In this unusual book, Mark Peel draws on some two thousand case files from three continents to dramatize the encounters between the poor and the investigators from private charities who adjudicated their claims for help. Starting in Melbourne and fluidly moving through London, Boston, Minneapolis, and Portland, Oregon, Peel provides a panoramic and richly textured view of “what people who were not poor thought was true about those who were” (p. 5) in the inter-war years. To “give voice” to the poor, and to redress the inherent imbalance of power preserved in the archives, Peel goes further than most historians. Six provocative, dramatic reenactments, written as scripts, introduce each section, attempting to fill in the blanks of what might have been left unspoken. An appendix helpfully, and crucially, furnishes notes from the original case records, allowing readers to piece together what the author has imagined, and what he has drawn directly from the archives. As a narrative device, these dramatic scripts work well, reinforcing the argument that to understand poverty one must listen to the voices of the poor and see the world through their eyes.

The six dramas intersperse chapters that locate the complex and often contentious interactions between caseworkers and their clients in specifically local and national contexts. As a comparative study, the analysis highlights many threads of continuity and contrast. Some common themes across the continents include: the imperative for the poor to “perform” their poverty and the routine humiliations to which they were subjected in the process of seeking relief; genuine concern intermingled with casual disdain and harsh judgment, on the part of those who made charity their life's work; the gendered dynamics of encounters between mostly female caseworkers and mostly female clients; and the impact of the Great Depression on both social welfare organizations and the recipients of aid. Among noteworthy contrasts, the chapters on the United States describe revealing differences in approaches between agencies in Boston (faith in the power of transformation into “Americans”), Minneapolis (“wise planning” as the antidote for dependency), and Portland (fear of disorder in the backwoods). A final section on male caseworkers explores dilemmas of “manliness” in a profession dominated by women.

Enlivened by a colorful cast of characters, Miss Cutler and the Case of the Resurrected Horse interrogates the limits and possibilities of what we can know about the lives of the poor. Peel does not hesitate to speculate or reflect on what the historian would like to know, and what cannot be known. He also argues passionately for a different approach to thinking about poverty, both historically and in the present: to “understand that poverty is first and foremost an injustice” (282). This is a compelling book, beautifully written and full of insight.