The Feminist Movement/Chapter 6
CHAPTER VI
WOMEN AND SOCIAL SERVICE
Contemporary with the struggle for education and for the opening of the liberal professions to women, there has been a large increase in the number and kind of their philanthropic and social activities. British women have the reputation, on the Continent and elsewhere, of being the first, amongst European women at least, to recognise their obligations to the poor and needy. If this be true it is an honourable distinction, and one of which they are justly entitled to be proud; but whether it be true or not that British women were the first women social reformers, it is certainly true that they have produced from amongst themselves a long line of women whose services to the State have proved invaluable.
The public activities of women during the last century and a half, may, for the purposes of a brief summary, be classified in the following manner. First come the women who have accomplished their deeds through personal influence upon the authorities, and who, through their own initiative, have contrived to have some glaring evil removed by those in power. To this class belong Mrs Elizabeth Fry and Miss Florence Nightingale. In the days of these two women, notably of Elizabeth Fry, Parliament was not elected by a popular vote. In 1793, when the little Quakeress was thirteen years of age, 160 persons returned 306 members, an absolute majority, to the House of Commons. She was fifty-two when, by the passing of the Reform Bill of 1832, the middle-class element in the country received its enfranchisement, and she had been dead twenty-one years when the first real measure of working-class enfranchisement was passed in 1867. In this same year, 1867, Florence Nightingale attained her forty-seventh year and had already accomplished her mighty work for the nation. Partly because politicians were not dependent upon large numbers of votes for their election, and partly because public opinion counted for less with them than it does to-day, it was possible for a clever, earnest woman to have her appeal listened to by statesmen and to accomplish more through her own personality than to-day, when every politician weighs his actions with a view to retaining the votes of his constituents.
The democratic franchise, then, was responsible more than anything else for the creation of a new class of reformers, women who now seek to influence authority by creating organisations which, in their turn, help to form the public opinion upon which reform depends. The work of these women may be looked for in the organisations which stand for temperance, purity, and peace; and in those which are against sweating, bad housing, unemployment, and under-feeding. Typical women reformers of this class, most of whom are alive to-day, are the Countess Dowager of Carlisle, President of the British Women's Temperance Association; Miss Octavia Hill, whose work for the slum-dweller is so widely-known and appreciated; the Duchess of Marlboro', advocate of lodging-houses for women; and the Hon. Mrs Bertrand Russell, whose Schools for Mothers (she was one of the pioneers of the idea) have been such a boon to thousands of ignorant and helpless young mothers amongst the poor. But to select any names in this connection is almost invidious, since the host of women workers of this sort is legion, and all are equally praiseworthy.
The third class of women social reformers includes all those who, on such public bodies as Boards of Guardians, School Boards (in Scotland), Education Authorities, Parish, Borough, and County Councils, for all of which women are eligible at the present time, have sought to represent as elected members the opinion of their constituents. It will be obvious that these three classes frequently overlap, that the propagandist and organiser is frequently the elected representative also, and that there is no necessary antagonism between the work of the elected person and the woman who prefers to use her private influence on behalf of social reform. A few words about some of Great Britain's most famous women reformers will not be out of place in an essay on feminism, though perhaps the connection between the work of these pioneers and the principle of sex-equality is not obvious. These words will at least demonstrate the inherent fitness of women to concern themselves with those matters which touch the race, and will for ever destroy the argument maintained only by the foolish, that women are devoid of public spirit, incapable of turning their minds to anything beyond the petty interests and concerns of ordinary everyday existence.
Elizabeth Gurney was bom in Norwich in the year 1780 of a well-known and highly-respected Quaker family. She was always a serious-minded child, much given to introspection, an idealist by every instinct of her being. When very young she came under the influence of a much-esteemed friend of the family who belonged to the straitest sect of the Society of Friends, wearing more sober garments, and observing a sterner code of manners than the parents of Elizabeth felt called upon to adopt. Like wise parents, however, they put no obstacles in the way of their child, who was permitted to follow her heart and conscience, and who voluntarily adopted the stern life of the more rigid Quakers. Her husband, Joseph Fry, whom she married when twenty years of age, agreed beforehand never to interfere with the free movements of her spirit, nor to step into the way of the accomplishment of whatever work she might feel called upon to do.
