Charity, Casework and the Dramas of Class in Melbourne, 1920–1940: ‘Feeling Your Position’

Abstract

This paper uses case files to describe the class relationships and identities that were made - and sometimes undermined – in the everyday work of Melbourne’s Charity Organisation Society during the 1920s and 1930s. It emphasises the importance of such sources in the history of class identities and relationships, and highlights women’s crucial roles along the ‘borders of class’. In this period, case files often dramatised encounters between applicants and enquiry officers, shaping them into stories that described the nature of social superiority and inferiority and focusing on the detection of truth, lies and secrets. As the Depression of the 1930s took hold, however, a small but increasing number of case narratives began to explore different ideas about poverty’s origins and remedies, emphasising intractable problems and the real struggles of the poor.This article has been peer-reviewed.