Preventing prostitution: The ladies' association for the care and protection of young girls in Birmingham, 1887-1914

Women's History Review

Volumn 7, Issue 1, 1998, Pages 37-60

  Bartley, Paula ^a  

^a UNIVERSITY OF WOLVERHAMPTON   (United Kingdom)

Author keywords

[No Author keywords available]

Indexed keywords

EID: 0003094793     PISSN: 09612025     EISSN: None     Source Type: Journal    
DOI: 10.1080/09612029800200160     Document Type: Review

References (59)

1. Ellice Hopkins (1884) How to Start Preventive Work (London: Hatchards).
2. The Contagious Diseases Act (1864-1886) were an example of the state regulation of prostitution. The Contagious Diseases Acts did not apply to Birmingham although a few Nonconformists helped in the campaigns to abolish them. There is a considerable literature on the Contagious Diseases Acts. See, for example, P. McHugh (1980) Prostitution and Victorian Social Reform (London: Croom Helm)
3. and J. Walkowitz (1980) Prostitution and Victorian Society (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press).
4. Similarly, there is a growing body of literature on the reform of prostitutes, notably Linda Mahood (1990) The Magdalenes (London: Routledge). In contrast there are few mentions, and only in passing, of the prevention of prostitution.
5. See, for example, S. Jeffreys (1985) The Spinster and her Enemies (London: Pandora).
6. Jeffreys, The Spinster and her Enemies, pp. 17-18.
7. E. Bristow (1977) Vice and Vigilance, p. 98 (London: Gill & Macmillan).
8. See, for example, Walkowitz, Prostitution and Victorian Society.
9. See Arthur Marwick (1989, 3rd edn) The Nature of History, pp. 216-20 (London: Macmillan; first published 1970, London: Macmillan).
10. See, for example, P. Levine (1987) Victorian Feminism, Ch, 3 (London: Hutchinson)
11. See P. Levine (1990) Feminist Lives in Victorian England (Oxford: Basil Blackwell) for an analysis of a national women's network based upon familial and friendship groups.
12. See also J. Rendall (Ed.) (1987) Equal or Different, pp. 112-138 (Oxford: Basil Blackwell) for a discussion of the importance of women's friendships in political movement.
13. G. Parsons (1988) Religion in Victorian Britain, pp. 40-49 (Milton Keynes: Open University).
14. Michael Mason (1994) The Making of Victorian Sexual Attitudes, p. 89 (Oxford: Oxford University Press).
15. P. Hollis (1987) Ladies Elect, p. 265 (Oxford: Oxford University Press).
16. See Brian Harrison (1973) For Church, Queen and family: the Girls Friendly Society, Past and Present, No. 61.
17. Hopkins, How to Start Preventive Work.
18. See L, Bland (1987) The married woman, the new woman and the feminist: sexual politics of the 1890s, in J, Rendall (Ed.) Equal or Different, pp. 141-164 (Oxford: Basil Blackwell).
19. Carol Dyhouse (1981) Girls Growing Up in Late Victorian and Edwardian England, p. 109 (London: Routledge & Kegal Paul).
20. Mothers' Meetings in Birmingham at least were the invention of the Ladies' Association. See F. Prochaska (1989) A mother's country: mothers' meetings and family welfare in Britain, 1850-1950, History, 74, p. 380.
21. Prochaska also claims that the Mothers' Meetings were ultimately unsuccessful in breaking down class barriers. (Prochaska, 'A mother's country', pp. 389-399).
22. NUWW [National Union of Women Workers] Quarterly Magazine, March 1892, p. 21.
23. Drawing room meetings were regular events. In 1887 Miss Emily Janes spoke at thirty drawing room meetings in Edgbaston alone. Such meetings were probably regarded as recruitment meetings because several women joined the MEB after each one (BLACPYG Annual Reports, 1887-1900).
24. The Friend, 1 May 1914.
25. BLACPYG Annual Report, 1891-1914.
