The Bristol Female Mission Society, 1859-1884: Prevention or
Cure?
Gill James, PhD student, University of the West of England
This case study was prompted by my reading two articles for the MA module
‘The Bristol Poor’. The first was the chapter on ‘Immorality and the Poor’ in the
Report of the Committee appointed by the Bishop of Bristol to Inquire into the
Condition of The Bristol Poor, which was published in 18841. The second was
Paula Bartley’s essay ‘Preventing Prostitution: the Ladies Association for the
Care and Protection of Young Girls in Birmingham, 1887-1914’, which was
published in 1998 in the Women’s History Review.2
In the Report of the Committee there was a description of the work done by the
two Branches of the Bristol Female Mission Society. This attracted my attention
for two reasons. Firstly because it was noted that the Mission was run by women
for women and without male assistance. And secondly that one of the aims of
the Mission was to prevent young girls from becoming prostitutes through a
programme of education, training and by the provision of a support network. A
visit to the Bristol Record Office revealed that the Mission had begun this work in
1859 more than a quarter of century before the Ladies’ Association, was
established in Birmingham.
Report of the Committee to ‘Inquire into the Condition of the Bristol Poor, 22 December 1884’
(London, P.S. King and Bristol, W. Lewis & Sons, 1885).
2 Bartley, Paula, ‘Preventing Prostitution: the Ladies Association for the Care and Protection of
Young Girls in Birmingham, 1877-1914 Women’s History Review, Vol. 7. No. 1, (1998), pp. 37-60.
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Paula Bartley records that Ladies Associations sprang up all over the country in
the 1880s to prevent prostitution by providing educational groups, night shelters,
clubs, hostels and registry offices and training homes for domestic servants.3
The work of the Ladies Associations sounded very familiar from my reading of
the Bristol Female Mission’s Annual Reports. Another document that we had
discussed in the ‘Bristol Poor’ was a report of a paper read by Frances Power
Cobbe at the Meeting of the Association for the Promotion of Social Science held
at Dublin in August 1861 and published in the English Woman’s Journal on
November 1 in the same year. Entitled, The Preventive Branch of the Bristol
Female Mission it described the work being done by the Mission in Bristol, in
accordance to a plan conceived by Miss Stephen of Clifton. The article claimed
that this work was revolutionary, for rather than helping girls who had already
succumbed; the Mission aimed to ‘save them from falling’.
Background:
Bristol in the 1820s had the unenviable reputation of being one of the most overcrowded cities in England. In the inner city courts, houses originally built for one
family, were occupied by as many families as there were rooms, in severe cases,
it was reported, that a single room could house several families.4 These rooms
lacked a proper water closet, had no drains and were supplied with water by a
single tap that often served the needs of the whole court. Unemployment was
3
Bartley, Paula, Prostitution: Prevention and Reform in England 1860-1914 (London, Routledge,
2000).
4 The Report of the Conditions of the Bristol Poor, ‘Dwellings of the Poor’, page 34
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high, and outdoor relief for a man, wife and 5 children was 10s 1d a week, put of
which rent could account for as much as 3s 6d.5 In response to this
overcrowding a ‘few conscientious non-conformist employers’ founded the City
Mission in 1827, with the aim of improving the living conditions for the poorer
inhabitants of Bristol.6 Their wives formed a Ladies’ Committee and in 1851
appointed a female missionary to work amongst the poor women in St Judes. In
1855 the Ladies Committee separated from the City Mission. Founded as the
Bristol Female Mission Society it widened its scope and became a non-sectarian
society.7 It is the work of the Mission that this study will discuss.
