roles thatmiddle class women played in social and political life,

both in the home and beyond, in nineteenth-century capitalist societies (Branca 1975;

Daniels 1982; Lake and Kelly 1985;Mappen 1986; Levine 1990). Daniels (1982), for

example, makes the important point that part of the reason for women's absencefrom chronicles of public life in the nineteenth-century is the fact that men have

dominated history writing. Most historians would now agree that public and private

spaces were ideologically gendered by nineteenth-century moral opinion, but that

many bourgeois women were nonetheless able to escape the sentence of domesticity

through social practices such as philanthropy and 'moral reform 'work (Prochaska

1980; Poovey 1989; Ryan 1983; 1990). Prochaska (1980), for example, has shown how

the experience of philanthropic work in the Victorian period helped prepare middle

class British women for entry into public professions, such as teaching and social

work, in the twentieth-century.

This paper contributes new evidence to support the view that nineteenth-century

middle class women were active in public life. In colonial Melbourne (Australia),

middle class women very clearly controlled the public provision of 'outdoor ' relief

inworking class districts, whilst men presided over the internal affairs of charitable

asylums. This state of affairs clearly shows that, for some middle class women,

charity work did not, asWilliams (1987) claims, represent their 'displacement ' into

a private, domestic sphere. On the contrary, women's charitable work in nineteenth

century Melbourne is evidence of their involvement in an important and politically

contentious public sphere. The case study to be presented in this paper illuminates

an area of nineteenth-century middle class life-organised charity-in which the

space-gender dichotomy appears to be displaced. On the face of it, middle class

charity in colonial Melbourne represents a seeming reversal of the public-privateroles of men and women which preoccupied the minds of Victorian moralists.

However, the practice of colonial charity only transposed the public-private roles of

middle class men and women in a formal sense. At a deeper level of analysis, it is

clear that the gendered spheres of charity represent a more complex social ontology,

in that middle class women were able to act publicly inways that challenged accepted

notions both of female domesticity and the androcentrism of public society. Charity

in colonial Melbourne is, thus, an example of the displacement of the public-private

distinction inmiddle class life, in that some women, through charitable works, were

able to create a public space for themselves that was distinctly feminine. This paper

will present a case study of charity in colonial Melbourne, centring on the activities

of the Melbourne Ladies' Benevolent Society. The analysis will reconstruct the

Benevolent Society's role in charity in nineteenth-century Melbourne and relate an

episode during which these women successfully resisted the attempts of men to

displace them from public philanthropy. The narrative is drawn from an examination

of various historical materials, the principal being the minutes of the Melbourne

Ladies' Benevolent Society covering the fifty years, 1850-19002. The paper builds on

the important work undertaken by Kennedy (1968, 1974, 1985) and Swain (1985a,b),







Womenand charity incolonialMelbourne 195

and seeks to extend their chronicles of colonial charity through a historical

geographicalnquiry.The paper is organised as two main sections. The first section overviews the

charity network of colonial Melbourne, which was a reproduction of British

philanthropy in all but one important aspect: the Colony of Victoria strenuously

resisted the introduction of a poor law. This section of the analysis demonstrates that

women controlled the public provision of relief to working class areas, whilst men

tended to dominate the boards and administrations of institutions which provided

' indoor ' relief to the poor. The second section of the paper relates the rise of a

male-dominated philanthropic structure-the Charity Organisation Society-and its

ultimately unsuccessful attempts to reduce the public influence of the Melbourne

Ladies' Benevolent Society.

The charity network of colonial Victoria

ColonialVictoriaThe white invasion of what is now known asVictoria began in a sustained fashion in

1835. The six and a half decades which separated this date from the creation of the

Commonwealth of Australia in 1901 constitute the colonial period of Victoria's

history. A schematic periodisation of this period might posit a predominantly

mercantile and latifundian society from white settlement to the first gold rushes of

1851, leavened afterwards by steady urbanisation and the rise of a significant

industrial sector centred on the colony's capital city, Melbourne (Davison 1978).

During this period, Victoria's largely British-born ruling class celebrated the

colony's lavish mimicry of British institutions and social forms (see for example

Davison 1978; Carroll 1982 and de Serville 1991 on this). Serle (1971, 338) observes

that,

'Almost very British institution, ancient or novel, was reproduced; legislation was

often copied verbatim, and nearly all the current movements, debates and new

organizations founded in Britain were faithfully reflected '.