26. Society of Friends Minute Books of Women's Monthly Meetings, 1880-1914.
27. BLACPYG Annual Reports, 1887-1903.
28. NUWW Quarterly Magazine, June 1891.
29. Miss Nunneley, NUWW Annual Conference, 1890, p. 23.
30. Of course, many working-class people would have subscribed to a similar moral code. See C. Chinn (1988) They Worked All Their Lives, pp. 144-146 (Manchester: Manchester University Press) for a fuller discussion of working-class morality in Birmingham.
31. This fear was widespread amongst some of the middle-class. See Chinn, They Worked All Their Lives, p. 98 for some Birmingham examples. One of the explanations for the spread of the use of contraception amongst the factory workers was that women exchanged information on the shop floor.
32. See A McLaren (1978) Birth Control in Nineteenth Century England, pp. 215-231 (New York: Holmes & Meier) for a discussion of birth control and the working class in England.
33. See Hollis, Ladies Elect, pp. 267-271 for a discussion of the role of women Guardians in the rescue of unmarried mothers, nationally.
34. C. R. Elrington (1964) Local government and public services, in W. B. Stephens (Ed.) A History of the County of Warwick, p. 324 (London: Oxford University Press).
35. NUWW Quarterly Magazine, December 1892, p. 10.
36. P. Thane (1978) Women and the Poor Law in Victorian and Edwardian England, History Workshop Journal, Autumn, p. 39.
37. See R. Kunzel (1993) Fallen Women, Problem Girls, who draws attention to the need by the American authorities to contain the sexuality of single mothers.
38. See C. Smart (1992) Regulating Womanhood (for a discussion of marriage as a form of control over women).
39. Englishwoman's Review, 15 April 1892, p. 110.
40. Pat Thane's 'Women and the Poor Law in Victorian and Edwardian England', pp. 39-44 has demonstrated that the values and attitutudes of the PLAA 1834 were still held in later "Victorian and Edwardian England.
41. See Thane, 'Women and the Poor Law in Victorian and Edwardian England', pp. 28-51
42. NUWW Conference, 1910.
43. BLACPYG Annual Report, 1892, p. 14.
44. Englishwoman's Review, 14 July 1888, p. 324.
45. BLACPYG Annual Report, 1888.
46. Helen Newill, Minutes of Evidence, Royal Commission on the Poor Laws, 1909, p. 402.
47. This was probably, of course, a euphemism for virginal, NUWSS Quarterly Magazine, December 1892, p. 6
48. See M Cale Saved from a Life of Vice and Crime: reformatory and industrial schools for girls, 1854-1901. D.Phil., University of Oxford, 1993, for a discussion of this in relation to industrial schools for girls.
49. BLACPG Annual Report, 1905.
50. See P. Horn (1988) The education and employment of working-class girls, 1870-1914, History of Education, 17, p. 71, for a discussion on working-class education for girls.
51. BLACPYG Annual Reports, 1907-1912.
52. Swimming lessons were paid for by Miss Pugh and taught by Miss Miller (BLACPYG Annual Reports, 1913-14).
53. BLACPYG Annual Reports, 1912.
54. BLACPYG Annual Reports, 1908-14.
55. F. Prochaska (1980) Women and Philanthropy in Nineteenth Century England, p. 148 (Oxford: Clarendon Press).
56. P. Horn's (1975) The Rise and Fall of the Victorian Servant, p. 76 (London: Gill & Macmillan) has shown that lower middle-class families would often employ a nursemaid to look after their children. The job of the maid would be to dress the children, play with them and take them for walks. Nannies were only employed in richer establishments.
57. BLACPYG Annual Reports, 1906, p. 8.
58. Birmingham Daily Post, 10 March 1909, p. 3.
59. Organising recreation for the working class was quite common. For instance, Lady Charlotte, in Wales, took her male workforce to the Great Exhibition of 1851. See A V. John (1991) Our Mothers' Land, (University of Wales Press).