In 1846, a group of women came together to form what would become one of Hamilton’s most important social welfare institutions. Through the Ladies Benevolent Society and Hamilton Orphan Asylum, they managed and administered a charitable visiting society, orphan asylum, and aged women’s home. In Private Women and the Public Good, Carmen J. Nielson explores the tension inherent in nineteenth-century women’s charitable work, nominally private because it was voluntary and female, but also sustained by public monies, legitimated by law, and serving the so-called public good.

Carmen J. Nielson's profile page

Carmen J. Nielson is an associate professor of history in the Department of Humanities at Mount Royal University.

A very readable, persuasive, and important contribution to the literature on gender and social policy in nineteenth-century Canada written in a way that engagingly connects history with theory.

James E. Struthers, professor in the Canadian Studies Department at Trent University

...Nielson’s well-crafted study provides a unique lens through which to examine gender, the public-private spheres, and politics in nineteenth-century Canada.

British Journal of Canadian Studies, Vol. 29 No. 1, Spring 2016