That prostitution was a growing problem in Bristol in the early years of the
nineteenth-century is supported by the number of institutions and societies
formed with the aim of the moral reformation of those considered to have ‘fallen’
or to be in danger of ‘falling’. In Bristol a Female Penitentiary or Magdalen
House was established in 1800 for the reception of females, who, ‘having strayed
from the paths of virtue, desire to recover their lost character’.8 In 1813 the
Bristol Female Refuge Society opened a Home in Marlborough Hill. It was
founded for the ’same benevolent purposes’ as the Penitentiary and provided
shelter for women rescued from a life of sin.9 In Bristol, as in other towns and
cities throughout Britain, the primary goal of such institutions was to provide an
‘Waifs and Wanderers in St Jude’s’, The Homes of the Bristol Poor by the Special
Commissioner of the Bristol Mercury (Bristol, William Lewis, 1884), p. 26.
6 Elm House: 1855 – 1955: The History of a Mission. (BRO 41810/3/1).
7 Ibid.
8 Report of the Committee to Inquire into the condition of The Bristol Poor, 22 December 1884, p.
216.
9 Ibid, p. 217.
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alternative to the streets, prison or the poorhouse for the newly fallen and victims
of seduction. There was never any intention of rescuing women well established
in the profession, or those prostitutes with criminal records.10 In this respect the
Bristol Female Mission was no different, its missionaries aimed to encourage the
‘newly fallen’ to voluntarily enter the Penitentiary in Upper Maudlin Street. They
did, however, work with the sick, diseased and dying, providing nursing care and
encouraging repentance for their lives of sin.
Following its break with the City Mission the Bristol Female Mission Society
employed two missionaries to work amongst the prostitutes in St James, St
Judes and St Michael’s, the three Bristol parishes identified as having the highest
number of brothels and the worst problems with prostitution in the entire City.11
Besides attempting to ‘rescue’ young women, the two missionaries had been
instrumental, due to their knowledge of the areas, in preventing several young
and innocent girls, who had come to Bristol in search of work, from falling into the
clutches of known ‘pimps and madams’.12 These young women were, the
Committee decided, vulnerable because they lacked employment so a decision
was made to establish a Free Register Office. 13 This was opened in January
1859 at 3 Park Row and operated as an employment agency, finding ‘suitable’
candidates employment as domestic servants.
10
Linda Mahood, The Magdalenes: Prostitution in the Nineteenth Century (London, Routledge,
1990), p. 159-60; Stanley Nash, ‘Prostitution and Charity: The Magdalen Hospital, A Case Study’
Journal of Social History Vol. 17.4 (1983), p. 619.
11 ‘Waifs and Wanderers in St Jude’s’.
12 The Centenary Report of Elm House: Home of Bristol Mission to Women and Girls (1955), p. 3.
13 The Fourth Annual Report of The Bristol Female Mission Society (1859), p. 4.
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For the redemptive work to succeed the Committee realized that the girls must
not only be trained, outfitted and placed in suitable posts, but they must also be
visited regularly in their situations, received back if they failed (in one case this
happened 10 times) and given a home to come to in their free time, or in times of
sickness or adversity.14 Thus the Mission became both parent and friend to the
girls. The Committee recognized that these girls had to struggle not only against
circumstances but also against faults of character and lack of early training.
Without continued encouragement and personal help from the Mission, the
Committee concluded that most girls would not avoid the temptation to sin.
It is the supervision of the young women that makes the work of the Mission
stand out from other philanthropic provision in Bristol. Not only were the young
women visited monthly to ensure that they were being properly supervised by
their employer, but the Mission also provided other benefits to those in who
stayed in employment. At the Free Register Office girls could purchase, for the
cost of the materials, suitable clothes and attend classes in religious instruction.
The Mission also offered a savings scheme which paid interest on the money
banked at the rate of 2d for every shilling saved, a sick club and a Friendly
Society which organized regular social events, summer outings, and winter tea
parties and for those that remained in continuous employment a cash prize.15
Power Cobbe, Frances, ‘The Preventive Branch of the Bristol Female Mission’ The English
Woman’s Journal Vol. VIII No. 46 (1 November 1861) pp 145-151.
