Josephine Butler

Josephine Butler by George Richmond, 1851

Josephine Elizabeth Butler (nee 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 abolition of child prostitution, and an end to human trafficking of young women and children into European prostitution.

Quotes

• I became possessed with an irresistible desire to go forth and find some pain keener than my own — to meet with people more unhappy than myself (for I knew there were thousands of such). I did not exaggerate my own trial; I only knew that my heart ached night and day, and that the only solace possible would seem to be to find other hearts which ached night and day, and with more reason than mine. I had no clear idea beyond that, no plan for helping others; my sole wish was to plunge into the heart of some human misery, and to say (as I now knew I could) to afflicted people, "I understand. I, too, have suffered."
  • Butler on her reason for getting involved in controversial social campaigns after the accidental death of her young daughter in 1864 (1890)

• We read of strong men bowed down with woe, weeping as women weep, turning homewards in the hear-sickness of unavailing search, or with a certainty worse than suspense.
  • "The Lovers of the Lost," The Contemporary Review 13 (1870)

• It is well that we should understand clearly the illegal character of the Acts we oppose. I have been the more deeply impressed with the importance of this aspect of the matter, by reading the almost universal and powerful testimony of our great lawyers and historians to the danger of introducing, in any single instance, a lax, vicious, or unjust principle into our criminal code, and to the moral and social evils which such an introduction necessarily involves. Niebuhr, De Tocqueville, Guizot, Hallam, Lieber, Creasy, Mackintosh, Blackstone, and a host of others, have again and again pointed out that upon the justice and purity of the penal legislation of a country the political wellbeing of that country mainly depends. [...]
  ...when it comes to a matter of such awful seriousness as that of a woman’s honour, involving loss of character, which character is often, to a poor woman, her sole earthly property, her only possession and capital; involving, moreover, the penalties of personal assault, of a nature inadmissible hitherto in law even in the case of proved outrageous guilt; of imprisonment and of public registration as an infamous person; when it comes to this, I say, it is an awful thing to put the accusation in the power of the executive — that executive being the secret police, paid by the State, for the sole business of detecting and hunting down suspected or unchaste women. Again, the evil is aggravated by the fact that no other witness to the guilt of the woman is required, except the government spy, and that he, by this law, is not required to bring forward any overt act on the part of his prisoner, or one iota of positive proof, but is only required to believe and swear that the woman has a certain purpose or intention.
  • From a speech against the Contagious Diseases Acts at Craigie Hall, Edinburgh, Scotland (24 Feb 1871)

• Hearing, one day, that a poor young girl of her acquaintance had been enticed to a fashionable house of ill-fame, she ran to the place, entered the house, and claimed the girl. She found there several gentlemen of the Court, whom she rebuked with a severity, the justice of which they confessed by sudden and precipitate flight; she then took the young girl by the hand and led her from the abode of shame.
  • "Some Thoughts on the Present Aspect of the Crusade," Liverpool (1874)

• We all feel now that the time is come when we must appeal to the judgement of the public, so as to bring the condemnation of public opinion to bear upon these men, seeing that our laws give us no hold whatever upon them, and are not likely to do, so long as our legislators continue to refuse us the small boon we ask — legal protection for the young up to the age of 16.
  • Butler on the campaign to raise the age of consent in England for girls from 12 to 16 (c.1885)

• Those who have read the Pall Mall Gazette are aware that a "Secret Commission" was formed of persons who had sufficient courage and Christian charity to "descend into hell" for the salvation of the victims of organized vice, and for the exposure and rebuke of the crimes perpetuated in that "Inferno." ... In the course of our terrible researches, we came daily across immoral agents who were offering innocent little girls for sale. We intercepted some such, and in the good purpose and motive of proving the facility of with which such children can be bought for diabolical purposes, we ourselves bought children.
  • Excerpt from a letter to the Winchester Observer and Country News (15 Aug 1885)

• Mr. Justice Lopes: Why did you refuse information to the police?
  Butler: I always refuse information to the police. (Laughter)
  Lopes: That quite answers my question, I admit. (Laughter) I hope if you always refuse information to the police, you do not refuse it to the law.
  Butler: No, I do not. (Laughter)
  • A back-and-forth with the judge during Butler's testimony in the Eliza Armstrong case, as quoted in The Birmingham Press (3 Nov 1885)

• It is a fact, that numbers even of moral and religious people have permitted themselves to accept and condone in man what is fiercely condemned in woman.
  • "The Double Standard of Morality," The Philanthropist (Oct 1886)

• I was in Ireland during that famine year. As a young girl I had no conception of the full meaning of the misery I saw around me, yet it printed itself upon my brain and memory. I can recollect being awakened in the early morning by a strange sound like the croaking or chattering of many birds. Some of the voices were hoarse and almost extinguished by the faintness of famine; and on looking out of my window I recollect seeing the garden and fields in front of the house completely darkened with a population of men, women, and children squatting, in rags; uncovered skeleton limbs protruding everywhere from their wretched clothing, and clamorous, though faint voices uplifted for food...
  • "Our Christianity Tested by the Irish Question" (1887)

• This one object and work of my life (the promotion of purity) is now sought to be be discredited for the first time by well-known leaders of women's movements. It is openly opposed by Lady Henry Somerset, who has, as you are aware, put forward a scheme for the regulation of male and female irregularity which goes beyond the Contagious Diseases Act formerly in force in England in immorality and indelicacy. [...] There is war now between women and women, and we are coming into searching and sifting times — times in which our personal likings and even strong friendships may have to give way before the winnowing blast which shall separate the wavering from the steadfast in this righteous work.
  • A letter from Butler to attendees at the fourth international convention of the Woman's Christian Temperance Union in Toronto, Canada (Oct 1897)

• I saw the whole intent and purpose of our grand Constitution was to assure to each man, and equally to each woman, the full recognition of individual rights... I used to pass whole nights without sleep, thinking and mourning over the whole question.
  • Quoted by The Daily Telegraph in Butler's obituary (2 Jan 1907)

About Josephine Butler

• She won enormous support over the years from individual politicians, radicals and medical people, but also became the target of violent hatred. There were several lucrative brothels in Liverpool and those who profited did not take kindly to Butler's interference in their trade. She was once pelted with cow dung by pimps at a rally she was addressing. Another time, a group of men smashed the windows of a hotel where she was staying, trying to get to her and threatening to set it on fire.
• In 1880 Butler turned her attention to child prostitution, and was instrumental in the campaign to raise the age of consent from 12 to 16 to protect girls from sexual abuse.
  • Julie Bindel "A heroine for our age", The Guardian (21 September 2006)
  • On Butler's campaigns against prostitution, then legal in the UK.