Introduction
The Industrial Revolution required a steady flow of poor migrants. They came from rural Quebec, the United Kingdom, the United States, and, starting in the late nineteenth century, from continental Europe. The families of the period faced a totally new reality. They had to find work outside the home, depend on daily wages for food and shelter, and adapt to industrial discipline.
Industrialization created unprecedented wealth, but people at the time were also shocked by the widespread misery faced by urban workers. Conditions only began to improve after the Great Depression of the 1930s. Wage labour brought insecurity to many working-class families. Unemployment, illness, old age, death, or even the birth of a child could drive them into poverty.
Since few social services were available at the time, families tried to protect themselves through strategies like sending children out to work and renting rooms to boarders. Within this family economy, each member was given a role, under the authority of the male breadwinner. But too often, their efforts fell short.
Working-class Families in Precarious Situations
Families that spend more than 70% of their income on housing, food, and clothing are considered poor. In the 1920s, the Montreal Council of Social Agencies conducted a study of working-class families in the city. This umbrella organization for non-Catholic charities was affiliated with McGill University’s School of Social Work. The study found that in most cases, families could not support themselves on a male breadwinner’s salary alone. In fact, the situation was probably worse than suggested, since the organization used a “highly conservative” estimate for the cost of necessities and made the “bold assumption” that annual earnings would not be affected by seasonal unemployment.
Working Women and Children
The labour market was structured according to a gendered understanding of social roles that regarded motherhood as a woman’s “natural” function. As a result, those women from poor families who sought work outside the home were young and single. They sometimes sought employment as domestic servants in wealthy households or worked alongside children as unskilled labourers in factories. In the late nineteenth century, such women accounted for about a third of the industrial workforce in Montreal’s Saint-Laurent, Saint-Louis and Saint-Jacques wards. Until they married, they could add a modest but vital contribution to the male breadwinner’s income.
The Labour Movement and Charity
In the 1850s, workers began joining a variety of mutual aid associations that insured against lost wages in cases where the family breadwinner fell ill or died. In newspaper ads, the Union des travailleurs de la Cité de Montréal explained that when a worker who belonged to the association fell on hard times, he did not receive a handout. Rather, “he receives the fruits of his labour… Therefore nothing that could bring him shame… Whether sick or infirm, he continues to live from his own work.” Likewise, members of the Quebec Ship Laborers’ Benevolent Society paraded through the streets near the port every year on July 23, behind a large banner with these words: “We support our infirm. We bury our dead.”
Like trade unionists, proponents of mutual aid sought to ensure wages were high enough that workers could play their “natural” role as family breadwinners, thereby sparing their households the shame of having to resort to private or public charity. In the 1920s, the trade union movement drew on similar ideas when it condemned how the “palaces of misery” run by institutional charities humiliated working-class families.
Quebec’s Institutional Network: Housing the Needy
Until the end of the eighteenth century, those who found themselves homeless in Quebec could only turn to their local hôtel-dieu or hôpital-général. Various new secular and religious institutions began emerging in the 1820s. By mid-century, Quebec was home to a rapidly growing collection of orphanages, reformatories for juvenile delinquents, homes for prostitutes, homeless shelters, and hospices for the elderly.
Before the First World War, this emerging social welfare system was largely managed by private organizations, both religious and secular. The role of government was essentially limited to providing for the needs of two groups: jailed prisoners and destitute mental patients committed to asylums.
Private residential facilities were associated with the different communities that made up the Quebec population. Alongside charities founded by French Canadian and Irish Catholics, there were Anglican and other Protestant institutions, as well as some established by the Jewish community. However, such private charitable efforts were no match for a range of increasingly serious social issues. As a result, until the early twentieth century, many people in need continued to find themselves confined to the cells of police stations and jails.
Institutions of Social Regulation in Montreal, 1841–1921
Click the map icon to open the app in a new tab. Click the dots to learn more about the institutions (map legend available in French only).
A Logic of Exclusion
Despite the wide range of private charitable institutions, they all shared a common vision. The assistance they provided was considered a last resort. It was distributed sparingly, sanctimoniously, and solely to the “deserving poor.” That generally meant women, children, or disabled men who found themselves destitute and without any family support. Little help was available to able-bodied men, who were expected to provide for their dependents.
Nor was charitable assistance designed to lift the destitute out of poverty. Rather, it sought to improve the moral character of those who received it. This goal was most easily achieved by confining the poor to residential institutions. Charity was therefore closely tied to caring for the destitute in facilities like asylums, shelters, hospices, orphanages, reformatories, hospitals, and even jails.
Throughout the period, these institutions helped poor families meet their basic needs. However, they also exerted a great deal of control over the people they housed. Not surprisingly, this aroused rather ambivalent feelings. Whereas many saw charity as a selfless act, others associated it with humiliating and even repressive situations.
