Josephine E. Butler

On April 20th Mr. Stansfeld moved the resolution condemning compulsory examination, which Mr. Hopwood had been prevented from bringing on in February, and it was carried by 182 votes to 110. In accordance with this resolution, the Government suspended the operation of the Acts in the following month.

To her sister in Naples.Winchester, April, 1883.

Some day I trust I shall be able to tell you in detail of the events of the last few days. I longed for your presence during the debate; it was for us a very solemn time. All day long groups had met for prayer – some in the houses of M.P.‘s, some in churches, some in halls, where the poorest people came. Meetings were being held also all over the kingdom, and telegraphic messages of sympathy came to us continually from Scotland and Ireland, France, and Switzerland and Italy. There was something in the air like the approach of victory. As men and women prayed they suddenly burst forth into praise, thanking God for the answer, as if it had already been granted. It was a long debate. The tone of the speeches, both for and against, was remarkably purified, and with one exception they were altogether on a higher plane than in former debates. Many of us ladies sat through the whole evening till after midnight; then came the division. A few minutes previously Mr. Gerard, the steward of the Ladies’ Gallery, crept quietly in and whispered to me, “I think you are going to win!” That reserved official, of course, never betrays sympathy with any party; nevertheless, I could see the irrepressible pleasure in his face when he said this.

Never can I forget the expression on the faces of our M.P.’s in the House when they all streamed back from the division lobby. The interval during their absence had seemed very long, and we could hear each other’s breathing, so deep was the silence. We did not require to wait to hear the announcement of the division by the tellers: the faces of our friends told the tale. Slowly and steadily they pressed in, headed by Mr. Stansfeld and Mr. Hopwood, the tellers on our side. Mr. Fowler’s face was beaming with joy and a kind of humble triumph. I thought of the words: “Say unto Jerusalem that her warfare is accomplished.” It was a victory of righteousness over gross selfishness, injustice, and deceit, and for the moment we were all elevated by it. When the figures were given out a long-continued cheer arose, which sounded like a psalm of praise. Then we ran quickly down from the gallery, and met a number of our friends coming out from Westminster Hall.

It was half-past one in the morning, and the stars were shining in a clear sky. I felt at that silent hour in the morning in the spirit of the Psalmist, who said: “When the Lord turned again the captivity of Zion we were like unto them that dream.” It almost seemed like a dream.

When Mr. Cavendish Bentinck was speaking against us I noticed an expression of pain on Mr. Gladstone’s face. He seemed to be pretending to read a letter, but at last passed his hand over his eyes and left the House. He returned before Mr. Stansfeld made his noble speech, to which he listened attentively.

Later in the year she referred to this victory in a speech at Birmingham, which was printed under the title The Bright Side of the Question, and from which we quote the two following paragraphs.

I will say then to the women here one word. Dear women, I recall a scene; you will understand me. The night of the memorable debate in April, lasting many hours, there were meetings of women not far from the House of Commons – a crowd of women upon their knees through a great part of the night. I crept out of the House of Commons, where I was in the Ladies’ Gallery, and joined those meetings for a few moments. It was a sight I shall never forget. At one meeting there were the poorest, most ragged and miserable women from the slums of Westminster on their knees before the God of hosts, with tears and groans pouring out the burden of their sad hearts. He alone knew what that burden was. There were mothers who had lost daughters; there were sad-hearted women; and side by side with these poor souls, dear to God as we are, there were ladies of high rank, in their splendid dresses – Christian ladies of the upper classes kneeling and also weeping. I thank God for this wonderful and beautiful solidarity of the women of the world before God. Women are called to be a great power in the future, and by this terrible blow which fell upon us, forcing us to leave our privacy and bind ourselves together for our less fortunate sisters, we have passed through an education – a noble education. God has prepared in us, in the women of the world, a force for all future causes which are great and just.

We shall not stop, our efforts will not cease when this particular struggle is at an end. God has called us out, and we must not go back from any warfare to which He shall now call us in the future. We praise, we thank Him for what He has done already for us, and for what He is going to do, for we shall one day have a complete victory. We can echo the words of that which is written: “My soul doth magnify the Lord, and my spirit hath rejoiced in God my Saviour, for He hath regarded the low estate of His handmaidens.” And remember, women, if we are faithful unto death, from henceforth all men shall call us blessed. Yes, generations to come, your children and your children’s children will call you blessed, because you have laboured for purer morals and for juster laws.

