Name/TitleJosephine Butler: Flame of Fire
MakerMoberly Bell, Enid
Maker RoleAuthor
About this objectHardback book with black covers titled 'Josephine Butler: Flame of Fire' by E. Moberly Bell. An author's noted (May 1962) states: "This book is based on comprehensive correspondence collected from every branch of the International Abolitionist Federation as well as from many of Josephine Butler's personal friends, and lent to me by the Josephine Butler Society. The correspondence had been dipped into but never before fully used or put into any sort of order." The contents are:
THE FLAME KINDLED
I. Not Mentioned
II. The Greys of Dilston
III. Oxford 1852-1857
IV. Cheltenham 1857-1865
V. Liverpool 1886-1869
CONSUMING FIRE
VI. The Contagious Diseases Acts 1866-1869
VII. Westminster 1871-1873
VIII. Testing the Country 1873-1874
IX. First European Sally 1874-1875
X. The International Federation 1875-1877
XI. Holidays Abroad 1877-1879
XII. Westminster Again 1879-18883
XIII. The White Slave Traffic 1882-1885
XIV. George Butler's Last Days 1885-1890
GLOWING EMBERS
XV. Geneva and Italy 1891-1894
XVI. Colmar and Geneva 1895-1897
XVII. India 1888-1898
XVIII. Old Age 1898-1906
Medium and MaterialsOrganic, board and paper
MeasurementsH: 222 x W: 140 x D: 28 mm
Date Made1962
Period19th century
Place MadeEngland, London
Place NotesConstable and Co. Lt, 10-12 Orange Street, London W.C.2.
PublisherConstable and Co. Ltd
Publication Date1962
Publication PlaceEngland, London
Subject and Association Descriptionhttps://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Josephine_Butler:
Josephine Elizabeth Butler (née Grey; 13 April 1828 – 30 December 1906) was an English feminist and social reformer in the Victorian era. She campaigned for women's suffrage, the right of women to better education, the end of coverture in British law, the repeal of the Contagious Diseases Acts, the abolition of child prostitution and an end to human trafficking of young women and children into European prostitution.
Grey grew up in a well-to-do and politically connected progressive family which helped develop in her a strong social conscience and firmly held religious ideals. She married George Butler, an Anglican divine and schoolmaster, and the couple had four children, the last of whom, Eva, died falling from a banister. The death was a turning point for Butler, and she focused her feelings on helping others, starting with the inhabitants of a local workhouse. She began to campaign for women's rights in British law. In 1869 she became involved in the campaign to repeal the Contagious Diseases Acts, legislation that attempted to control the spread of venereal diseases—particularly in the British Army and Royal Navy—through the forced medical examination of alleged prostitutes, a process she described as surgical or steel rape. The campaign achieved its final success in 1886 with the repeal of the Acts. Butler also formed the International Abolitionist Federation, a Europe-wide organisation to combat similar systems on the continent.
While investigating the effect of the Acts, Butler had been appalled that some of the prostitutes were as young as 12, and that there was a slave trade of young women and children from England to the continent for the purpose of prostitution. A campaign to combat the trafficking led to the removal from office of the head of the Belgian Police des Mœurs, and the trial and imprisonment of his deputy and 12 brothel owners, who were all involved in the trade. Butler fought child prostitution with help from the campaigning editor of The Pall Mall Gazette, William Thomas Stead, who purchased a 13-year-old girl from her mother for £5. The subsequent outcry led to the Criminal Law Amendment Act 1885 which raised the age of consent from 13 to 16 and brought in measures to stop children becoming prostitutes. Her final campaign was in the late-1890s, against the Contagious Diseases Acts which continued to be implemented in the British Raj.
Butler wrote more than 90 books and pamphlets over the course of her career, most of which were in support of her campaigning, although she also produced biographies of her father, her husband and Catherine of Siena. Butler's Christian feminism is celebrated by the Church of England with a Lesser Festival, and by representations of her in the stained glass windows of Liverpool's Anglican Cathedral and St Olave's Church in the City of London. Her name appears on the Reformers Memorial in Kensal Green Cemetery, London, and Durham University named one of their colleges after her. Her campaign strategies changed the way feminist and suffragists conducted future struggles, and her work brought into the political milieu groups of people that had never been active before. After her death in 1906 the feminist leader Millicent Fawcett hailed her as "the most distinguished Englishwoman of the nineteenth century" [continues].
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Charles_Frederic_Moberly_Bell:
Charles Frederic Moberly Bell (2 April 1847, Alexandria – 5 April 1911, London) was a British journalist and newspaper editor. ... In 1875, Moberly Bell married Ethel Chataway. The couple had six children, two sons and four daughters. One of their daughters, Enid (1881-1967), later became the founding headmistress of Lady Margaret School. Enid's published books included Storming The Citadel: The Rise of the Woman Doctor in 1953 which focussed on Elizabeth Garrett Anderson and a biography of her father, titled The Life and Letters of C. F. Moberly Bell, in 1927, sixteen years after his death. Committed to social justice, in 1930 Enid and Anne Lupton were the committee member and hon-secretary respectively of the Fulham Housing Improvement Society. Concerned with establishing homes and "shelters", the association "issued shares and loan stock at a low rate of interest and with the income built new housing and re-conditioned old property which was then let at affordable rents. Properties were administered by lady managers on the principles laid down by Octavia Hill". In 1946, Enid wrote Hill's biography.
Subject and Association Keywordswomen's history
Subject and Association Keywordswomen's work & labour
Subject and Association Keywordswomen's suffrage, right to vote
Subject and Association Keywordssex trafficking, white slavery
Subject and Association Keywordssex work, prostitution, courtesans
Subject and Association Keywordssocial reform
Subject and Association Keywords(auto) biography
Named CollectionGlasgow Women's Library
Object TypeBook
Object numberGWL-2025-85-4
Spine LabelJosephine Butler by E. Moberly Bell
Copyright LicenceAll rights reserved