We cannot trace this request any farther. No letter or memo says what was done. Smallwood sent her letter on to the Department of Public Welfare.

The woman's request may seem strange today. But in 1959, there were no home care programs. The older woman might have had very little income. When her blankets wore out, perhaps she could not buy new ones. At that time, families were expected to look after older people.

The woman who wrote the letter took over a job that the family usually did. But she was not family. She thought she should get some government help for what she was doing. She probably thought that sending the letter with its list of bedding was the sensible thing. She saw that a service was needed. She would provide that service, with a little help. This kind of direct suggestion to government was not strange in the 1950s. When there was no system in place to solve problems, people often gave their own ideas about what to do.

Mothers' Allowances

Before Confederation, many women were heads of families. Many of these women could not work. There were few jobs for women. Besides, they had to look after their children. But only some of them could get an allowance. The only help for women who headed families was a widows' allowance. You could only get this if you had married, and your husband died.

The allowance for widows left out a lot of women. A woman with a husband in prison or in hospital got nothing. A woman with a husband who was disabled and could not work got nothing either. If a woman's husband left her, she could get no allowance. Single mothers could not get any help either. All of these women and their families had the same kinds of needs. But they were not treated equally.

There were many reasons for this. For years, governments had tried to keep spending down. There were other reasons. These had little to do with money, and more to do with how people thought. For a long time, people thought that there were some people who "deserved" help, and others who did not "deserve" it. Often, people were blamed for being poor. A woman could not help it if her husband died: she deserved help. But what about the others? For a long time, governments and the public did not think of them as deserving. "You made your bed. Now lie in it." This is an old saying. It is how many people thought about women who ended up as heads of families. This was very common if they had never married.