The actual repeal of the laws was retarded, and we began to feel in 1885 that we must make strenuous efforts. There had been on several occasions solemn meetings of a devotional character on the question, notably one which lasted several days, and where all the churches were represented. This was promoted by the Society of Friends. An “All Day of Prayer” was called in February, 1885. A paper was issued in advance, giving the subjects to which each succeeding hour would especially be devoted.

During the year which followed this meeting James Stuart worked with all his heart and might in Parliament for the success of our cause. I believe that the Cabinet were rather surprised when a petition was presented to them by him, signed by two hundred Members of Parliament on both sides of the House, adjuring the Government to give immediate attention to this question, as the patience of the people of England had been sufficiently tried.

At the General Election this year, Josephine Butler issued

A Woman’s Appeal to the Electors, some extracts from which are here given.

By whom are we in future to be governed? Women are asking this question on the eve of the approaching elections, even more anxiously, I believe, than men; more anxiously, because they themselves are still denied the right and power of expressing by their votes their opinion of the candidates who are crowding forward asking to be allowed to represent them in Parliament, and to have a share in making the laws by which they and their children, their households, and even their nurseries, are in future to be influenced for good or for evil. As a woman, I am deeply thankful that at last the question of private and personal character is coming to the front in the selection of our representatives. I hope the day is past in which it could be said or believed that it was possible for a man who was corrupt in his private life and character to be a useful, just, or beneficent ruler. Who can reckon up the miseries, the wrongs, the soul murders, and the destruction of young lives which have been going on for years past, owing in a great measure to the shameful state of our laws on questions bearing on morality, that shameful state being obstinately maintained year by year by men in Parliament whose very presence there is a block to all good and pure measures?

I would suggest that each candidate should be asked questions in some such form as the following: —

(1) Will he vote for the total repeal of the C.D. Acts?

(2) Is he prepared to vote for a parliamentary enquiry into the reason why the prosecution of Mrs. Jeffries was dropped, and why Inspector Minahan was dismissed from the police force?

(3) Is he prepared to vote for, or to ask a question in Parliament on the subject of a parliamentary enquiry as to the circumstances which have induced the prosecution by the Treasury of Mr. Stead, Mr. Booth, and their assistants, to whose labours the Criminal Law Amendment Act has been mainly due; while no prosecution has been undertaken by the Treasury against any single one of the real offenders, whose crimes these persons have done so much to expose?

We may, and do hope for a purer Parliament, if the electors will wake up to the tremendous issues now before this country, issues immeasurably greater than those depending on the triumph of this or that political party; but when we shall have secured a purer Parliament, the struggle for a purified nation and a saved people will only be at its beginning. Unless God by the might of His Holy Spirit works powerfully and widely in the hearts of our people – in our own hearts, each one of us – we shall not be saved as a people in the mighty shaking of the nations which is at hand. The diseases of our own hearts and of our social system, if but slightly healed, will break forth again; moral corruption will set in again like a flood-tide; the noble watchwords of to-day will become the rotten and wretched Shibboleths of to-morrow; we shall have “a name to live while we are dead.” For my part, I have not an atom of faith in any reform, moral, social, or political, which has not at its root a real repentance before God, a ruthless banishing from the heart and life by individuals of all that is opposed to justice, purity, and holiness, and a quickening of every power of the soul by the breath of the Spirit of God. Christian politicians, lovers of our country, let us, while we work, also pray – unitedly pray – that God will arise and, taking our nation in hand, will chasten, train, and mould it for the carrying out of His own purposes in the future of the world.

The actual repeal of this legislation was carried in April, 1886. My husband and I were at the time staying with my sister in Naples. It was a great joy to us to receive a telegram on April 16th, signed by Mr. Stuart and Mr. Stansfeld, saying: “The Royal Assent has this day been given to the Repeal Bill.” I thanked God at that moment that Queen Victoria had washed her hands of a stain which she had unconsciously contracted in the first endorsement of this legislation.

CHAPTER XIII.