15 Centenary Report, p. 4.
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That domestic service was seen as the most appropriate work for respectable
lower class women by most philanthropic societies is difficult to understand. G. P
Merrick, a clergyman involved in rescue work amongst the ‘fallen’ in London
between 1870-90, kept records of the women he interviewed. His findings
suggest that somewhere between 40% and 50% of patients in Lock Hospitals
had been employed as domestic servants before becoming prostitutes.16 There
was, however, little choice for most women, for factory work could be irregular
and poorly paid and like shop work left young women unsupervised in the
evenings, a particular worry as evenings were considered to be time that young
women were at most risk of falling into bad company.
In the first year of operation, nearly six hundred girls applied to the Free Register
Office of which just over 200 ‘suitable’ young women had been found
employment. The success of the Free Register Office, however, highlighted an
unforeseen problem. The Matron in charge, Mrs. Bartholomew, reported to the
Committee that many of the applicants were ‘ignorant of duties expected of them
in domestic service’.17 To remedy this shortcoming, the Mission’s Committee
resolved to open a Training School, which was to be called the Preventive Home,
where girls between the ages of 12 and 16 would be taught the duties expected
of a domestic servant.18 This training would, the Committee believed, prevent
these girls from falling prey to prostitution. Opened in late 1859 at 4 Lower
16
G P Merrick, Work Amongst the Fallen as Seen in the Prison Cell (London, Ward & Lock,
1891).
17 Power Cobbe, ‘The Preventive Branch’, p. 148.
18 The First Report of the Preventive Branch (1861), p. 8.
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College Green the Home provided accommodation for 18 girls at any one time.
Thus by 1860 the Mission was not only seeking out young women who had
fallen but was also providing an alternative to the streets and brothels by training
and finding employment for the vulnerable, whilst at the same time helping to
fulfill the almost insatiable demand for efficient and inexpensive servants in
Victorian Bristol.19
The Preventive Branch of the Mission took on the responsibility for running both
the Free Register Office and the Preventive Home, leaving the Rescue Branch to
continue its work amongst the prostitutes in the brothels and the sick in the
workhouses and hospitals. Between 1859 and 1884 around eighty-one thousand
visits were made by the missionaries, a figure which equates to around 10-20
visits per day depending on the number of missionaries employed.20 These
women worked a six day week, from early morning to late into the night for a
salary of £50 a year. The success rate for the Rescue Branch appears relatively
very small with just over one thousand two hundred young women helped in the
21 years for which records survive, this equates to an average of 58 per year,
compared to an average of 114 girls who passed through the Preventive Home
each year. The majority of those helped either entered the Penitentiary, The
Temporary Home in Southwell Street or were, occasionally, found employment
as domestic servants under the auspices of the Free Register Office.
F. K. Prochaska ‘Female Philanthropy and Domestic Service in Victorian Britain’ Bulletin of the
Institute of Historical Research, Vol. 54 (1981), pp. 79 and 155.
20 The Annual Reports give details of visits made in each year.
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An additional activity of the missionaries was to encourage couples living in sin to
marry. In 1864 the Committee reported that an unmarried couple who kept a
brothel, had been ‘helped’ to give up their life of vice, marry and were now ‘living
a good Christian life’ and that their home was ‘respectable and happy’. 21 The
Committee always noted its successes in such terms, reporting that those who
accepted the hand of friendship were ‘grateful, penitent, remorseful, repentant
and were ‘showing true sorrow for their previous life’, whilst those who refused
help were ‘willful, ungrateful, bad-tempered, depraved, proud, and ‘haughty of
spirit”.22 In the use of such language the Ladies of the Committee showed a
typical middle-class view of those below, there was no acceptance that the
working-classes had a different set of values. Moreover the Ladies expected
gratitude and were hurt and upset when spurned, this attitude also created a
dependency that appears to have been common to all Magdalen provision. (Both
Frances Finnegan and Linda Mahood noted the same in their work of similar
provisions in Glasgow and York.23)
The BFMS was supported entirely by private subscription, donations and
collections, with the majority of subscribers being middle-class married women.24
The sums raised were quite considerable. The rescue branch’s income
21
The Ninth Report of the Rescue Branch, (1864), p. 5.
