Benevolent ladies and irrepressible busybodies: contesting the bounds of ‘genuine’ philanthropy

Abstract

Female philanthropy in the nineteenth century presents as a site for the contestation and reinscription of hierarchical hegemonic ideological constructs of gender and class. Female philanthropists were complexly and contradictorily positioned as both agents of social control while simultaneously being subjected to socially determined notions of respectable womanhood and genteel femininity. Dominant discourses prescribed that relationships between the providers and receivers of assistance be circumscribed by difference, deference and distance. These boundaries were challenged by social reformers who sought to address and eliminate the causes of poverty rather than provide palliative charity. This article explores the tensions that arose in the Auckland and Melbourne philanthropic communities in the early to mid-1870s when women's rights advocate Mary Ann Colclough proposed a number of schemes to provide for women in need. Dubbed by the periodical press as an ‘irrepressible busybody’ and a member of the ‘shrieking sisterhood’, her actions challenged accepted notions of who was deserving of assistance, the nature of appropriate assistance, and who was entitled to provide that assistance. This is clearly evident in the newspaper debates her actions engendered, debates that essentially sought to delineate and reinscribe the bounds of ‘genuine’ philanthropy.