Josephine E. Butler

For instance the Council worked hard, and with some success, in endeavouring to induce the Endowed Schools Commissioners to secure that some part of the endowments of Public Schools should be devoted to the education of girls. “Mrs. Butler made an able as well as a zealous President of the Council, and while she herself took an active part in almost everything that was undertaken, she also did good service in kindling the enthusiasm of others by her eloquence and enthusiasm.”4 Although she retired from the Presidency in 1873 on the ground of ill-health, she attended its last meetings at York in 1874, when she read a paper on Economic Science as a part of the Education of Girls. In that year the Council was dissolved, having finished its pioneer work, and feeling that the movement could henceforth be carried on by other organisations, which had by that time come into existence.

In 1868 Josephine Butler published her first pamphlet, The Education and Employment of Women. Starting with the census figures of 1861, she meets the old argument that woman’s sphere is the home, and only the home, by pointing out that the proportion of wives to widows and spinsters over twenty was only about three to two (in 1901 the proportion was even less), and that over three million women were earning or partly earning their living. This number had risen in 1901 to over four millions. She refers to the miserable wages received by women workers, from the teaching profession downwards, due in part to the comparatively low state of education among girls, and in part to the restrictions upon their employment in various directions, both causes being ultimately traceable to the fact that “they are unrepresented, and the interests of the unrepresented always tend to be overlooked.” Hence she pleads for the higher education of women and the removal of all legal and other restrictions upon their employment. She incidentally urges the mixed education of boys and girls. As against the argument that the more extended employment of women would injure men, she prophesies, in the words of F. D. Maurice, “Whenever in trade or in any department of human activity restrictions tending to the advantage of one class and the injury of others have been removed, there a divine power has been at work counteracting not only the selfish calculations, but often the apparently sagacious reasonings of their defenders.” Surely this prophecy has been fulfilled, as it appears from the Report of the Poor Law Commission recently issued, that, taking a wide outlook of the whole industrial situation, there has been no tendency in the past twenty years for women workers to displace men. (Pp. 322-5.)

In 1869 Josephine Butler edited and wrote an introduction to a volume of essays on Woman’s Work and Woman’s Culture. The essays were by Frances Power Cobbe, Jessie Boucherett, George Butler, Sophia Jex-Blake, James Stuart, Charles H. Pearson, Herbert N. Mozley, Julia Wedgwood, Elizabeth C. Wolstenholme, and John Boyd-Kinnear. In her introductory essay she lays stress on the fact that any disabilities, from which women suffer, cause injury and loss to men, no less than to women themselves. She admits that woman’s sphere is home, but she wishes the home idea to be realised in wider spheres than within the four walls of a single household. She pleads that to grant the demands of women for higher education, and for unrestricted liberty to engage in any employment, will tend to the restoration of true home ideals; first through the restored dignity of women, and secondly through the opening out and diffusion of the home influence and character into the solution of social problems, by the relegation to women of some of the more important work of dealing with our vast populations. This she illustrates in the following passage.

In the present pretty general realisation of the futility, if not the positive harm, of many forms of private philanthropy, and the often-repeated deprecation of meddling individuals, who pauperise the community by their old-fashioned, lady-bountiful way of dispensing alms and patronage, we do not perhaps quite foresee the reaction which is setting in, with a tendency so strong in the opposite direction that it brings us into the danger of once more missing the philosophy of the whole matter. The tendency at present is to centralisation of rule, to vast combinations, large institutions, and uniformity of system. I have a doubt about any wholesale manipulation of the poor, the criminal, scholars in schools, etc. I believe it to be so far from being founded on a philosophical view of human nature and of society, that if carried to extremes the last state of our poor will be worse than the first. For the correction of the extreme tendencies of this reaction, I believe that nothing whatever will avail but the large infusion of home elements into workhouses, hospitals, schools, orphanages, lunatic asylums, reformatories, and even prisons; and in order to attain this there must be a setting free of feminine powers and influence from the constraint of bad education, and narrow aims, and listless homes where they are at present too often a superfluity. We have had experience of what we may call the feminine form of philanthropy, the independent individual ministering, of too mediæval a type to suit the present day. It has failed. We are now about to try the masculine form of philanthropy – large and comprehensive measures, organisations and systems, planned by men and sanctioned by Parliament. This also will fail if it so far prevail as to extinguish the truth to which the other method witnessed in spite of its excesses. Why should we not try at last a union of principles which are equally true? “It is not good for man to be alone” was a very early announcement in the history of the world. Neither is it good for man to work alone in any matter whatsoever which concerns the welfare of the great human family; and the larger the work be which he undertakes, unassisted by her whom God gave to him for a helpmate, the more signal will be the failure in the end.