WINCHESTER

We again visited Grindelwald (in 1885), where we had the joy of meeting once more the Meuricoffre family. We had magnificent weather, favourable to mountain and glacier excursions. The nights were especially beautiful towards September, when there was a fine display of autumn meteors. It was my turn on this occasion to be obliged to hurry home, leaving my husband for a little longer enjoyment of the mountains. I was called home in order to advise in the matter of the action of our poor protégée, Rebecca Jarrett, who had been engaged by Mr. Stead to help him in his difficult researches. Two years previously we had opened at Winchester, as we had done at Liverpool, a little House of Rest, which served as a shelter for poor girls and young women who were recognised failures, morally and physically. Some were sick, rejected by hospitals as incurable; others friendless, betrayed and ruined, judged for one reason or another not quite suitable for other homes or refuges. We also took into the House of Rest however a few persons of more mature age, not invalids, who had fallen into trouble and misfortune, and who sometimes became excellent helpers in our work. Among these latter was the woman I have mentioned, who had put behind her and abjured her miserable past, and who showed much intelligence and tenderness as our aid in the work of rescue. The task however to which she was invited in London was of a different kind, and too heavy a responsibility for her. Hence the summons I received to come home and support her, and also in part to answer for her conduct, as she had been living with us.

It will be remembered that Mr. Stead and Rebecca Jarrett were tried on a charge of abduction, and sentenced to imprisonment. At the trial this poor woman, being cross-examined about her past life, told an untruth, and this was used by the prosecuting counsel as discrediting her whole evidence, with the result that the case against her and Mr. Stead was greatly damaged. Early in 1886 Josephine Butler published the story of Rebecca Jarrett, in order“to present the exact truth about her in justice to herself, and to Mr. Stead, for whom she acted; and also to give some incidents of personal history, which may tend not only to palliate these departures from truth, of which she was guilty, but to show that the situation in which she was placed was pathetic – even tragic – and one from which there was, humanly speaking, no escape.” She tells how before the trial some old associates, fearing what Rebecca might reveal concerning them, had gone down to her at Winchester, and pursued her with appeals and threats; and how she, after earnestly entreating them to lead a better life, had given them a solemn promise that she would not get them into trouble; and then how, under severe cross-examination in the court —

She answered truly as far as she could, until it came to the giving of an address which would have involved others in trouble. Then there flashed across her the promise made in her evil days, and the promise made later from better motives, under her new character. There rose afresh in her mind the desire that those to whom she had given her promise should see that a reclaimed woman would not break her word. She was standing between two oaths – the first, made to her old friends; the second, made in the witness-box, to speak “nothing but the truth.” Reader, were you ever in such a position – between two solemn promises, both of which you desired to keep, but which were opposed the one to the other? If you ever were, you can feel for this weak young convert to truth, and you can pity her weakness. Yes, she told a lie. She looked across the Court at me with an expression on her pale face which I shall never forget. That night, on returning to her lodgings, she spent several hours on her knees, weeping as if her heart would break; no word of consolation availed for her. It was in vain to try to comfort her. She cried, and screamed to God,“O God, I have told a lie; I have perjured myself in the witness-box; I have lied before the world; I have ruined this cause, and I have got all my kind friends into trouble! And yet, O God, Thou knowest why I did it – oh, Thou knowest why I did it. Look into my heart; Thou knowest why I did it!”

To a friend.April 10th, 1886.