The Fourth Report of the Rescue Branch, pp. 7-8.
23 Frances Finnegan, Poverty and Prostitution: A study of Victorian prostitutes in York
(Cambridge, Cambridge University Press, 1979); Mahood, Linda, The Magdalenes: Prostitution in
the Nineteenth Century (London, Routledge, 1990).
24 The amounts given and the subscriber’s names were noted in the Annual Reports.
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averaged £123 per year and the preventive branch £514. From the early 1870s
the Rescue Branch’s income barely covered the salaries of the two missionaries.
This situation led to the Committee’s recommendation not to replace one of the
missionaries in April 1884. 25 In contrast the income of the Preventive Branch
never dropped below £500 after 1869. Lynda Nead suggests that this was
because many Victorians felt more willing to contribute to towards preventing
prostitution than rescuing those who had already sinned. It was felt that the
fallen were likely to return to prostitution, thus wasting time, effort and money.26
In 1861 the Mission expanded its operations by opening a Factory Home at
Barton Hill and a Free Register Office in St. Phillips. Unfortunately both were to
close in the same year.27 The Factory Home, next to a Cotton Factory, where
‘girls totally unfit for service’ had been found employment, aimed to provide
protection in the potentially dangerous evenings. Unfortunately the lack of cotton
imports due to the Federal blockage on the Confederate Southern ports forced
the factory to close. Whilst the running costs for the St Phillips’ Free Register
Office proved to be too great for the numbers registering for work. In contrast the
success of the Preventive Home meant that by 1862 the house at Lower College
Green had become too small for the numbers applying for admittance. So the
Mission purchased larger premises in Fort Lane, off St Michael’s Hill.28 The new
25
The Twenty-ninth Report of the Rescue Branch (1884), p. 3.
Lynda Nead, Myths of Sexuality (Oxford, Blackwell, 1988), particularly Chapter 5 ‘The prostitute
as Social Victim’, pp. 138-164.
27 The Second Report of the Preventive Branch (1862).
28 The Fifth Report of the Preventive Branch (1865), p. 21.
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home, Royal Fort House could accommodate upwards of 42 girls.29 It continued
to function there until 1937, although latterly as a home for mentally deficient
girls.30 Girls were admitted to the Home by either recommendation or more
usually from attending a Probationary Sewing Class held at Royal Fort daily
between 2 and 4 p.m. (There was another class held at Lewins Mead on two
afternoons a week for the ‘shoeless unable to go as far as College Green’).31
Also in 1862 the Register Office moved to 8 Lower Park Row. Within these
larger premises a Free Lodging House was established, which provided
accommodation between jobs or in times of sickness for the young women in the
care of the Mission.32
Thus the aim of the Preventive Branch was to train young girls carefully in
domestic service, including laundry and sewing, and to provide lessons in the
three R’s. The Ladies of the Committee were closely involved in the lessons
because it was felt that the girls would gain much advantage from contact with
educated ladies, whose example was considered to be very necessary for the
girls training.33 The Home’s laundry and sewing class also provided much
needed income. The sewing class provided the ready made clothes that were
sold at the Register Office and the laundry provided not only a service for local
families at ‘very competitive rates’, but provided a similar service at cost for the
29
1881 Census Return, RG11, Piece, 2486, Folio 55.
Centenary Report, p 4.
31 The Thirteenth Report of the Preventive Branch (1872), p. 26; The First Report of the
Preventive Branch (1861), p. 10.
32 The Third Report of the Preventive Branch (1863), p. 13.
33 The Thirteenth Report of the Preventive Branch (1872), p. 26
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Ladies of the Committee. This service, however, depended very much on the
abilities of the girls in the Home at the time and on several occasion the Ladies
were asked to make other arrangements for their household’s linen.