The built environment, the popular press and public ritual were all enlisted in thecomic-drama of Anglophilia, with Melbourne providing its centre stage3. The

ruling class of Victoria did, however, ban the importation of one of Britain's most

important institutions; namely, the juridical apparatus of the British poor law.

The colonial bourgeoisie abhorred the compulsory taxing of the wealthy

prescribed by the English legislation as a means for local relief of the poor.

Furthermore, the poor law's guarantee of a (very) minimum level of public

support for the impoverished amounted to a state heresy in the opinion of

powerful sections of the colonial ruling class who were devoted to the creed of

laissez-faire capitalism (Kennedy 1985)4. To prevent the possibility of sentiment

for a poor law taking root in colonial soil, the bourgeoisie applied a permanent

ideological defoliant in the form of the 'no poverty' myth (Kennedy 1985; Watts

1988; Garton 1990). The fable of Victoria as a 'workingman's paradise ', free from

destitution, was ceaselessly narrated in both the press and popular literature. In

1842 the Port Phillip Gazette trumpeted that,

'Poverty here means a deprivation of the luxuries of wealth that a man must

work for his living' (quoted inWatts 1988, 93).







196 Gleeson

Some thirty years later the Medical Journal of Australia was carolling its own paean

to the 'workers' heaven ':

' In Melbourne, none but the unthrifty, the intemperate, the incapable, can be

excluded from the prevalent rule of prosperity ' (quoted inWatts 1988, 93)5.

The other strategy adopted by the middle and upper classes to foreclose on the

possibility of a poor lawwas the creation of a privately-run welfare system which was

calculated to prevent any direct state involvement in the relief of the poor. Welfare

in nineteenth-century colonial Victoria was virtually synonymous with charity.

Alleviation of poverty was almost exclusively the preserve of private philanthropy,

with the colonial state limiting itself to aminimal, ad hoc involvement. Both Dickey

(1980) and Garton (1990) argue that the Victorian government was the leastinterventionist, in terms of charitable policy, of all colonial administrations in

Australia. By the 1880s, Melbourne's charity network comprised seventeen major

institutions providing ' indoor' welfare within asylum settings. In addition, the city

claimed a host of philanthropic organisations providing 'outdoor ' relief to the poor

in their homes. Outdoor relief was largely undertaken by ladies' benevolent societies,

of which there were twenty-one operating in the metropolitan area by 1891 (Kennedy

1974). The societies specialised in providing relief beyond the confines of the

charitable asylum (hence the term outdoor). Most outdoor charity involved various

forms of income supplements and loans being provided directly to the poor of

working class districts by the ' lady visitors 'of the benevolent societies.

The ladies' benevolent society had emerged in late eighteenth-century Britain as

part of the protestant evangelical revival (Godden 1982; Windschuttle 1980, 1982).

An important nostrum of the evangelical movement was organised 'benevolence ',

through which moral and religious reform of the poor was to be effected. The

possession of ' innate ' female virtues, such as tolerance and benevolence, together

with the civilising advantage of class, was thought to render bourgeois women fit for

the role of moral exemplars to the poor. Consequently, the movement encouraged

the growth of a number of philanthropic enterprises whose membership was

exclusively female. The main object of these benevolent societies was to turn

proletarian homes into classrooms for the pedagogy of evangelical charity.

TheMelbourneLadies'BenevolentSociety

Evangelicals established a presence soon after white settlement in Australia, and

women were actively involved in philanthropy in the colonies from 1800 onwards

(Windschuttle 1980, 1982). In 1845, a small compact of Presbyterian women in

Melbourne founded what was to become the city's most important, and most

enduring, ladies' benevolent society (MLBS 1945). The Melbourne Ladies'

Benevolent Society (hereafter, ' the Society ') quickly established itself and by the

1850s it had assumed the role of Melbourne's principal outdoor relief agency. After

1855, the Society's field of operation settled upon the central city and four adjoining

suburbs; the whole divided into forty smaller districts, each with its own lady visitor

(Figure 1). By the 1890s, the Society's operating area was home to about 150,000persons.

