TY - JOUR
T1 - The Charity-Mongers of Modern Babylon: Bureaucracy, Scandal, and the Transformation of the Philanthropic Marketplace, c.1870–1912
AU - Roddy, Sarah
AU - Strange, Julie-Marie
AU - Taithe, Bertrand
N1 - This work was supported by the Economic and Social Research Council, for the project Charitable Consumption: Innovation in Compassion in Britain, 1870–1912 (RES- ES/1031359/1).
PY - 2015/1
Y1 - 2015/1
N2 - This essay sheds new light on the supposedly familiar world of Victorian philanthropy by considering charity in relation to market regulation. Focusing on the “charity fraud,” we suggest that in the shaping of this exclusive and paradoxical marketplace, charities eagerly seized fraud denunciations to advertise and authenticate their legitimacy. This reflected the massive changes in the charitable world since the days of paternalist social relations and, paradoxically, illustrates the extremity of the problem facing the donating public: if one could not be entirely certain of a local charity, how could he or she discern between the national organizations that undertook fund-raising for international disasters? This contest for legitimacy and the exposure of fraud shaped a contested but oddly virtuous exchange market: by the turn of the twentieth century, charities not only published account sheets but debated them publicly, too.
AB - This essay sheds new light on the supposedly familiar world of Victorian philanthropy by considering charity in relation to market regulation. Focusing on the “charity fraud,” we suggest that in the shaping of this exclusive and paradoxical marketplace, charities eagerly seized fraud denunciations to advertise and authenticate their legitimacy. This reflected the massive changes in the charitable world since the days of paternalist social relations and, paradoxically, illustrates the extremity of the problem facing the donating public: if one could not be entirely certain of a local charity, how could he or she discern between the national organizations that undertook fund-raising for international disasters? This contest for legitimacy and the exposure of fraud shaped a contested but oddly virtuous exchange market: by the turn of the twentieth century, charities not only published account sheets but debated them publicly, too.
KW - charity fraud marketplace bureaucracy scandal philanthropy victorian
U2 - 10.1017/jbr.2014.163
DO - 10.1017/jbr.2014.163
M3 - Article
SN - 1545-6986
VL - 54
SP - 118
EP - 137
JO - Journal of British Studies
JF - Journal of British Studies
IS - 1
M1 - JBR:9518880
ER -