Although children were born to her in rapid succession, she found time for many pious works amongst the poor, providing them with food, clothing, and even education, for she founded a school on her country estate, to which many came to be taught. So divinely serene and pure was her character, that men and women of very different religious persuasions came together and worked in common, without bitterness, under her gracious influence.
Her good works were so many and so various that it is impossible to record them all; but the great work of her life, and that by which she is best known, she accomplished for the women prisoners of Newgate. She had heard in her own house, from people who had visited them, of the terrible conditions in which the women prisoners were kept, and she made up her mind then and there to go to the prison and to see if these things were true. She went, and found things worse than she had conceived in her worst imaginings. The stimulus given to the work of prison reform by the sainted John Howard had been exhausted, and the condition of British gaols at the time of Mrs Fry's visit to Newgate was everywhere a scandal and a disgrace to the community.
In Newgate prison Mrs Fry discovered the women prisoners crowded into two narrow wards and two small cells, the innocent and the guilty alike, those who had been tried and condemned, and those awaiting judgment—women of all ages and of every degree of depravity, and tender, innocent children and babes amongst them all. The following quotation tells the story:—'The prisoners were destitute of sufficient clothing, for there was not provision; in rags and dirt they slept upon the floor. In the same rooms they lived, cooked and washed. With the proceeds of their clamorous begging when any stranger appeared among them they purchased liquor from a tap in the prison. Spirits were openly drunk, and the ear was assailed by the most terrible language. Beyond the necessity for safe custody there was little restraint upon their communication with the world outside. Although military sentinels were posted on the leads of the prison, such was the lawlessness prevailing that the Governor always entered this portion of it with reluctance.'
Mrs Fry was horror-struck with what she saw. A domestic calamity prevented her from taking immediate action, but at a later date she paid a second visit to the prison, and made a suggestion to the women which they received with alacrity. She suggested that they should form a school for the children and select a teacher for them from amongst their number. This they did, appointing a gifted young Irishwoman to this curious post. Such was the success of this scheme that the women themselves clamoured for instruction and sought permission to enter the class with the children. This led to the formation of an Association for the Improvement of the Female Prisoners in Newgate. Rules for the government of this society were drawn up and submitted to the women for them to adopt or reject as they thought fit. The rules forbade swearing, drinking, lying, and abuse; but the women accepted them, and undertook to keep them and to see that they were kept. With the help of the authorities, who gave her permission to experiment, and of those good men and women who helped her in the work, Mrs Fry secured good clothing for the women, and appointed them to some useful work. An old disused laundry was granted to her for a workroom, and a matron was appointed to assist. For many weeks Mrs Fry and her devoted band of helpers almost lived in the prison, but the revolution they were the means of bringing about in the behaviour of those poor, unfortunate souls more than paid them for the temporary discomfort they endured. The women became quiet and orderly, decent and restrained to a degree that no man living had believed it possible for them to become. Triumphantly Mrs Fry pointed to the improvement a little easy employment had effected in the character of the women, and begged that this might be made a part of the ordinary prison scheme.
In time this was granted; as were other improvements which Mrs Fry suggested—more light, air, space, and privacy. Doubtless much remains to be done before this country equals the United States in its treatment of prisoners, but enough has been done through the efforts of a good woman to constitute a revolution in the management of prisoners.
But this was not all Mrs Fry accomplished, for her country's good. Convict-ships came in for a share of her sympathetic attention. The earliest institutions for the training of nurses were founded by her. She did more than any other individual to create the public opinion against hanging for offences against property; for it is well known that up to the beginning of the nineteenth century, to steal five shillings' worth of goods was an offence which was punishable by death. She was a pioneer of old-age pensions for worn-out servants. She was ever interested in the advancement of education, and provided lonely coastguardsmen with books.
Nobody was too insignificant, and nothing was too small for her that had for its object the improvement of a human being. The number of her activities would soon have daunted a woman of spiritual gifts fewer and less fine than her own. She spent herself freely and gave of her best. Nor did her deep interest in humanity at large cause her to forget the little circle at home of which she was the centre and the sun. She gave twelve children to her country and was a devoted mother to them all. The secret of it all lay in the depth and strength of her religious conviction, her grand faith in humanity, and a calm confidence in the ultimate good, which kept her as humble when crowned with honour as it kept her strong to bear the sights and sounds of human misery which she was so frequently called upon to witness.