Last Sunday we had a delightful day at Pozzuoli, where Sir William Armstrong is establishing great ironworks for making ironclads for the Italian Government. He has sent out from England some forty or fifty picked men. They are all Northumbrians, and choice men in every respect for bodily strength and high character. They are also tried and skilled workmen. Mr. Stephen Burrowes, my sister’s helper in her work for the sailors, suggested that a Workmen’s Rest or Home for our English workmen and others should be established at once at Pozzuoli. Our party went in five or six open carriages to Pozzuoli – all the Meuricoffre family and others of the Swiss and Protestant community of Naples. Our dedicatory service presented a curious combination of associations of different centuries and various countries. The spot where we assembled was close to the ruined Temple of Serapis. It was also in the near neighbourhood of the large Roman amphitheatre of the times of Tiberius. Before us was the sea, its gentle waves beating on the shore – the shore, as you know, where St. Paul first landed in Europe, a prisoner, on his way to Rome. Opposite was Baiæ, where Nero held his infernal court – itself lovely and peaceful in appearance – and Capri, the sharp outline of whose steep rock, whence Tiberius used to fling his slaves headlong into the sea as an after-dinner amusement, stood clear against the pure blue sky. This whole neighbourhood has all its old entrancing charm still, and that wonderful beauty which made it of old the last resort of people satiated with every other form of luxury. It was the ideal of a summer Sabbath evening. My husband offered up a dedicatory prayer, invoking the blessing of God on the design which we had come to inaugurate, on every workman who should work there, and on the dear Meuricoffres and all who work with them for the good of the people around them. He alluded in his prayer to the advent in that very place of the great apostle of the Gentiles, charged with the precious gift for Europe – the Gospel of our salvation. Then we sang hymns, some of the old favourites of the English workmen. It was strange to hear those familiar songs, pronounced with the strong Northumbrian guttural, ascending from the ruins of the Temple of Serapis – a blending of associations past and present, heathen and Christian, ancient and modern. When the men found out that my sister and I were Northumbrians they could scarcely suppress their joy; and after that, whenever she or I made a remark, however trivial, they cheered. Most of them came from Blyth and Morpeth. They were chiefly Wesleyans, and politically supporters of Thomas Burt, M.P. Our drive home in the evening was delicious beyond description. It was perfectly calm, with a lovely sunset, the trees already flashing into their summer tints, and the air full of that most delightful scent of the early orange and lemon blossom which comes out while the trees are still covered with their golden fruit. It was a memorable day for us, as a pleasant family gathering and full of Christian hope.

This summer George Butler was very ill for several weeks with rheumatic fever. On his partial recovery, he was advised to try the baths at Homburg, and from thence they travelled to Aix-la-Chapelle and to Switzerland, where he became seriously ill again, and had to remain till December.

I must now record a passage of my own personal experience at this crisis, which will be variously interpreted by any who may read it, but which I shall state with all simplicity for the encouragement at least of those who believe and know that there is a “God in heaven Who heareth prayer.” I had passed a sleepless night, in vain attempts to soothe the sufferings and allay the fever of my dear invalid, myself weak and exhausted, and now full of pain. The night was long, dark and cold, both spiritually and materially. Towards morning he fell into a troubled sleep. I went softly into a little ante-room, leaving the door open between. A feeling of despair came over me. My own strength was failing, and he was worse. Who would now minister to him, I asked, and was there to be no end to these repeated and heart-breaking disappointments? When Elijah fled into the wilderness, and gave himself up to bitter thoughts, in the depths of his discouragement the voice came to him, questioning, “What doest thou here, Elijah?” bidding him arise out of his depression. So to me it seemed at that moment that a voice came – or rather, I would say, a light shone – into the very heart of my darkness and despair. The promises of God in the Scriptures, with which I had been familiar all my life, came to me as if I had heard them for the first time. I fell on my knees and kept silence, to hear what the Lord would say to me; for, for my own part, I had nothing to say. My trouble was too heavy for speech. “The prayer of faith shall save the sick.”“Call upon Me in the time of trouble, and I will deliver thee.” “Is this true?” I exclaimed. Yes, I knew it was true. It seemed to become a very simple matter, and grace was given to me, in my pain and weakness, to say only, “Lord, I believe.” The burden was removed. I returned to my husband’s room, and sat silent for a while until he moved, and the day broke. I brought him his breakfast, and said to him confidently, “You are going to be better to-day, beloved.” He smiled, but did not speak. Two hours later our kind doctor came. He took his temperature and felt his pulse, and with a sigh of relief he said, “Well, dear Canon, a wonderful thing has happened. A great change has come. You are much better.”

A lady told me later that at a party of friends in Berne, Dr. Demme had spoken of this recovery, and said that it had been very remarkable, – a “Divine interposition” in answer, as he believed, to prayer: he added that my husband had had inflammation of both lungs and pleurisy, as well as the serious heart attack, adding, “any one of which was enough to kill most men.”

