Women and Philanthropy in Nineteenth-Century Ireland

Luddy, Maria

doi:10.1017/cbo9780511522666

Cited by 159 publications

(32 citation statements)

References 2 publications

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“…Luddy writes that while the perceptions of women's function changed only slowly over the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, and while there were 'no watersheds that fundamentally altered the place of women in society', women -especially middle-class women -were nevertheless active agents of change in their own lives, in their communities, and in society at large. 60 Nowhere was this more evident than in the work of the lady principals and lady superintendents.…”

Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 98%

‘Nervous Energy and Administrative Ability’: The Early Lady Principals and Lady Superintendents in Ireland

Fealy

Harford²

2007

Journal of Educational Administration and History

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At the turn of the twentieth century, middle-class educated gentlewomen in Ireland had established positions of authority and leadership in the relatively new professions of education and nursing. Acting in the roles of lady principals and lady superintendents, respectively, in education and nursing, many of these women had themselves participated in the social reform movements that led to the establishment of their new professions in the late nineteenth century. This paper critically analyses the roles played by these two distinct but socially related groups of Irish women, who were prominent in the early development of the social practices of education and nursing. The lady principals and lady superintendents entered the public domain as women with supervisory managerial roles, a fact that was in and of itself significant in late Victorian and early Edwardian society. In these roles, they expanded the boundaries of woman's role, provided role models for other women to follow, and forged networks of support for women. While the performance of their respective roles was mediated by public expectations and by extant gender relationships, they negotiated their way through the constraints of their new public space to achieve their aims of advancing their respective professions.

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Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 98%

‘Nervous Energy and Administrative Ability’: The Early Lady Principals and Lady Superintendents in Ireland

Fealy

Harford²

2007

Journal of Educational Administration and History

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“…She also asserts 'the possibility that such "ladies" could be forced to enter a workhouse was greeted with horror'. 76 Likewise, members of the public agitating for asylum provision for the middle classes were evidently concerned with the relief of their own social class. In 1874, a contributor using the pseudonym 'middle class' wrote to the Irish Times highlighting the want of increased asylum provision for the middle classes, which he argued would be a 'real boon to the community'.…”

Section: 'A Highly Useful and Benevolent Foundation'mentioning

confidence: 99%

The Non-Pauper Insane: Private, Voluntary and State Concerns

Mauger

2017

Mental Health in Historical Perspective

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This chapter provides an overview of the developments leading up to the admission of paying patients to private, voluntary and district asylums. Focusing primarily on the reports of Ireland’s lunacy inspectors, the national press and the emerging psychiatric community, it is concerned with the debates aired at national level on how best to accommodate different social groups. It examines proposals for the establishment of separate accommodation for paying patients, negative press coverage of private asylums and the abuses identified by the lunacy inspectors, the growing social importance of Ireland’s four voluntary asylums and the implications of the eventual reception of paying patients in the district asylum system. Ultimately, this chapter argues that in the absence of a single effective solution, the result was a patchwork of public, voluntary and private accommodation, each the outcome of a set of shared convictions as to how, why and by whom the non-pauper insane should be treated.

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“…27 This work, particularly that aimed at women, was largely carried out by religious orders and, as Maria Luddy has shown, remained very much under clerical control. 28 Belfast also experienced an evangelical revival which swept across Britain and parts of Ulster during the 1850s and which manifested itself most powerfully among Protestant denominations. 29 This gave rise to large numbers of organizations formed for both the spiritual and social improvement of society, what Simon Gunn refers to as the 'philanthropic offensive of the mid-Victorian years…a religious and philanthropic enterprise of an unprecedented scale and intensity, lasting some thirty years'.…”

Section: Landscape Of Welfarementioning

confidence: 99%

Surviving the industrial city: the female poor and the workhouse in late nineteenth-century Belfast

Purdue¹

2016

Urban History

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In common with many British cities, but unlike the rest of Ireland, late nineteenth-century Belfast experienced rapid industrialization and physical expansion. Women formed a significant proportion of the city's workforce, attracted by the employment opportunities represented in the burgeoning textile industry.Many of them were economically vulnerable, however, and could find themselves destitute for a number of reasons. This article sets Belfast's Poor Law workhouse in the landscape of welfare in the city, exploring how its use reflected the development of the city and the ways in which the female poor engaged with it in order to survive.In May 2010, a life-sized cast bronze statue of a young female millworker was unveiled on the corner of Cambrai Street and Crumlin Road in north Belfast. The statue, affectionately known as 'Millie', was deliberately located just off the Crumlin Road in what was one of the poorest parts of the city next to the Brookfield Mill and close to where three other major spinning mills once stood, and has been billed as a 'celebration of the contribution that Belfast's female mill-workers made to the city's success'. 1 Several years earlier, a statute of two bronze female figures, Monument to the Unknown Female Worker, was erected in Belfast city centre as a tribute to the city's poorest workers, those women whose grinding labour had contributed so much to the city's economic prosperity but yet had been forced to draw on a range of strategies in order to survive. 2 2 Each of these pieces of public art stands as a permanent reminder of the reality of the economic precariousness, poverty and destitution faced by the tens of thousands of women who flocked to Belfast in search of work during the late nineteenth century. Most found employment in the city's linen mills; others resorted to a wide variety of strategies for survival. All were vulnerable to poverty, sickness and destitution, many struggled and sometimes failed to achieve economic independence and often existed on the margins of society. Even for those in employment, there was no guarantee that work would continue to be available and often no economic safety net if it did not. The development of welfare in the city was, therefore, of crucial importance to those who sought relief, in some cases, providing short-term shelter in a crisis, in others, providing a more long-term solution. While, in common with most Irish and British cities, philanthropic organizations proliferated throughout the nineteenth century, the landscape of welfare provision was dominated by the workhouse set up under the Irish Poor Law of 1838. In a city facing the social challenges presented by rapid industrialization and inward migration, overlaid with communal tensions and sectarian division, the provision of welfare presented particular challenges. This article will examine the ways in which the particular growth of Belfast contributed to social problems and shaped its welfare provision before going on to explore the importance of the workhouse fo...

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Women and Philanthropy in Nineteenth-Century Ireland

Cited by 159 publications

References 2 publications

‘Nervous Energy and Administrative Ability’: The Early Lady Principals and Lady Superintendents in Ireland

‘Nervous Energy and Administrative Ability’: The Early Lady Principals and Lady Superintendents in Ireland

The Non-Pauper Insane: Private, Voluntary and State Concerns

Surviving the industrial city: the female poor and the workhouse in late nineteenth-century Belfast

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