The Melbourne Society drafted most of itsmembers from women of the lower or

middle strata of the bourgeoisie, usually the wives of doctors, businessmen, and

minor clergymen (Swain 1985a). Although the Society was the most prestigious of

Melbourne's benevolent societies6, many middle class women shied away from the

time-consuming and physically exhausting work of visiting and attending meetings.







Women and charity in colonial Melbourne 197

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Fiuevertheless,phecaereo prtond of theelourcaies' BenelevolentSciety of8a5large







198 Gleeson

lumpenproletariat-composed of widows, deserted families, the aged, the sick, and

the disabled-which relied on charity for survival. Amongst these, the limited

financial resources of the Society constrained it from assisting all but the desperately

needy.In 1881 the Society was relieving an average of just over 1800 persons per

fortnight, or around one and half per cent of the total population of its five regions.

By 1892, in the midst of the depression, an average of over 4600 persons were helped

fortnightly, being about three per cent of the total population8. In the first few

decades of its operation the Society was frequently acclaimed in the public sphere.

The colonial establishment recognised the voluntary labour of the ladies as a sort of

preventive medicine, dampening revolutionary fevers, and, of more immediate

import, keeping the colony free of the quackery of government welfare (Kennedy1974). In 1870, the government's own Royal Commission into Charitable Institutions

gave utterance to this sentiment, declaring

' It is undeniable that we have to thank theMelbourne Ladies' Benevolent Society

... that we are not now subjected to an obnoxious Poor Law '9.

City of charity: themen stay indoors

As a socio-spatial phenomenon, Melbourne's charity network is notable for its

inversion of the general patriarchal landscape. The accepted notion of Victorian

social space as comprised of two gendered domains-private and public-to which

women and men were separately consigned does not hold for the charity system of

colonial Melbourne. The geography of charity was dominated by two unique

terrains: the sphere of indoor, institutionally-based assistance presided over by men,

and the realm of outdoor relief dominated by women. The large hospitals and

asylums providing indoor relief were run by boards recruited from amongst themale

bourgeoisie by means of the 'old boy network 'of school, business or political ties

(Kennedy 1974). In some instances, charitable institutions had close connections to

male power structures, such as the Masons and other denominational men's

organisations. The occasion for the founding of the colony's premier poorhouse, the

Melbourne Benevolent Asylum, was, for example, marked by masonic pomp and

rituall0, and the institution thereafter maintained close ties with the city's Masonsthrough its Board membership. Women had no particular role in the administration

of the institution, except as employed nurses or as the wives of gentlemen Board

members who undertook regular fundraising ventures for theAsylum. This situation

was reflected in the administration of the city's other major poorhouse, the

Immigrants' Home (Uhl 1981).

The fact that the larger poorhouses and asylums accommodated needy people of

both sexes may account formale control of these institutions. It is possible that the

prospect of women managing the difficult task of keeping asylum inmates 'orderly'

(which required inter alia separate confinement of the sexes) was simply unthinkable

for the Victorian middle class sensibility. In a sense, men were presiding here over

domestic spaces, deciding budgets, and ordering the internal household economies of

asylums. The testimony of witnesses before the 1890 Royal Commission into

Charitable Institutions is revealing on this account11. The Commission's inquiries

concerning indoor relief were directed to a succession of male administrators of

asylums and poorhouses, most of whom detailed various 'house-keeping' woes,

centring on issues such as overcrowding, underfunding, staff management and the

difficulty of obtaining necessary ordinances'2. To investigate outdoor relief, the








Commissioners turned to the representatives of the city's numerous ladies' benev

olent societies, acknowledging that this domain of charity was the preserve of middleclass women.

The women of the Melbourne Ladies' Benevolent Society, the city's largest

outdoor relief agency, managed an enterprise that was firmly in the public arena. As

an organisation, the Society negotiated with the state (from where it received much

of its funding in the form of modest annual votes of Parliament) and various

commercial bodies in the general course of its operations. In addition, the Society

held public meetings, liaised with themajor charitable institutions, and was formally

represented before at least three royal commissions during the colonial period.

Individually, the lady visitors were each responsible for the relief of at least one

district inworking class communities. Members were sometimes forced to supervise

more than one district due to the Society's continual recruitment problems. Visitors

were expected to attend every case that they were relieving each fortnight. This

necessitated a large amount of travelling, both to and from their homes in the more

genteel (usually southern) parts of the metropolis, and within the districts them

selves. Visitors, often the only agents of charity available, exercised enormous

personal power over the lives of poor men and women. An ever-vigilant eye was kept

on the poor in order to ensure that none were defrauding charity. The visitors liaised

closely with police, clergymen, and local storekeepers in order to monitor the

circumstances of families and individuals receiving relief. In a purely material sense

at least, the visitor became the most important local representative of the public

sphere for charity recipients.

