Professional Gentlemen: A Culture of Work and Its Reconstruction in Nineteenth-Century Ontario

What distinguishes professions from other occupations? How and why does the meaning of profession or professional work change over time? These are the questions that animate Professional Gentlemen, the first comprehensive account of the professions in nineteenth-century Ontario. Beginning with the three traditional ‘learned professions, ’ law, divinity, and medicine, Professional Gentlemen first examines their establishment in the Upper Canadian occupational order, and then explores the nature and rhythms of professional work, the education of professional men, and the effects of political, economic, and social change on their privileges and place in society. The authors turn next to the development of a number of occupations aspiring to professional status, ranging from dentists and surveyors to engineers, public school teachers, and others; some were successful - some failed. In the process, however, the very meaning of profession itself became more diffuse and the occupations it encompassed more diverse. Those interested in the history of a variety of specific occupations, in the emerging structure of white-collar work, in the history of higher education, and in changing gender relations will find this book compelling. But Professional Gentlemen is more than a history of a particular group of occupations. It is also an inquiry into the nature of a social and occupational ideal, its influence in nineteenth-century society, and the transmutations in the ideal which laid the groundwork for twentieth-century conceptions of professional work.