With a foreword by Maria Luddy, the author of a landmark study, Women and Philanthropy in Nineteenth-Century Ireland, this book focuses chiefly on charitable organizations in Dublin and on specific Protestant and Quaker laywomen who created or supported them. Margaret H. Preston deliberately chooses not to examine, except very minimally, the charitable work of women who took religious vows, the vast majority of whom were Roman Catholic, nor is the charitable work of Catholic laywomen a central focus. Given the broad range of social and religious complexities operating in the century and the wide variety of charitable activities in Dublin, the author's choices may be legitimate; however, they render the subtitle of the book misleading.

Several explicit theses serve as the lenses through which the charitable activities of Irish laywomen in Dublin and the documents about their activities are interpreted: most notably, the conviction that class distinctions and ideologies governed the motives and goals of these charities (e.g., protection of the upper class and reform of the lower class); the belief that sectarian conflicts and competition inhibited nearly all of these charitable endeavors, except those of the Society of Friends; and the theory that Protestant laywomen sought charitable involvement as a way to expand their sphere of public engagement (upper- and middle-class Catholic laywomen doing so as a way to establish their equal social status). Rather than a comprehensive analysis of one particular genre of organization (e.g., orphanages) or of all the charitable organizations sponsored or supported by Protestant laywomen in Dublin in the nineteenth century (which would probably have been a premature undertaking), the book offers a series of case studies illustrative of its claims about the attitudes and rhetoric of these largely upper-class women of philanthropy. Religious motivations, presumably inspired by their Christian faith and scriptures, are not explored in depth or seen as paramount for these women.

As background to the other chapters, chapter 1 describes the economic poverty of much of Dublin's population and the city's mismanagement of material conditions conducive to increased poverty and illness: the lack of sanitation, neglected slums, inadequate housing stock, and lack of employment opportunities. Chapter 2 explores the concepts of race, class, and religion said to be revealed in the self-descriptions of the Dublin charities that are considered. The language of these mostly Protestant philanthropic groups contained, it is said, the notions that the Irish race was inherently inferior to the Anglo-Saxon, that the inferior status of the lower class was unchangeable, and that Catholic faith—the “disease of popery”—contributed negatively to the situation of the Irish poor. Preston claims that among both Protestant and Catholic upper-class philanthropists, poverty was primarily seen as the result of the essential nature of the lower-class character. There was, however, some debate about the “sins” of this class: whether they were a cause or a consequence of its poverty.

Chapter 3, devoted to the claim that sectarian tensions limited the effectiveness of Dublin charities, focuses primarily not on the majority of those charities, who, it is said, sought to avoid sectarian disputes, often by serving only persons of their own denomination, but on two philanthropists who illustrate what the author calls the “battle” for the souls of children: the Protestant Ellen Smyly whose homes and schools practiced overt proselytism; and the Catholic Margaret Aylward who, through the Ladies’ Association of Charity of St. Vincent de Paul, resisted efforts such as Smyly's and encouraged poor Catholics to remain loyal and active members of their church. The book notes the religious tensions but does not attempt to examine their origins: the long-standing, and historically elaborated, theological issues that divided Protestants and Roman Catholics, undergird their prevailing contemporary ecclesiologies, and often led, understandably, to mutual fear and rejection—ecumenism being a largely twentieth-century endeavor.

Chapter 4 reflects appreciatively and at length on the charitable work of Dublin Quakers; it claims that Friends also espoused class prejudices and that the generous financial aspects of their works of charity were often made possible by the mercantile success of Friends who departed from George Fox's founding ideal of simple living. Finally, chapter 5, cast somewhat differently from earlier chapters, presents the evolution of the nursing profession in Ireland. Except for a brief discussion of the founding of two hospitals by Roman Catholic nuns (St. Vincent's and Mater Misericordia), these pages focus primarily on the involvement of Protestant laywomen in the reform of nursing, especially at two other Dublin hospitals (Sir Patrick Dun's and the City of Dublin Hospital on Baggot Street), and on the development of district nursing.

Readers will greatly appreciate the author's extensive use of primary sources, though some may question the interpretation of the language in these documents almost solely in terms of a set of so-called, and supposedly universal, Victorian attitudes. Some may question whether the nineteenth century is not too large and too varied a time period to be treated as if informed by a single set of convictions, even in the relatively limited area of women's participation in charitable endeavors in Dublin. Some may also question whether views held in England can be validly offered as representative of views held in Ireland during this long period. Perhaps I am atypical in thinking that some generalizations in the book require further evidence or qualification.

Preston's book is welcomed as an informative publication that provides detailed insights into a number of charities instituted or supported by Protestant laywomen in a city and a century of extreme poverty and human suffering. Raising to view the hidden history of these women's persistent and often personally courageous efforts is a scholarly necessity, to which Preston has made a helpful contribution.