Massachusetts Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Children

The MSPCC, a private child welfare agency, was founded in 1878 to aid and protect abused and neglected children and continues as such today with district offices throughout the Commonwealth.

In 1874 a churchworker brought a case against the abusive mother of a child named "Mary Ellen". The only way she could do this was to file her complaint under cruelty to animals statutes since there were laws punishing cruelty to animals but not cruelty to children. An immediate outcome of the imprisonment of Mary Ellen's mother was the organization in 1874 of the New York Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Children. A similar society was founded in Massachusetts. The Massachusetts Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Children (MSPCC), a private charitable organization, was incorporated on April 23, 1878, "for the purpose of awakening interest in the abuses to which children are exposed by the intemporance, cruelty, or cupidity of parents and guardians, and to help the enforcement of existing laws on the subject, procure needed legislation, and for kindred work." For its first twenty-nine years the Society functioned as a part of the police force, by protecting children from physical cruelty and by prosecuting the offenders. In 1907 the Society's emphasis changed from legal to social aspects, from punishment to prevention. The Society still prosecuted abusers, but reformation received the major emphasis. Its dual role, therefore, was to protect the child, and at the same time persuade the parents to establish and maintain a "respectable" home.