We quote another passage from this essay to show how here, as always, she founded herself on the appeal to Christ as the highest authority in matters of principle and of action.

The author of Ecce Homo has set the example to those to whom it did not occur to do so for themselves, of venturing straight into the presence of Christ for an answer to every question, and of silencing the voice of all theologians from St. Paul to this day, until we have heard what the Master says. It may be that God will give grace to some woman in the time to come to discern more clearly, and to reveal to others, some truth which theologians have hitherto failed to see in its fulness; for from the intimacy into which our Divine Master admitted women with Himself it would seem that His communications of the deepest nature were not confined to male recipients; and what took place during His life on earth may, through His Holy Spirit, be continued now. It is instructive to recall the fact that the most stupendous announcement ever made to the world, the announcement of an event concerning which the whole world is divided to this day, and which more than all others is bound up with our hopes of immortality, the resurrection of Christ, was first made to women. Nor can we wonder, looking back over the ages since then, and seeing how any truths asserted by women, not at once palpable to the outward sense or provable by logic, have been accounted as idle tales, that of the first apostles it should have been said, “The words of the women seemed unto them as idle tales,” when they declared that Christ was risen. Among the great typical acts of Christ, which were evidently and intentionally for the announcement of a principle for the guidance of society, none were more markedly so than His acts towards women; and I appeal to the open Book, and to the intelligence of every candid student of Gospel history, for the justification of my assertion that in all important instances of His dealings with women His dismissal of each case was accompanied by a distinct act of Liberation. In one case He emancipated a woman from legal thraldom. His act no doubt appeared to those who witnessed it as that of a dangerous leveller, for while He granted to the woman a completeness of freedom from the tyranny of law which must have electrified the bystanders, He imposed upon the men present, and upon all men by implication, the higher obligation which they had made a miserable attempt to enforce upon one half of society only, and the breach of which their cruel laws visited with terrible severity on women alone. They all went out convicted by conscience, while the woman alone remained free; but, be it observed, free in a double sense – free alike from the inward moral slavery, and from the harsh, humanly-imposed judgment. The emancipation granted to another in the matter of hereditary disabilities was signal. In a moment He struck off chains which had been riveted by the traditions of centuries, and raised her from the position, accepted even by herself, of a “Gentile dog” to one higher than the highest of the commonwealth of Israel. In another case His “Go in peace,” and words of tender and respectful commendation to one who had been exiled from society, contrasted solemnly with His rebuke to His self-satisfied host, who, while firmly holding his place among the honoured of this world, marvelled that Christ should not seem to be aware what manner of woman it was who touched Him. To another, before ever she had spoken a word, He cried, “Woman, thou art loosed!” and to objectors He replied, “Ought not this woman, being a daughter of Abraham, whom Satan hath bound lo these eighteen years, be loosed from this bond on the Sabbath day?” The tyrannies and infirmities from which He freed these persons severally were various and manifold, and this does but increase the significance of His whole proceeding towards them. Search throughout the Gospel history, and observe His conduct in regard to women, and it will be found that the word liberation expresses, above all others, the act which changed the whole life and character and position of the women dealt with, and which ought to have changed the character of men’s treatment of women from that time forward.

While in His example of submission to parents, of filial duty and affection, in His inculcation of the sacredness of marriage, and of the duty of obedience to laws which ought to be obeyed, His righteousness far exceeded the righteousness of the Pharisees of His own or of the present day, it seems to me impossible for anyone candidly to study Christ’s whole life and words without seeing that the principle of the perfect equality of all human beings was announced by Him as the basis of social philosophy. To some extent this has been practically acknowledged in the relations of men to men; only in one case has it been consistently ignored, and that is in the case of that half of the human race in regard to which His doctrine of equality was more markedly enforced than in any other. It is no wonder that there should be some women whose love for this Saviour exceeds the love which it is possible for any man to feel for Him, and that, retiring from the encounter with prejudices which are apt to lurk even in the minds of the most just and most generous of men, they should be driven to cast themselves in a great solitude of heart before Him, for He only is just, He only is holy, He only is infinitely tender.

In the same year, 1869, Josephine Butler published the Memoir of John Grey of Dilston, a most interesting biography of a good man, who faithfully served his native county throughout his life, and took a keen interest in all the stirring political events of the first half of the last century. An Italian translation of this Memoir was published in Florence two years later.

CHAPTER VI.

