author
Samuel Henry Prince
An Anglican priest, social reformer, and early sociologist, he is best remembered for turning firsthand experience of the 1917 Halifax Explosion into one of the earliest major social-science studies of disaster. His work connected catastrophe with community response and social change in a way that still feels strikingly modern.
1 Audiobook
Catastrophe and Social Change Based Upon a Sociological Study of the Halifax Disaster
by Samuel Henry Prince
About the author
Born in New Brunswick in 1886, Samuel Henry Prince was a Canadian clergyman and scholar who studied at the University of Toronto and later earned a PhD in sociology at Columbia University. He served as an Anglican priest in Halifax and became closely tied to several defining events of the early 20th century, including the aftermath of the Titanic disaster and, most notably, the Halifax Explosion of December 6, 1917.
That explosion shaped his best-known work, Catastrophe and Social Change, published from his Columbia dissertation in 1920. Drawing on direct observation and relief work, Prince examined how a city responds under extreme stress and how disaster can accelerate social and institutional change. The book is often noted as a pioneering study in the sociology of disaster.
Prince later spent decades teaching and working in social reform, especially through King’s in Nova Scotia. He was remembered not only as a scholar, but as a practical advocate for more humane social programs and institutions. He died in 1960.