The Mission Committee
Who were these women who gave so much time to the work of the Mission?
From the Censuses I have identified the members of both Committees and some
of the Founding Committee. For the most part, as you can see from the
Handouts of The Founding Committee, 1855, the Preventive Branch 1874 and
the Rescue Branch 1879 the Committees were drawn from the upper and middle
classes. Most of the single women ran their own households, either alone or with
relatives; all had servants and were of independent means.34 The married
committee members were the wives of merchants, ministers and professional
men and employed at least two servants. Mrs. Annie May, a member of the
founding Committee had six indoor servants and employed a coachman.35
Relatively few of the BFMS’s Committee members belonged to the LNA, the
exceptions being Mrs. J. P. Budgett, Miss Leonard and Miss Marriott who also
sat on the Lock Hospital Committee.36 Also none of the members of either
Census Enumerators’ Notebooks, 1861: RG9. Pieces 1721, 1722, 1723 and 1729; 1871:
RG10. Pieces 2531, 2532, 2533 and 2534; 1881: RG11. Pieces 2475, 2476, and 2486.
35 1881 Census: RG11, Piece 2502, p. 60
36 It has not been possible within the time constraints of the study to make comparisons of the
BFMS Committee with that of the Ladies Committee of the Female Penitentiary in Upper Maudlin
Street.
34
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Committee are mentioned by Heloise Brown as active in the Suffrage Movement
in Bristol.37
Staffing was always a problem for both Branches; the Annual Reports frequently
mention the need to find new employees. The longest serving missionary was
Miss Hannah Denyer who worked for the Mission for six years (1858-1864) – she
was forced to resign her position due to ill-health, the most common reason for
missionaries to leave the Mission employ.38 When in 1873 Miss Eliza Leonard
resigned as both Secretary and Superintendent for the Preventive Home there
followed an unsettled period. During 1874 the Head Matron of the Home
changed twice, unfortunately the Annual Report for 1875 is missing, but from the
1876 report it appears that the problems of appointing a suitable Head Matron
were ongoing. Miss Talbot who had replaced Miss Leonard as Secretary and
Superintendent resigned in 1876 and the Head Matron (not named) was replaced
by the second Matron.39 This unsettled period ended1877 when Miss Gertrude
Savill, who had been on the Preventive Branch Committee since 1874 became
Secretary and Superintendent, a position she was to hold for over twenty years. 40
She was assisted throughout this period by Rose Coleman and Head Matron
Blanche Whiteway.41 Unfortunately the Reports do not tell us what the problems
Heloise Brown, Routes into Women’s History (Bristol, Bristol Historical Resource CD, 2000),
The Dataset: Bristol women in philanthropy, 1850-1914.
38 The Ninth Report of the Rescue Branch (1864), p. 3.
39 The Seventeenth Report of the Preventive Branch, (1876).
40 The Eighteenth Report of the Preventive Branch, (1877)
41 1891 Census, RG12, Piece 1964, Folio 34, page 9.
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were, but the Committee did expect the Matron to be at their beck and call and
required that two members of staff were in the home at all times.42
The average age of the girls received into Royal Fort Home was 13 years and
one month, and the average stay in the Home was just under six months. Whilst
the majority of girls came from Bristol and the immediate counties of
Gloucestershire and Somerset others came from as far afield as Ireland and
America. Importantly the Mission required, before any girl could enter the Home,
the parent or guardian to sign an agreement giving care and control to the
Committee, plus the agreement stated that what ever the girl earned in the Home
went into the common fund.43 This action effectively severed all familial links and
created a dependency on the Mission. It was seen as important that the girls
were admitted before they did wrong with the emphasis being that help was
given before they could ‘fall into bad influence’. Once admitted to the Home girls
stayed according to the amount of teaching required to ‘fit them for humble
service’ and until they could be provided with a suitable place, unless, of course,
their conduct was bad or they became ill, when they would be returned to their
family or guardian.44
Motives
What made the Bristol Female Mission Society stand out is the fact that unlike
the other charitable provisions in the city dealing with prostitutes and young girls,
the Mission was run and funded by women for women. What were the motives
42
The Eighteenth Report of the Preventive Branch, (1877).
