How Liberal Welfare History Constructs the Reformist Poor

Abstract

In my book, Charity Warfare,1 I have argued that the Charity Organisation Society of Melbourne, from its inception in 1887 to the turn of the century, achieved three objects of importance to Australian welfare history. The Society acclimatised the principles of the English New Poor Law (1834) to a colonial environment by applying them at a crucial time to the practice of charity in the colony of Victoria. Secondly, the COS helped as a leading force to push the course of Victorian welfare ‘reform’ in a conservative direction. And in trying to head off the welfare aspirations of the organising working class, especially on the issue of unemployment relief during the terrible distress of 1892, the Charity Organisation Society forged the intellectual and practical origins of an indigenous Australian social work.