Working towards the 'welfare of the world'

This article examines philanthropic networks created and sustained by Florence and Rosamund Hill, Caroline Emily Clark, Henry Parkes, Mary Carpenter, Arthur Renwick, the Windeyer family, and others as they travelled across the British Empire, moving between England, Australia, and elsewhere, gathering research data and sharing their ideas and resources through formal organisations like the Social Science Association as well as through their informal networks. In line with recent scholarship produced by Shurlee Swain and Elizabeth Harvey, it suggests that welfare reform and philanthropists in the Antipodes have been neglected in accounts of imperial philanthropy on policy formation in different national contexts. Charity workers were not bound by national borders as they implemented reforms and they made claims to political and social power through their transnational philanthropic work.