The Thirteenth Report of the Preventive Branch (1873), p. 26.
44 Ibid.
43
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that made these women devote so much of their time to the rescue and
prevention of prostitution? Both Finnegan and Mahood suggest that the fear that
prostitution could infiltrate middle-class society and upset family values was a
compelling reason; but can that explain the many hours these philanthropic
women spent?45 It has been suggested that female solidarity against prostitution
could have been a persuasive reason, but Paula Bartley argues that the notions
of female solidarity were misplaced and suggests that it was the well-regulated
class context of power and authority that attracted middle-class women to
societies such as the BFMS.46 Such power and authority allowed both the
Rescue and Preventive Branches of the BFMS to impose middle-class values on
working-class women.
45
Finnegan, Poverty and Prostitution; Mahood, The Magdalenes: Prostitution in the Nineteenth
Century.
46 Bartley, ‘Preventing Prostitution’, p. 40.
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Bibliography
Primary Sources
Bristol Record Office
41810/1/1 – Reports of the Bristol Female Mission Society, 1859-1913.
41810/3/1 – Elm House: 1855 - 1955 The History of a Mission.
40144/P/24 – Annual Report of the Old Park Lock Hospital for the Treatment of
Women only, 31 December. 1878.
Bristol Reference Library.
20270 - Report of the Committee to ‘Inquire into the Condition of the Bristol Poor,
22 December 1884’ (London, P.S. King and Bristol, W. Lewis & Sons, 1885).
14683 – ‘Waifs and Wanderers in St Jude’s’, in The Homes of the Bristol Poor
(Bristol, William Lewis & Sons, 1884), reprinted from the Bristol Mercury, 1884.
Census Enumerators’ Notebooks at http://www.ancestry.co.uk
1861: RG9. Pieces 1721, 1722, 1723 and 1729.
1871: RG10. Pieces 2531, 2532, 2533 and 2534.
1881: RG11. Pieces 2475, 2476 and 2486.
Power Cobbe, Frances, ‘The Preventive Branch of the Bristol Female Mission’
The English Woman’s Journal Vol. VIII No. 46 (1 November 1861) pp 145-151.
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Bartley, Paula, Prostitution: Prevention and Reform in England 1860-1914
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Brown, Heloise, Routes into Women’s History (Bristol, Bristol Historical Resource
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Finnegan, Frances, Poverty and Prostitution: A study of Victorian prostitutes in
York (Cambridge, Cambridge University Press, 1979).
Mahood, Linda, The Magdalenes: Prostitution in the Nineteenth Century
(London, Routledge, 1990).
McHugh, Paul, Prostitution and Victorian Social Reform (London, Croom Helm,
1980).
15
Nead, Lynda, Myths of Sexuality (Oxford, Blackwell, 1988).
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Articles
Bartley, Paula, ‘Preventing Prostitution: the Ladies Association for the Care and
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Vol. 7. No. 1, (1998), pp. 37-60.
Harrison, B., ‘Philanthropy and the Victorians’, Victorian Studies, Vol. 9 (1966),
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Nash, Stanley, ‘Prostitution and Charity: The Magdalen Hospital, A Case Study’
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Bulletin of the Institute of Historical Research, Vol. 54 (1981), pp. 79-85.
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XX (1959), pp. 195-216.
Walkowitz, Judith, ‘Male Vice and Female Virtue: feminism and the Politics of
Prostitution in Nineteenth Century Britain’, History Workshop Journal, 13, (1982),
pp. 79-93.
Internet Sources
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http://www.smilodon.plus.com/mapcd/glosguide1869/bristol.jpg (last updated
September 23, 2003)
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