Inevitably associated with Mrs Fry, since they attained to an equal glory of achievement, is Miss Florence Nightingale, the idol of so many British homes. She had the good fortune to possess a father who had no half-savage notion about the inferiority of women, and who gave to his daughter the best education at his command. He wisely left her free to adopt the life she liked, and did not compel her against her wish to live the useless, foolish life of the average early-Victorian maiden of means, stitching samplers or knitting woollen antimacassars. When Mr Nightingale returned from Italy to live on his Derbyshire estates, it became the daily delight of his daughter to minister to the sick and suffering who came within her circle of influence. She had a perfect passion for nursing, and, unhampered by parental disapproval, she gave herself during those years of young womanhood to studying, at home and abroad, the art and science of her chosen profession. It was whilst she pursued this study that she made the acquaintance of Mr Sydney Herbert, a friendship afterwards fraught with deepest consequence to them both; for when Mr Herbert became the head of the War Department, charged with the duty of removing the scandal created by the unhappy condition in which our wounded soldiers were permitted to lie during the Crimean war, it was to his friend Florence Nightingale that his thoughts turned when needing just the kind of help he knew she could give. It is pleasant to know that the same thought struck each of them at the same time, and that a letter from the War Minister to Miss Nightingale asking her to go to the Crimea, crossed in the post one from her to him offering her services. These services were accepted, and in 1854 she and her band of assistants set sail.
Can it be believed that this devoted woman was actually slandered and abused without mercy by a large part of the British public? and that even a portion of the Press lent itself to insulting suggestions? The idea of a woman of position and refinement turning nurse to rough soldiers appeared to many as an unthinkable and intolerable degradation of womanhood. Others, more coarse, loudly accused her of seeking a husband. This is always said of women who take any individual line in public work, and the thought that it has been said of the world's best women should console lesser ones of whom it is said, and help them to shoulder their burden bravely. It never seems to occur to these coarse-minded and ignorant critics that there are women in the world who set so high a price upon themselves that few men are qualified to claim them; or that a woman can put aside domestic happiness for herself in order to help to achieve the conditions of domestic happiness for other people.
When Miss Nightingale arrived at the scene of her duties, she discovered that the rumours of the sufferings of our men had not been exaggerated and that Britain did well to be angry. Our poor soldiers in those long hospital corridors at Scutari lay in filth and misery too bad for description. They were without the barest necessaries of comfort, hungry and cold, and having little care and attention paid to their wounds and their sickness. But these brave women, undaunted, got to work at once, and after some time brought order out of chaos, and some measure of comfort to the sufferers.
It is not possible to tell the splendid story in detail, but this much may be said: That it is to Florence Nightingale's great gifts as a leader, a commander, an organiser, that this country owes even more than to her work as a nurse. The sentimental figure of the Lady with the Lamp, created by poet and painter to be a household goddess for British homes, has obscured for many the more valuable part of her work. When her name is mentioned to-day, visions of a tender woman bending over the sick-bed, binding the broken limb or closing the dying eyes, a woman whose name soldiers breathe with their last breath, whose shadow on the wall they kiss, whose every movement they follow with their eyes, are what is seen in the mind's eye. But to other gifts, also, of hers the nation owes a debt—to her royal impatience of red-tape, stupid officialism, and lordly ignorance and incapacity, and to her wonderful powers as an organiser. Out of her way, whenever she could, she swept the follies that blocked it, and brought order, comfort, and efficiency, where before their opposites had made death and desolation supreme.
The saintly Josephine Butler could not be left out of any account of those women who have in a very special way served the best interests of society, though the nature of her work makes her story somewhat difficult to tell. Never a woman lived less fitted to endure without suffering the cruelties which a pioneer of public opinion must ever be prepared to endure, and which must inevitably be more than doubled when the cause is such as the one she chose to champion. This wife of a Liverpool professor was a beautiful creature, delicate and sensitive, cultivated and refined, driven by an inward prompting to take up the cause of humanity's castaways, the women of the streets. For seventeen years she toiled to have removed from our Statute Book certain Acts of Parliament which legalised vice. By these Acts of Parliament, known as the Contagious Diseases Acts, which were passed in 1866 and 1869, the authorities were empowered to imprison any of these women who refused to undergo an examination as to their physical condition. The first refusal meant imprisonment for a month with hard labour. The second offence was punished with three months' hard labour in prison. It was further provided that where a woman was wrongfully arrested and imprisoned, she could not recover damages if the official responsible for the wrongful arrest had offered a sum of money which, in the opinion of the magistrate, was sufficient to make due amends. It will readily be seen that many wrongful arrests would probably be made. It may not be so readily realised that many of the women preferred imprisonment with hard labour rather than submission to a degrading law.