Maps describing the individual districts have unfortunately been lost, but Swain

(1985a) has painstakingly gathered enough evidence to permit a graphic reconstruc

tion of the area supervised by aMrs Hughes during the 1880s and 1890s (Figure 2).

This indicates that districts as large as one square kilometre in the densely-packed

proletarian slums may not have been uncommon. Mrs Hughes on average assisted 30

to 40 families per fortnight inwinter, and between 15 and 20 in summer. During the

economic crisis of 1892 asmany as 139 families relied on her for help each fortnight

(Swain 1985a). The spatiality of the Society was public and itwas clearly conscious

of its involvement inmainstream political and social life. A Jubilee history notes that

theSociety

wassuccessful

inobtaining funding from

theColonial Government in

1857 after having conclusively proved its status as a 'public institution ' (MLBS

1945). Some years later, in a letter to the Colonial Treasurer inMay, 1862, the

Society's secretary reminded the minister that,

'This Society claims to be a Public Institution, and for fourteen years it has been

recognised by Government as such . . .' (emphasis added).

However, the Society's spatiality cannot be seen as 'public ' in the sense that many

male activities were in nineteenth-century society. Men's occupation of the public

sphere centred on formal political activity and paid employment (or other economic

activity). By contrast, the Society inscribed its presence in the public sphere through

charitable works which projected middle class women's domestic knowledges and

values into proletarian homes. In order to receive relief, proletarian families were

expected to conform, not only with accepted Victorian moral standards, but also with

middle class expectations concerning the proper management of household affairs.

This projection of expectations was usually achieved through the lady visitor's

relationship with the proletarian women amongst her cases. The visitor's dealings







200 Gleeson

Mrs Hughes' District

Victoria Par

Richmond0 500m

Figure 2 The District supervised by Mrs Hughes

Source: reconstructed by author from description given by Swain (1985a)

were almost exclusively with the senior women of the households receiving charity,

though her power invariably also extended to resident men.

The visitors carefully surveyed the domestic space of households seeking relief in

order to assess the moral worth of residents. Dirt, disorder and drink were the

principal nemeses of virtue, and a sure sign of depredation. The consumption of

luxuries, such asmeat, cheese, eggs or tea, was forbidden for all but the sick. Visitors

would even peer into the family rubbish bin to ensure that nothing save the hardrations of charity were being consumed. The Society's rhetoric conveyed the strictest

expectations of virtue from those it helped (though often in practice these strictures

were flexible). Sometimes the ladies' collective indignation at a member's report

would survive its minuting. One can almost hear the ' tut-tuts 'which must have

attended the following alarming account:

'Miss Kernot reported that on visiting she found bread and butter on the table,

the baby screaming, and the mother reading a " penny dreadful " '.

Proletarian women, however, were hardly passive 'objects of charity ' and the

minutes evidence an undercurrent of resentment towards the insinuations and

accusations of visitors. There are references in the Society's records to the

' impudence ', 'bad language ' and insults which visitors encountered in working

class homes. Obviously, not all charity recipients were enthralled by the ladies'

'benevolence ',which many families regarded as despotic and intrusive.

Nonetheless, the records elsewhere reveal amutual understanding and sympathy

between visitors and charity recipient. Visitors carefully recorded signs of domestic








violence, and the tenor of these observations is generally one of empathy with the

victims of 'bad ' and intemperate men. A strong stand was taken against shirkers

who deserted their wives and families. The Society frequently arranged arrest

warrants for deserters, and many a bolter, cribbed in one of Her Majesty's stables,

must have cursed the 'meddling ladies'. The most significant manner inwhich the

women of the Society manifested empathy with their proletarian contemporaries was

in their interpretation of the prevailing ideology of philanthropy. The Society, like

most charitable bodies in colonial Melbourne, claimed adherence to the principles of

the 1834 English Poor Law. Very simply, these tenets proscribed outdoor relief to

able-bodied labourers and their dependants (Checkland and Checkland 1974).

