| Book Review | The Journal of American History, 93.4

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| Book Review | The Journal of American History, 93.4 | The History Cooperative

Book Review

Habits of Compassion: Irish Catholic Nuns and the Origins of New York's Welfare System, 1830–1920. By Maureen Fitzgerald. (Urbana: University of Illinois Press, 2006. x, 298 pp. Cloth, $50.00, ISBN 0-252-03034-6. Paper, $25.00, ISBN 0-252-07282-0.)

Habits of Compassion by Maureen Fitzgerald adds to a growing literature on the impact of the Catholic sisterhoods on the development of American social institutions (see Sioban Nelson, Say Little, Do Much, 2001; Barbra Mann Wall, Unlikely Entrepreneurs, 2005; John J. Fialka, Sisters, 2003). The relationship between charity, respectability, and Catholic versus Protestant values is sharply illustrated in Fitzgerald's narrative on the development of social welfare among the Irish poor of New York City. Beginning with the funeral tribute to the monumental Sister Irene Fitzgibbon, famed founder of the New York Foundling Asylum, Habits of Compassion puts the work of Irishwomen such as Sister Irene center stage in the development of the American welfare system.

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