note to the 'Alpine Journal' (vol. xv. 1892), he wrote that the 'centres' were from various causes almost totally unknown to him, that his acquaintance with the chain of 'Mont Blanc was founded on dim schoolboy recollections of a walk round the lower cols in days when the Alpine Club itself did not exist; that he had not seen Zermatt for nearly a quarter of a century, while Grindelwald remained to him merely a place on the map. In 1886, when he became a member of the Alpine Club, he brought to it an intimate knowledge—beyond challenge by any mountaineer in Europe—of the Oetzthal Alps, which he first attacked in 1874, and revisited many times, with an ardour that was almost a passion, up to 1890. His attitude towards climbing for mere display may be gathered from a single sentence in a note of this last expedition, in which he and his companion were badly baffled by fogs. On one occasion they missed the peak of their assault and wandered on in a mist until 'We found ourselves on the top of something.' The mist lifted and 'it became clear that we had strayed on to the top of the highest and most northerly of the Hennesiegelköpfe. When we got back, Praximarer (the landlord), who is probably as good an authority as anyone, said that he knew of no previous ascent, nor can I conceive any reason why there should ever have been one.' Butler became editor of the 'Alpine Journal' in 1890, and supervised it until the close of 1893 (vols. xv. and xvi.). He delighted in the dinners of the A.D.C. (Alpine Dining Club). He was a member of the band of 'Sunday Tramps' which (Sir) Leslie Stephen organised in 1882, ranking number ten on the original list (cf. Maitland's Life of Stephen).
Butler died at Weybridge on 26 Feb. 1910, and was buried at Wantage. He married on 6 April 1875, Mary, daughter of William Gilson Humphrey, vicar of St. Martin's-in-the-Fields, and left issue one son and six daughters.
A small oil portrait by Lady Holroyd belongs to Mrs. Butler.
[Life and Letters of William John Butler, ed. A. J. Butler, 1897; Alpine Journal, vols. xv. xvi. and to 1890 passim; Maitland, Life of Sir Leslie Stephen; The Times, 28 Feb. and 8 March 1910; Athenæum, 5 March 1910; Cambridge Review, notice by Sir Frederick Pollock, March 1910; Eton College Chronicle and Eton Register; private letters and records.]
BUTLER, Mrs. JOSEPHINE ELIZABETH (1828–1906), social reformer, born on 13 April 1828 at Millfield Hill, Glendale, Northumberland, was fourth daughter of John Grey of Dilston [q. v.] by his wife Hannah Annett, whose family was of Huguenot extraction. Much influenced in girlhood by her father's strong religious and ethical convictions, she was educated at home, save for a short period at the boarding-school of a Miss Tydey at Newcastle-on-Tyne. She studied in girlhood much Italian and English literature, and read translations of the fathers. On 8 Jan. 1852 she married George Butler [q. v. Suppl. I], then engaged in tuition at Oxford. The first five years of her married life were spent in Oxford, whence she moved successively to Cheltenham, Liverpool, and Winchester, where her husband held in turn educational or ecclesiastical appointments.
From an early period Mrs. Butler, moved by what she believed to be a divine call, devoted her energies to the moral elevation of her sex. She supported in its early stages the movement for the higher education of women (cf. her introduction to Woman's Work and Woman's Culture, 1869), but after the accidental death by a fall before her eyes of her youngest child and only daughter, she concentrated her efforts on the protection and reclamation of women subjected to vicious influences. Having settled in Liverpool in 1866, she visited women in the workhouse and helped to establish homes and refuges for the drifting population of workgirls and fallen women. Many of the latter were with her husband's assent received into their home. At the end of 1869 she engaged in the agitation then just begun for the repeal of the Contagious Diseases Acts of 1864, 1866, and 1869, which gave a legal sanction to vice by placing women living immoral lives under police supervision while exposing them to cruel injustice. These measures only applied to seaports and garrison towns, but their extension to the whole country was recommended by their more extreme advocates. After an agitation for repeal of the Acts had been begun by Daniel Cooper, secretary of the Rescue Society, the Ladies' National Association for Repeal was formed in 1869, with Mrs. Butler as hon. secretary, and it gained influential support not only from Englishwomen like Florence Nightingale [q. v. Suppl. II], Harriet Martineau [q. v.], and Lydia Becker [q. v. Suppl. I] (Daily News, 31 Dec. 1869), but from foreigners like Mazzini and Victor Hugo. For sixteen years Mrs. Butler was indefatigable in the