Assistance was to be confined to workhouses where the 'undeserving' could be

weeded out from the 'deserving' through the application of work tests.There is amarked difference between the Society's codified ideology-which was

directly derivative of the English law-and its practice of relief. The women realised

the impracticality of fully implementing the English scheme in a colony lacking a

formal system of workhouses wherein the undeserving could be strained from the

worthy poor. Moreover, the women were genuinely compassionate people, unwilling

to countenance gross deprivation and suffering for the sake of rules (Kennedy 1974;

1985). The minutes testify to the pragmatic charity practised by the Society. There

was a general agreement to show clemency to those whom the English code would

have judged undeserving, and relief was extended at times to the families of the

able-bodied unemployed (Kennedy 1974). The visitors would even on occasion turn

a blind eye to moral infidelities, like drink, gambling and prostitution, where need

was great. The Society's records indicate its strong conviction that women and

children, in particular, were not to be abandoned because of the failure of a husband

and father tomaintain his family respectably.

The challenge to women's public role in charity

Charity Organisers

The Society's philanthropic pragmatism did not go unnoticed and eventually became

the focus of ire for certain male power structures in the last decade of thenineteenth-century. In 1887, following British and American antecedents, a' Charity

Organisation Society' (COS) was formed inMelbourne with the principal object of

spreading the gospel of scientific charity in the colony. This philanthropic theory

embodied an austere understanding of the English poor law principles, coupled with

a conviction that charity should be a scientific enterprise (Kennedy 1985; Hollis 1987;

Scates 1990). Scientific charity held that careful investigation of cases, combined

with the litmus test of labour in the ' laboratory ' of the workhouse, could

successfully identify the species of 'undeserving poor ', known popularly as paupers.

The ' scientific ' approach dictated a careful geographical control of relief for

able-bodied labourers and their families, which was to be strictly delimited to

institutional spaces. The pauper-etymologically, the ancestor of the contemporary

'welfare cheat '-became the homo diabolos of the charity organisation movement's

demonology. Pauperism-the systematic imposition on a naively benevolent

'public ' (read bourgeoisie)-was the demon at loose in the social body, and the

movement was determined to cast it out by making charity a more rigorous and

suspicious enterprise (Scates 1990). The agenda of scientific charity sought improve

ment to philanthropy through the rationalisation of support to the poor, and not







202 Gleeson

through increased resources. The COS, although including various women inminor

capacities (for example support staff), was a male power structure; both the COS

executive and its principal officers in the 1890s were all men. The ' scientific '

epistemology was overtly patriarchal, believing woman, as the possessor of an

essentially ' nobler ' nature, to be incapable of resisting the conniving entreaties of

the professional pauper. For the COS, nature had exclusively endowed men both

with the diagnostic faculties necessary to identify the pauper, and the fortitude to

confront such rogues when discovered. Women, by contrast, were merely useful

assistants, garnering information about charity recipients through home visiting, and

caring for the few real specimens of deserving poor (Kennedy 1985).

Almost from its outset, the COS determined to break the power of theMelbourne

Ladies' Benevolent Society, and enforce the rule of scientific charity (Kennedy

1968). Through its ties to the colonial government the COS was instrumental in the

establishment in 1890 of a Royal Commission on Charitable Institutions. The

Commission was stacked with COS members and sycophants. Although its reports

were generally critical of the Victorian charity network, the Commission reserved the

full force of its censoriousness for the ladies' benevolent societies. Amongst these, the

Melbourne Society was singled out and upbraided for its lack of scientific method.

The Commission recommended the amalgamation of all ladies' benevolent societies,

and the creation of a Central Board of Charity to disburse funding.

Representatives of the city's ladies' benevolent societies were unanimous in

rejecting the Commissioners' suggestion that their organisations be combined under

the watchful eye of a central organising body. Mrs Turnbull, Secretary of the

Melbourne Society, pointed out that itwould be an ' immense labour ' to supervise

all the ladies' benevolent societies in the city'3. Mrs Clendinning, for the Prahran

