In The Charity Market, Roddy, Strange and Taithe explore the ways in which charities developed their businesses in the later nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. The originality of the book lies in its examination of how charities brought money into their organizations and how they managed it, rather than looking at how they spent that money or mobilized volunteers. The six chapters of The Charity Market group around three themes. The first two chapters explore the development of marketing, and the harnessing of certain aspects of the urban environment – commercialism and consumption – as a means of trying to combat other elements of the urban environment – poverty and squalour. In the first chapter, the authors consider the leaders of the Salvation Army, Barnardo's and the Wood Street Mission in Manchester as ‘social entrepreneurs’ who embraced new forms of media technology. The second chapter further delves into issues around consumption and charity, moving beyond the charity bazaar into consideration of how the Salvation Army effectively ran a department store in London as part of its fundraising activities. Insight into the development of an ‘experience economy’ – such as the chance to buy tickets for theatre performances in support of specific causes, or observing the completion of an extreme challenge on behalf of a charitable cause – is valuable.

The third chapter, in its consideration of charity branding, takes the analysis into a different direction. Developing a recognizable brand in a growing marketplace of charitable competitors was important as a means of signalling what the charity's values and aims were, encouraging like-minded donors to support them. Branding also became important as a means of building confidence and trust in the organization – and the people it sought to help. Successful, powerful charitable brands needed protection from imitators. The fourth chapter delves further into issues of fraud and mismanagement of resources. The authors draw out how the Charity Organization Society and, later, Truth magazine sought to expose those who were making false claims about their work. The case of the ‘Reverend’ Lee Jones in Liverpool is used as a means of exploring the emergence of calls for discrimination not just in terms of who the objects of the charity should be, but also around those supposedly undertaking the work.

From here, The Charity Market further shifts its focus in the fifth chapter to consider the role of aristocrats in the charity business, examining the impact of their financial power and political standing in intervening in charitable campaigns. The work of the Stafford House Committee – a network of philanthropists that emerged from the 1870s – is used as a means of exploring the themes that emerged earlier in the book. The authors take us through the committee's work in raising funds for international disasters in the 1870s, and the processes of accountability around the money and its use that ensued. The final chapter explores the role of franchising by charities and social enterprises. Perhaps more readily associated with twenty-first-century philanthropy, the authors argue, using the case of the Mansion House Fund, that this form of spreading a particular type of charitable work has its roots in the nineteenth century. Whilst there was an existing tradition of civic and mayoral appeals to deal with the aftermath of disasters, said appeals dealt with local problems. The lord mayor of London and the Mansion House Fund, however, were not restricted to responding to matters in the City. As the authors show, the Mansion House Fund operated as a national fundraising campaign for both domestic and global crises. Local groups could join in the effort for the national Mansion House Fund, making use of branded materials and the sense of shared purpose. Not all campaigns ran smoothly, and, as the authors show, looking at those disasters or crises that were not supported is also instructive: if a choice needed to be made between two disasters in different parts of the world, the one in the British empire was favoured.

The Charity Market is more a study of the development and function of urban-based activity, and the ways in which contemporaries attempted to deal with the challenges thrown up by urban modernity, than a study of charity markets in particular locales. For urban historians, it offers useful frameworks for thinking about the role of charity within the wider arenas of business and consumption, and the national and global contexts of local civic or philanthropic activities. Although it focuses on 1870 to 1912, the authors are clear in drawing out the ways in which activities associated with charitable fundraising in the twenty-first century have much longer roots. The Charity Market is a very welcome and timely addition to the literature.