It was to fight this horror, the creation by law of white slaves, the lowering of women to the status of chattels, things, that Mrs Josephine Butler gave the best years of her life. For seventeen years this magnificent heroine toiled, at home and abroad, before she won her reward. Often her life was in danger from the mob. More than once the building in which she spoke was attacked. Every insult that the mind of vicious man could conceive was hurled at her. Even those she sought to save from the most complete degradation often misunderstood her. But the working-men were mainly on her side—were not their daughters the victims of those terrible laws?—and in 1886 the Acts were repealed. The passing through the House of Commons this year, by an enormous majority, of an Act of Parliament to make it more difficult for the White Slave trader to carry on his infamous work of entrapping young girls for immoral purposes, and inflicting heavy penalties, including the lash, upon every one convicted of a first offence of this sort, is evidence of a rapid advance in public opinion against this class of crime, which may be due to the strenuous and devoted work of Mrs Josephine Butler and her associates.
The example of these three great women has been followed by many others, though in a smaller, quieter way. To Mrs Fry's initiative is owing the large number of consecrated women who devote themselves to the service of prisoners, either as police court missionaries and probation officers, or through such organisations as the Discharged Prisoners' Aid Society. To Miss Nightingale is owing the opening of a new profession for educated women and the raising of the status of nurses to a position for which the Sairey Gamps of the past could not have qualified. To Mrs Josephine Butler praise must be paid for a new attitude towards old offences, a growing conviction on the part of most that purity should be a masculine as well as a feminine virtue.
Throw a stone into a pool and circle after circle in ever-widening radius reveals the place where it struck the water. The social conscience which these women succeeded in developing has extended far beyond the limits that their special work prescribed. Never was any age, and certainly never was any country, so rich in workers for the common good as this age and this country. The number of associations for human betterment is legion. The British Women's Temperance Association is not the only women's Temperance Society, but it is typical. It is an association of women who are all pledged to abstain from the use of intoxicating beverages and to persuade others to do the same. Rosalind, Countess of Carlisle, is their head, and the number of their members is 155,000. The mainspring of their activity is the knowledge that women are the greatest sufferers from the drink habit, the conviction that the solution of every other problem is complicated by this question of intemperance, and the determination to save their children from the perils of a practice which, more than anything else, spoils the peace of households, and brings men and women to poverty and despair.
Thousands of women are labouring amongst the poor in one way or another. University women of the greatest gifts are giving up time and comfort to live amongst them in Settlements, seeking to bring a little joy into their bleak lives. Others, like the women of the Salvation Army, themselves frequently very poor, are seeking through religious channels to lift up the fallen and the despairing. These women are not afraid to go into the filthiest attics in the most dangerous neighbourhoods if they may do something to help and save the lost and degraded, and no words are too strong in which to express one's admiration for the unselfishness and tirelessness of these sisters of mercy. Other women are seeking to organise working girls and women into Trade Unions. Miss Mary M'Arthur is secretary of the Women's Trade Union League, and from her comes the news that there are now over 300,000 organised working girls in the country out of the total of 5,500,000 women and girls engaged in industrial occupations. Out of the powerlessness of the individual to command a decent standard of life for herself has grown this tremendous organisation, of which more must be said later. The Schools for Mothers which are now, happily, becoming so common, and the Women's League of Service, founded by Dr Willey, are seeking to prevent the awful infantile mortality so prevalent in crowded cities, by feeding half-starved prospective mothers and teaching them how to feed, clothe, wash, and dress their babies.
These are only a few of the social activities in which large numbers of women are engaged; but they are typical, and a knowledge of their existence will help people to understand one, at least, of the motives behind the conscious feminist: the imperative demand that all those weapons may be placed in her hand, and all those opportunities given to her, by which she may the better and the sooner save and succour the unfortunate.