Society, also ventured that the ladies' management of outdoor relief explained why it

was so ' economically conducted' (a comment that must have discomfitted the

exclusively male Commissioners)'4. Unhappily for the COS, and for the progress of

scientific charity, a subsequent change of government led to the Commission's report

and recommendations being permanently shelved. The COS was not content to rest,

however, and over the next few years assailed theMelbourne Society on a range of

fronts, including various public meetings, in its Annual Reports, and at an

inter-colonial charity conference. At the charity conference held in 1891 the ladies oftheMelbourne Society were pilloried by the charity organisers whose comments cast

them as a closed cabal presiding over an irrational system of poor relief. One critic,

clearly resentful of the power of the ladies' benevolent societies, complained that they

were ' rather too much like a close community 15. This line was amplified over the

next few years in the Annual Reports of the COS. In its 1892 Report the COS

championed the American system of' Friendly Visiting'. This was explained as a

more rational alternative to the method of relief practised by ladies' benevolent

societies (which the Report termed 'District Visiting'). The charity organisers

regarded the spatiality of the relief system deployed by the Melbourne ladies as

irrational, and one that countenanced indiscriminate support of the deserving and

undeserving alike. The system of District Visiting, with a single lady visitor being

responsible for an areal unit containing numerous supported cases, was seen as

preventing the collection of detailed intelligence about the individual recipients of

charity. The COS feared that a combination of' womanly understanding' (compas

sion) and an excessive caseload would prevent the proper assessment of cases needed

to trap scheming paupers. The Friendly Visiting system would restore a proper

discipline to the exercise of philanthropy by placing both charity workers and charity








recipient under the supervision of a central authority which would monitor all relief

in the metropolis-indoor and outdoor.

The COS advocated a radical reconstitution of the spatial structure of philan

thropy whereby the metropolis' balkanised formation of ladies benevolent societies

would be placed under the suzerainty of a Central (read male) Board. The ladies of

the benevolent societies would become ' friendly visitors ', dispensing advice rather

than doles. Friendly visitors would also relay information about their proletarian

clients to a register administered by the Central Board. This intelligence bank would

in turn fund a permanent inquisition of all who dared spite the gods of Thrift and

Independence by throwing themselves on charity. For the charity organisers, such a

system would guide the 'innate' virtues and special domestic skills of women

philanthropists to a more useful (and subservient) end than that achieved by thewell-intentioned, but incapable, ladies of theMelbourne Society. The Report of 1892

provides the following description of the friendly visitor

... the first duty of the " friendly visitor " is to act as a friend and adviser . . .She

strives to study each case, gain the friendship of the family, and break down the

barriers between the classes of society; and she does not leave the case until it is

in a position of comparative independence. She weans the family from unthrift, is

more useful than the truant officer in seeing that the children attend school, saves

the growing girl from the streets, cures the wife of slovenly and wasteful

housekeeping, and perhaps the husband of his fondness for the bar parlour. All the

while she is in constant communication with a central office, and her visits and

observations enable her to supply invaluable hints and information . . .16.

From its reports and public submissions, it is obvious that the COS saw itself as the

bearer of enlightened philanthropic reason struggling to reform a dangerously

ossified ancien regime of charity17. The landscape of philanthropy, with its uneven

terrain of ladies' benevolent societies, occluded the centrally-positioned, utilitarian

gaze imagined by scientific charity, and provided a haven for paupers and lurkers.

(The COS explicitly argued for the establishment of a geographically-central

'Charity Hall ' from where the operations of all philanthropic agencies in the

metropolis could be monitored and controlled by a Central Board of Charity.) Putsimply, the COS wished to replace the localised and ideologically uneven terrain of

public benevolence with a 'panoptic plain' of surveillance (Foucault 1979) where

infractions of the rule of scientific charity could not escape detection. Importantly,

both charity recipient and charity worker alike were to be fixed by the panoptic eye.

The COS had, however, seriously underestimated the strength of theMelbourne

ladies' resentment of the ' scientific critique '. The charity organisers had also

misjudged both the ability of the women to defend their charitable territory, and

their great resolve to do that. At the end of 1892 theMelbourne Society's Committee

rejected the charity organisers' proposal for a Central Board of Charity. In January

of 1893, the Melbourne Society convened a private meeting of benevolent societies

with the result being that it, and the six leading organisations, determined to oppose

the COS plan to amalgamate, or confederate, them. In the face of the organised

contumacy of the ladies' benevolent societies the COS was forced to capitulate

and, thereafter, nothing is heard of the amalgamation plan. The COS continued to

argue for the reform of philanthropy-sponsoring lectures on 'Friendly Visiting '

and 'The Newer Methods of Charity' in 1895 for example-but its voice

sounded shrill and was increasingly ignored by a newly critical public (Kennedy







204 Gleeson

1974; 1984). Coinciding, as it did, with the colonial depression of the 1890s, the

struggle between the Melbourne Society and organised charity appears now as an

internecine skirmish between claimants for a dwindling philanthropic landscape. The

manifest inadequacy of philanthropy to cope with the mass impoverishment created

by the depression spurred progressive liberals and radicals to reject charity

altogether, and to demand that welfare relief be accepted as a state responsibility