WOMEN’S REVOLT

We now come to the period when Josephine Butler began the great work of her life, the crusade against the State regulation of vice. This system had its rise in France, being brought into operation in Paris by Napoleon on the eve of the establishment of the French Empire in 1802. Other continental countries followed the example of France, and several attempts were made to introduce the system into England, but without success until 1864, when a temporary Act was passed “for the prevention of contagious diseases at certain naval and military stations.” This Act was renewed in 1866, and was further extended (to eighteen towns) in 1869. In other countries the system was “suffered to crouch away in the mysterious recesses of irresponsible police regulations.” England was the only country which had “had the courage or the audacity to launch the system in all its essential details in the form a public statute.”5 This, which at first seemed a triumph for regulationists, proved the very reverse, since the publicity thus given to the matter was the starting-point of a fierce opposition begun in England, and afterwards spreading to the Continent, until it undermined the very foundations of the system. It is not indeed yet destroyed in continental countries, for it is hard to pull down structures which have stood firm for a century, but it is everywhere discredited; and this has come about chiefly through the heroic labours of Josephine Butler and her fellow-workers. In one of her early speeches she tells of her first call to this work.

I first became acquainted with this system as it existed in Paris. I was one of those persons – they were few, I believe – who read that very brief debate in the House of Commons in 1866, when Mr. Henley and Mr. Ayrton alone, but clearly and boldly, entered their protest. It was in that year that the knowledge first broke upon me that this system, which I had so long regarded with horror, had actually found a footing in our England. It seemed to me as if a dark cloud were hanging on the horizon, threatening our land. The depression which took possession of my mind was overwhelming. A few days ago I found a record of those days in an old manuscript book long laid aside. In turning over its leaves I found a note of that debate in the House, the date, and a written expression, which I had since forgotten, of a presentiment which at that time filled my mind, that in some way or other I should be called to meet this evil thing face to face – a trembling presentiment, which I could not escape from, that, do what I would, I myself must enter into this cloud. I find there recorded also a brief prayer, beseeching that if I must descend into darkness, that divine hand, whose touch is health and strength, would hold mine fast in the darkness. I can recollect going out into the garden, hoping that the sight of the flowers and blue sky might banish the mental pain; but it clung too fast for a time for any outward impression to remove it, and I envied the sparrows upon the garden walk because they had not minds and souls capable of torment like mine. But now, when I look back, I see that the prayer has been heard, the divine hand has held mine, often when I knew it not. And, friends, God can give more than power to bear the pain; there is a positive joy in His service, and in any warfare in which He, who conquered sin and death and hell, goes before us, and is our re reward.

Before the Act of 1869 was passed, Daniel Cooper, Secretary of the Rescue Society, aided by a few friends, took active steps to protest against these laws; but, as he afterwards wrote, he “felt an almost utter despair in seeing that, after putting forth our pamphlet and writing thousands of letters imploring our legislators, clergy, principal public men and philanthropists to look into the question, such a stoical indifference remained. We felt, on hearing of your Association, that Providence had well chosen the means for the defeat of these wicked Acts. The ladies of England will save the country from this fearful curse, for I fully believe that through them it has even now had its death-blow.” Dr. Worth and Dr. Bell Taylor of Nottingham also raised their voice against the system early in 1869, and they, with the Rev. Dr. Hooppell and Francis Newman, took part in the first public demonstration against the Act, on the occasion of the Social Science Congress meeting at Bristol in October, 1869, when the National Anti-Contagious Diseases Acts Association was formed.

The appeal to take up this cause reached me first from a group of medical men, who (all honour to them) had for some time been making strenuous efforts to prevent the introduction in our land of the principle of regulation by the State of the social evil. The experience gained during their efforts had convinced them that in order to be successful they must summon to their aid forces far beyond the arguments, strong as these were, based on physiological, scientific grounds. They recognised that the persons most insulted by the Napoleonic system with which our legislators of that day had become enamoured, being women, these women must find representatives of their own sex to protest against and to claim a practical repentance from the Parliament and Government which had flung this insult in their face.

It was on landing at Dover from our delightful summer tour in 1869, that we first learned that a small clique in Parliament had been too successfully busy over this work of darkness during the hot August days, or rather nights, in a thin House, in which most of those present were but vaguely cognisant of the meaning and purpose of the proposed constitutional change.

During the three months which followed the receipt of this communication I was very unhappy. I can only give a very imperfect impression of the sufferings of that time. The toils and conflicts of the years that followed were light in comparison with the anguish of that first plunge into the full realisation of the villainy there is in the world, and the dread of being called to oppose it. Like Jonah, when he was charged by God with a commission which he could not endure to contemplate, “I fled from the face of the Lord.” I worked hard at other things – good works, as I thought – with a kind of half-conscious hope that God would accept that work, and not require me to go further, and run my heart against the naked sword which seemed to be held out. But the hand of the Lord was upon me: night and day the pressure increased. From an old manuscript book in which I sometimes wrote I quote the following: —

