Here we see a country dancing class in the Great Hall of the Northampton Institute. Founded in the 1890s to provide technical education and wholesome recreation for the young of Clerkenwell, by 1966 it had become City University.
The 1890s Great Hall was used for concerts, dances and various classes and had a swimming pool adjacent (both remodelled post-war).
The 1890s Great Hall was used for concerts, dances and various classes and had a swimming pool adjacent (both remodelled post-war).
“Every great city has one or more slums, where the working-class is crowded together. True, poverty often dwells in hidden alleys close to the palaces of the rich; but, in general, a separate territory has been assigned to it, where, removed from the sight of the happier classes, it may struggle along as it can. These slums are pretty equally arranged in all the great towns of England, the worst houses in the worst quarters of the towns; usually one- or two-storied cottages in long rows, perhaps with cellars used as dwellings, almost always irregularly built. These houses of three or four rooms and a kitchen form, throughout England, some parts of London excepted, the general dwellings of the working-class. The streets are generally unpaved, rough, dirty, filled with vegetable and animal refuse, without sewers or gutters, but supplied with foul, stagnant pools instead. Moreover, ventilation is impeded by the bad, confused method of building of the whole quarter, and since many human beings here live crowded into a small space, the atmosphere that prevails in these working-men's quarters may readily be imagined. Further, the streets serve as drying grounds in fine weather; lines are stretched across from house to house, and hung with wet clothing.”
Friederich Engels “Condition of the Working Class in England” - 1845.
Friederich Engels “Condition of the Working Class in England” - 1845.
Josephine Butler was a social reformer and champion of women’s rights. She is particularly noted for her work with prostitutes and was the most prominent figure in the successful campaign to repeal the Contagious Diseases Act in 1886.
The death of a child would destroy most people, but the tragedy acted as an inspiration for the Victorian reformer Josephine Butler. In the years following her five-year-old daughter Eva’s death, in 1864, the Northumberland aristocrat, who was related to the former prime minister Earl Grey, began to search the streets, workhouses and docks of Liverpool, giving shelter to impoverished women and young girls who had been forced into sex work. “I became possessed with an irresistible desire to go forth and find some pain keener than my own,” Butler wrote. “I had to meet with people more unhappy than myself. My sole wish was to plunge into the heart of human misery, and to say to afflicted people as I now knew I could: ‘I understand. I too have suffered.’” Butler is one of the great British feminists.
But in comparison to women such as Florence Nightingale and Mary Seacole she is barely known. She can and should be seen as a precursor of the suffragette movement, a woman who took on and changed a system designed to keep her down, and did so on behalf of women who were demonised, says Helen Mathers, author of Patron Saint of Prostitutes: Josephine Butler and a Victorian Scandal, a new biography of Butler. Why is she not seen as a national heroine? “To many, she was the reverse of a heroine because she fought for women’s rights at a time when men had all the power,” says Mathers. “But she never gave up, never backed down.
She forced society to face the sordid details of its abuse. No wonder she was unpopular, and that seems to have clung to her memory ever since.” Butler learned of what she called “the steel rape” of sex workers. Under the Contagious Diseases Act, police doctors carried out the most invasive genital examinations of any woman, from the age of 13, who might have a sexual infection. “It was legalised sexual assault,” Mathers says. “There was no treatment for sexually transmitted diseases. Women were held responsible for the consequences of gonorrhoea and tertiary syphilis.” Over a period of eight years, Butler campaigned to have the Contagious Diseases Act repealed, lobbying MPs in the Houses of Parliament and holding civic meetings across the country.
A respectable woman did not talk of such things in polite society, and she was met with hostility wherever she went. But, in 1886, Butler sat in the Commons’ public gallery to watch as the act was repealed, and the age of examination raised from 13 to 16 years. It was a small attitude shift for the powers that be, and a life-changing moment for the women Butler gave voice to. Yet Butler was under no illusion that legislation alone would solve the problem. She recognised that the public’s attitude towards young, poor girls remained condemnatory. And this, Mathers says, has not evolved: “Butler insisted that a change in the attitudes of men - the police, the judiciary and the government - was the only way to achieve real progress. She is a model for how moral purpose can create genuine, on-the-ground change and deserves to be remembered today, especially as reports warn that the sexual exploitation of vulnerable children is now the social norm in some parts of the UK.
The death of a child would destroy most people, but the tragedy acted as an inspiration for the Victorian reformer Josephine Butler. In the years following her five-year-old daughter Eva’s death, in 1864, the Northumberland aristocrat, who was related to the former prime minister Earl Grey, began to search the streets, workhouses and docks of Liverpool, giving shelter to impoverished women and young girls who had been forced into sex work. “I became possessed with an irresistible desire to go forth and find some pain keener than my own,” Butler wrote. “I had to meet with people more unhappy than myself. My sole wish was to plunge into the heart of human misery, and to say to afflicted people as I now knew I could: ‘I understand. I too have suffered.’” Butler is one of the great British feminists.
But in comparison to women such as Florence Nightingale and Mary Seacole she is barely known. She can and should be seen as a precursor of the suffragette movement, a woman who took on and changed a system designed to keep her down, and did so on behalf of women who were demonised, says Helen Mathers, author of Patron Saint of Prostitutes: Josephine Butler and a Victorian Scandal, a new biography of Butler. Why is she not seen as a national heroine? “To many, she was the reverse of a heroine because she fought for women’s rights at a time when men had all the power,” says Mathers. “But she never gave up, never backed down.
She forced society to face the sordid details of its abuse. No wonder she was unpopular, and that seems to have clung to her memory ever since.” Butler learned of what she called “the steel rape” of sex workers. Under the Contagious Diseases Act, police doctors carried out the most invasive genital examinations of any woman, from the age of 13, who might have a sexual infection. “It was legalised sexual assault,” Mathers says. “There was no treatment for sexually transmitted diseases. Women were held responsible for the consequences of gonorrhoea and tertiary syphilis.” Over a period of eight years, Butler campaigned to have the Contagious Diseases Act repealed, lobbying MPs in the Houses of Parliament and holding civic meetings across the country.
A respectable woman did not talk of such things in polite society, and she was met with hostility wherever she went. But, in 1886, Butler sat in the Commons’ public gallery to watch as the act was repealed, and the age of examination raised from 13 to 16 years. It was a small attitude shift for the powers that be, and a life-changing moment for the women Butler gave voice to. Yet Butler was under no illusion that legislation alone would solve the problem. She recognised that the public’s attitude towards young, poor girls remained condemnatory. And this, Mathers says, has not evolved: “Butler insisted that a change in the attitudes of men - the police, the judiciary and the government - was the only way to achieve real progress. She is a model for how moral purpose can create genuine, on-the-ground change and deserves to be remembered today, especially as reports warn that the sexual exploitation of vulnerable children is now the social norm in some parts of the UK.