After my husband’s serious illness in 1886, I had resolved in my own mind never again to be absent from him for more than a few hours, if possible, during our united lives. I refused all invitations to attend meetings in London or elsewhere, sometimes, I fear, to the surprise as well as the regret of my fellow-workers in public matters. My choice was however deliberate, and I have never had cause to regret it. He had, I thought, sufficiently suffered by my frequent absences from home, during many years of our married life, while engaged in opposing a great social wrong, and he had borne this trial without a murmur. He was now advanced in years, and less strong, and these things seemed to me to constitute a most sacred claim to my personal and constant devotion to him. Never, except for a day or two during the serious illness of a dear sister, did I consent to be separated from him. Even on that occasion I was told by those at home that he seemed to feel my absence sadly, and that at the sound of a footstep or wheels on the drive, he would go to the window to see if by any chance it was his wife who had returned, though he knew that it was scarcely possible.

In this period of quieter life, Josephine Butler by no means rested from literary work, or from active interest in the abolitionist cause. Besides a large amount of correspondence, chiefly connected with the work of the Federation, she issued in 1887 two pamphlets, The Revival and Extension of the Abolitionist Cause, and Our Christianity tested by the Irish Question. In the first she refers to the C.D. Laws then in force in many of the Colonies and in India, and to the traffic in women which the system had facilitated. These Laws were shortly after repealed in most of the Crown Colonies and in India.

In the Irish pamphlet she shows how in the attempt to rule Ireland by a succession of Coercion Acts the same constitutional principles had been violated as in the case of the Acts against which she had so long fought. She traces the long sad story of England’s treatment of the sister isle, the real and solid grievances, which had naturally led to the demand for Home Rule.

Certain classes of persons in England have always maintained that successive Irish leaders and patriots were mere mischief makers, the cause and not the exponents of the prevailing discontent. If their mouths could be stopped, they imagine, there would be no more disaffection in Ireland, or such as there was would be easily repressed. This was their manner of judging of Flood, of Grattan, of Curran, of O’Connell. They could not learn, and are as far from learning to-day as ever, that you cannot heal the broken heart of Ireland by gagging those whom she sends over here to plead for her. They were relieved when the prison doors closed upon one after another of Ireland’s patriotic but unhappy sons; they were hopeful of quieter times when O’Connell died, worn out and sad. As one of their own poets said, “They broke the æolian harp, and then wrote an epitaph on the wind;” the wind which gave voice to the harp, a voice sometimes sad and low, and wailing, sometimes giving forth a shriek full of agony and vengeance. They imagined it was dead. Such has ever been the manner of looking at national griefs by people who lack sympathy with all aspirations after self-government, freedom, and the manhood of a nation, and who believe you can beat the souls of men into submission by physical force. They bring out their handcuffs and their cannon; they create the silence of desolation, and then they call it peace.

In order to give a complete idea of my husband’s kindliness of nature, and to fill in some characteristic touches of his home life, I must speak of our affectionate companions – our dogs. Our first dog friend was Bunty (the origin of the name is obscure). He lived with us many years at Liverpool, and came with us to Winchester. He was a dog of excellent parts; not of pure breed, chiefly otter hound. He had beautiful eyes, full of human expression. He had a strong sense of humour. It is generally said that dogs hate to be laughed at. This was not the case with Bunty. He could bear to be laughed at, would enter into the joke, and, so to speak, turn the laugh against himself, by behaving in a manner which he well knew would excite laughter. He shared many pleasant holidays with us. He died in 1883. My husband had the free hand of a sculptor. A few things which he carved in stone were worthy of preservation, among them a perfect likeness of this good dog in an attitude of watchful repose. Beneath he carved the words – ΑΡΙΣΤΟΥ ΚΥΝΟΣ ΣΗΜΑ. “Some of my friends,” he wrote, “find a difficulty in believing that I carved Bunty’s likeness in stone. Froude says, some centuries hence, when the monument is disinterred and its inscription discovered, some Dryasdust will start a theory that a Greek colony once inhabited the Close.” Bunty’s successor was Carlo, a handsome thoroughbred retriever, quite black, with shining curls – a sensible, gentlemanlike dog, excellent in his own special art of retrieving birds, and an uncompromising guard and watchdog. His attachment to his master, whom he outlived for two years, was profound. This poor dog was very wretched and melancholy when his master left his home for the last time and returned no more. He would seek him in every corner of the house, and along the riverside where he had been accustomed to walk with him or watch him fishing; and returning, would rest his chin on the arm of his master’s empty study chair, as if waiting for the familiar hand to pat his head. His dumb grief was very touching.