Encyclopedia o f Chicago
Entries : Visitation and Aid Society
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Visitation and Aid Society

Visitation and Aid Society

Founded in 1888, the Visitation and Aid Society was a politically progressive, lay-operated Roman Catholic charity that established a cooperative church-state welfare system serving delinquent or dependent juveniles, families, and prisoners in Cook County. Nationally, it was an important welfare lobby, publishing a journal, the Juvenile Record (later, the Juvenile Court Record ), which tracked social policy developments in North America and Europe. Leaders included Timothy Hurley and William Onahan, who, under V&A auspices, helped to found the world's first juvenile court and to quell interreligious rivalries by cooperating with Protestant and Jewish charities. In 1911, the V&A's work was assumed by the St. Vincent de Paul Society.

Bibliography
Hurley, Timothy. The Origin of the Illinois Juvenile Court Law. 1907.
Walsh, John Patrick. “The Catholic Church in Chicago and the Problems of Urban Poverty, 1893–1915.” Ph.D. diss., University of Chicago, 1948.