September, 1869.– “Now is your hour, and the power of darkness.” O Christ, if Thy Spirit fainted in that hour, how can mine sustain it? It is now many weeks since I knew that Parliament had sanctioned this great wickedness, and I have not yet put on my armour, nor am I yet ready. Nothing so wears me out, body and soul, as anger, fruitless anger; and this thing fills me with such an anger, and even hatred, that I fear to face it. The thought of this atrocity kills charity and hinders my prayers. But there is surely a way of being angry without sin. I pray Thee, O God, to give me a deep, well-governed, and lifelong hatred of all such injustice, tyranny and cruelty; and at the same time give me that divine compassion which is willing to live and suffer long for love to souls, or to fling itself into the breach and die at once. This is perhaps after all the very work, the very mission, I longed for years ago, and saw coming, afar off, like a bright star. But seen near, as it approaches, it is so dreadful, so difficult, so disgusting, that I tremble to look at it; and it is hard to see and know whether or not God is indeed calling me concerning it. If doubt were gone, and I felt sure He means me to rise in revolt and rebellion (for that it must be) against men, even against our rulers, then I would do it with zeal, however repulsive to others may seem the task.

Appeals continued to pour in. I read all that was sent to me, and I vividly recalled all that I had learned before of this fatal system and its corrupting influence in continental cities – the madness and despair into which it drives the most despised of society, who are yet God’s redeemed ones, and the blindness and hardness of heart which it begets in all who approach it in its practical administration, or in any way except in the way of uncompromising hostility. And the call seemed to come ever more clearly.

So far I had endured in silence, I could not bear the thought of making my dear companion a sharer of the pain; yet I saw that we must needs be united in this as in everything else. I had tried to arrange to suffer alone, but I could not act alone, if God should indeed call me to action. It seemed to me cruel to have to tell him of the call, and to say to him that I must try and stand in the breach. My heart was shaken by the foreshadowing of what I knew he would suffer. I went to him one evening when he was alone, all the household having retired to rest. I recollect the painful thoughts that seemed to throng that passage from my room to his study. I hesitated, and leaned my cheek against his closed door; and as I leaned I prayed. Then I went in, and gave him something I had written, and left him. I did not see him till the next day. He looked pale and troubled, and for some days was silent. But by and by we spoke together about it freely, and (I do not clearly recollect how or when) we agreed together that we must move in the matter, and that an appeal must be made to the people. (Already many members of both Houses of Parliament, bishops and responsible officials had been appealed to, but so far in vain.) I spoke to my husband then of all that had passed in my mind, and said, “I feel as if I must go out into the streets and cry aloud, or my heart will break.” And that good and noble man, foreseeing what it meant for me and for himself, spoke not one word to suggest difficulty or danger or impropriety in any action which I might be called to take. He did not pause to ask, “What will the world say?” or “Is this suitable work for a woman?” He had pondered the matter, and looking straight, as was his wont, he saw only a great wrong, and a deep desire to redress that wrong – a duty to be fulfilled in fidelity to that impulse, and in the cause of the victims of the wrong; and above all he saw God, who is of “purer eyes than to behold iniquity,” and whose call (whatever it be) it is man’s highest honour to obey; and his whole attitude in response to my words cited above expressed, “Go! and God be with you.”

I went forth, but not exactly into the streets, to cry aloud. I took the train to the nearest large station – Crewe – where there is a great manufactory of locomotives and a mass of workmen. I scarcely knew what I should say, and knew not at all what I should meet with. A friend acquainted with the workmen led me after work hours to their popular hall, and when I had delivered my message, a small group of leaders among the men bade me thrice welcome in the name of all there. They surprised me by saying, “We understand you perfectly. We in this group served an apprenticeship in Paris, and we have seen and know for ourselves the truth of what you say. We have said to each other that it would be the death-knell of the moral life of England were she to copy France in this matter.”

From Crewe I went to Leeds, York, Sunderland and Newcastle-on-Tyne, and then returned home. The response to our appeal from the working-classes, and from the humbler middle class in the northern and midland counties and in Scotland, exceeded our utmost expectations. In less than three weeks after this first little propagandist effort, the working-men of Yorkshire, recognised leaders in political and social movements, had organised mass meetings, and agreed on a programme of action, to express the adhesion of the working-classes of the north to the cause advocated.

Meanwhile the Ladies’ National Association for the repeal of the Contagious Diseases Acts had been formed towards the end of 1869, and on the last day of that year their solemn protest appeared in the Daily News. This protest is here given in full, because from it can be sufficiently gathered the nature and scope of the Contagious Diseases Acts, and also because it sums up the objections which were then and have ever since been raised by those who have strenuously opposed the regulation of vice involved in those Acts, and in the similar systems in operation in other countries; objections based upon the two fundamental principles of an equal moral standard for men and women, and of the equal treatment of men and women by the law of the land.