(Dickey 1980; Garton 1990). Although theMelbourne Society had prevailed in the

conflict with charity organisers, it too was made progressively irrelevant by the

welfare reforms initiated by the new Commonwealth (federal) and state governments

of the early twentieth-century.

Conclusion

As this case study and other analyses (for example Branca 1975; Lake & Kelly 1985;

Levine 1990) have shown, bourgeois women in nineteenth-century capitalist societies

were not simply powerless 'ornaments' of the private, domestic sphere. Nor were

such women, when they did appear on the public stage, merely always vicarious

participants, as wives of powerful men, or as auxiliaries of male organisations.

Speaking of nineteenth-century Britain, John has noted that

' the fervour with which so many middle-class women undertook philanthropic

ventures speaks volumes about their constraints ' (1986, 3).

Doubtless, the stifling domesticity which was a powerful expectation of bourgeois

women in the nineteenth-century drove many to seek social interaction outside the

home through charitable works. However, recognition of the important constraints

imposed by the notion of female gentility must not be allowed to overshadow the

distinctive and important public role which middle class women achieved collectively

through philanthropic activity.

The case of charity in colonial Melbourne shows some bourgeois women to have

been important participants in the public sphere, assisting in both the production of

philanthropy, and in the reproduction of class. To some extent, this position was

equivocal as these same women also challenged certain class ideologies by identifyingclosely at times with their ' inferiors '.Ultimately, however, the Society's work must

be seen as a powerful projection of middle class expectations concerning domesticity

and work into proletarian households. It is important also to recognise that the

Society provided material support to proletarian households which both relieved the

worst aspects of deprivation and prevented the institutionalisation of family mem

bers. By often keeping households and families intact, this material support also

helped to prevent the advent of a crisis of reproduction amongst the working class

and a consequent fragmentation of proletarian social space. Importantly, these

middle class women's involvement in the public sphere contrasted with men's role in

social affairs. Observing the British experience, Prochaska (1980, 7) notes:

'A distinctive feature of women's work in nineteenth-century philanthropy is the

degree to which they applied their domestic experience . . . to the world outside

the home'.

In a real sense, women's charitable endeavours were both amaterial and discursive

engagement of two class-divided domestic spheres. Women philanthropists achieved







Womenand charity in colonialMelbourne 205

this connection of bourgeois and proletarian domestic settings through their control

of a public institution, theMelbourne Ladies' Benevolent Society. The Society was

the vehicle through which middle class women were able tomobilise the political and

financial resources which their charitable works required. From this perspective, the

Society appears as a public nexus between domestic spheres which were otherwise

divided by class. This fact would caution against analyses which assume either that

nineteenth-century women had no role in the public sphere or that their involvement

in social life simply paralleled the activities of males. This analysis demonstrates that

middle class women did occupy the public sphere in one nineteenth-century society,

but that this presence was distinctively gendered and motivated by a desire to

connect class divided domestic spheres. In this sense, then, the practice of charity by

middle class women created a distinctively feminine public space, and therebydisplaced the accepted distinction in roles for the sexes.

Levine (1990) is correct to point out the danger of reducing nineteenth-century

philanthropy to feminism, as women's charitable activities hardly constituted a

radical threat to Victorian patriarchy. Nonetheless, the real, though constrained,

social power which middle class women managed to express through their public

involvement in charity must be acknowledged. Writing on colonial charity, Godden

(1982, 98) asserts that

'When women philanthropists attempted to assist the destitute in ways which

challenged the ideology of the woman's sphere, they were quickly brought into

line '.

The case of the Melbourne Ladies' Benevolent Society challenges this declaration.

Colonial Melbourne's women philanthropists saw public charity as a legitimate

segment of the 'woman's sphere '.Moreover, as the struggle between the Society

and the COS demonstrates, such women were quite prepared to resist attempts by

male power structures to challenge their public role in charity. According to

Kennedy (1984, 139), the colonial establishment regarded the Society as a 'bastion

against a poor law '. From the evidence presented in this analysis, it seems equally

true that the Society was something of a gender redoubt which created an important,

and distinctive, public place for middle class women in the patriarchal social space of

colonialMelbourne.

Notes

1 Fox (1991) nonetheless provides a rich picture of the middle class colonial family which acknowledges

the important role that women played in charity.

2 The activities of the Melbourne Ladies' Benevolent Society for the period between 1850-1900 are

minuted in 41 volumes, held in the Latrobe Collection of the State Library of Victoria (Australia).

3 The humorous nature of the colonial ruling class' adoration of all things British was not lost on certain

contemporary observers. The opening of the palatial Melbourne Benevolent Asylum in July 1851 was

marked by an extraordinary soiree attended by 250 colonial potentates, and presided over by thenewly-appointed Governor Latrobe. The journalist 'Garryowen ' (Edmund Finn), observing the

feasting throng, was moved to remark that ' to inaugurate a Poor-house by holding a grand public ball

there, seems incongruously amusing ' (Finn 1976, 248). For this observer the auspicious event was 'the

most hilarious Terpsichorean demonstration ever witnessed in Port Philip ' (1976, 248).

4 Perhaps one must recognise denominations amongst the general body of adherents to laissez-faire

ideology in the nineteenth century. The Victorian ruling class subscribed to a particular, and

somewhat contradictory, catechism which, whilst repudiating state involvement in charity, embraced

trade protectionism with a passionate fervour (Davison 1978).







206 Gleeson

5 The proletarian fairyland of colonial Victoria lasted as a discursive reality until the 1890s depression

and its fabulists remained legion.In

1883, Richard Twopenny,celebrated belletrist of the native

bourgeoisie, proclaimed that 'there is no poor class in the colonies' (1973, 111).

6 This is perhaps with the exception of the Queen's Fund after 1887-see Hateley (1972) on this.

7 Report of the Royal Commission into Charitable Institutions. Papers presented to Parliament, Victoria,

1871, volume II, 24.

8 These figures were calculated from census data and the fortnightly returns recorded in the Society's

minute books.9 Report of theRoyal CommissionntoCharitable Institutions. ictorian ParliamentaryPapers, 1871,

volume II, xii.

10 The Argus, 25 June, 1850, 2.

11 Refer Royal Commission n CharitableInstitutions-Synopsis,Minutes of Evidence and Appendix.

Victorian Parliamentary Papers, 1892-3, volume IV, No 60.

12 These men included: David Stobie, Secretary and Superintendent of the Melbourne Benevolent

Asylum; James Greig, Secretary and Superintendent of the Immigrants' Home and Henry Louis,Medical Officer of the Immigrants' Home.

13 Royal Commission on Charitable Institutions-Synopsis, Minutes of Evidence and Appendix. Victorian

Parliamentary Papers, 1892-3, Volume IV, No 60, 577.

14 Royal Commission on Charitable Institutions-Synopsis, Minutes of Evidence and Appendix. Victorian

Parliamentary Papers, 1892-3, Volume IV, No 60, 578.

15 This was aMrs Morris, wife of the founder of the COS, whose remark was recorded at an intercolonial

charity conference held inMelbourne in 1891 (COS 1891).

16 Annual Report of the Charity Organisation Society of Melbourne. (1892, 70).

17 In later years the COS was to lament its failure to impose a ' scientific ' logic on the exercise of charity.

In 1908, the COS recalled that in the 1890s, the organisation had ' strongly urged a union of forces to

contend against the unexampled distress, but amidst the universal turmoil itwas hard to make the voice

of reason heard' (COS 1908, 6).

Dedication

This paper is dedicated to Richard Kennedy whose indefatigable labours have contributed

much to the struggle againstWhig history.

Acknowledgements

I am indebted to Robin Law and Ruth Fincher for their critical reactions to the argument in

this paper. I am also grateful to Felix Driver and an anonymous referee for their helpful

comments on an earlier draft of the paper.

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Documents

Gleeson - 1995 - A Public Space for Women the Case of Charity in C