A MODERN SAINT.

White Ribbon, Volume 12, Issue 143, 15 April 1907, Page 1

A MODERN SAINT.

MRS. JOSEPHINE E. BUTLER. On December 30th last, at her home at Wooler, in the North of England, Josephine E. Ihitler passed quietly away, within three months of completing her 79th year. “Hv her 1 :r„ *» :a *1 „ i a

own life, sain t!;e London Daily Chronicle , “ she best illustrated the story of the saints of an older world, and most helpfully enabled us to understand their secret.” No ascetic, however, was this “ modern saint. One of her fellow-workers speaks of her as being very beautiful, of a gracious presence, and at home in every class of society. She was a good painter, an extremely able musician, a bold rider, charmingly gay at times, and full of humour. “ She dressed with great taste and simplicity, and above all things loved her home and her husband, and that love was whollv returned.”

Such is a brief personal description of the woman who, in the prosecution of her great Crusade. Was Hooted and Mobbed, and in danger, at times, of losing her life through the rage of those in sympathy with the vice she attacked.

At the time of her passing, scarce an English or Continental paper of note but paid tribute to tin* heroic lady who, though quivering in every nerve, had boldly faced and denounced the wrong. Protestant, Romanist, and Secularist alike brought their wreath wherewith to honour the founder of the International Federation for the Abolition of the State Regulation of Vice.

Chiefly from the “ In Memoriam ” notice published by the London limes are culled the following facts : Josephine G’ey was the daughter of John Grey, of Dilston, a man famous in his day as a reformer. Her mother was of Huguenot descent, and had,

as a golden-haired child, been lifted on the knee of the venerable John Wesley, and received his benediction. In 1851 Josephine Grey met George Butler, then a layman, whom the historian Froude described as “the most variously gifted man in body and mind that I ever knew.” The first five years of her married life Mrs Butler spent at Oxford, where, whether

puzzling out old Chaucers, or Translating Italian Poetry, or drawing maps to illustrate Mr Butlers lectures, the husband and wife worked together. “It was here in Oxford that her indignation was first aroused against ‘certain accepted theories in society —as ‘ that a moral lapse in a woman was immensely worse than in a man, and that the social evil was to be passed over in silence. ‘ I here echoed in my heart,’ she says, ‘the terribh prophetic words of the painter-])oet, Blake : The harlot’s eurse, from street to street, Shall weave old England’s windingsheet’

“ It was here, too, that the Butlers, who were absolutely at one on the moral question, took from Newgate into their service a young betrayed mother, who had been sentenced for the murder of her infant; ‘ the first of the world of unhappy women who

were thus welcomed, in 18- r >7 her own ill-health made removal from Oxford imperative. Her husband now accepted the viee-prineipalship of Cheltenham College. At Cheltenham her health greatly improved, but a great sorrow was in -tore —the leath of her only daughter i>y falling over a banister. From 1 St*r» till 1882 her husband was principal of Liverpool College; and in that great city she was w as she says, ‘possessed with an irresistible desire to go forth and find some pain keener than my own.' The result of her visits to the hospital and oakum-picking sheds of the Liverpool workhouse, and to the quays, drew down upon her ‘an avalanche of miserable but grateful womanhood.’ Into the garrets of their house the Butlers ‘crowded as many as possible of the most friendless girls who were anxious to make a fresh start.’ In time the pair of good Samaritans established a House of Rest for such cases —which long afterwards became a municipal institution—and also a?i industrial home for heaMiy and active but friendless girls. “ It was in 18f>9 that a group of medical men, who had been strenuously opposing the introduction into England of ‘the principle of regulation by the State of the social evil, became convinced that some far stronger force than scientific argument was needed to ensure success, and that women, ‘insulted by tin 4 Napoleonic system,’ must find Champions Among Their own Sex. Appeals for Mrs Butler’s help poured in, and the call seemed clear to her mind ; but at first she shrank back. A woman of extreme delicacy and refinement of mind, with a horror not only of contact with vice, but of publicity and agitation, she was only driven to action by passionate Jove of purity and justice, and boundless love of her unhappy sister-women. She entered the arena in the spirit of a martyr going to the lions. ‘ The toils and conflicts of the years that followed,’ she says, ‘were light in comparison with the anguish of that first plunge. Her husband foreseeing what it meant for her and himself, loving peace and hating strife, his happiness (like hers) centring in domestic life, nevertheless recognized ‘the call of God to conflict.’ Mr Butler —Canon Butler, as he became, of Winchester —took an active

and by no means perfunctory pa it T the movement; and on one evasion, at the Church Congress of 1872, in Nottingham, when lie began to read a paper on ‘The Duty of the Church of England in Moral Questions, he was shouted down. Together or apart, as Mrs Butler sa\s, they had to endure ‘ the cold looks «»f friends, the scorn of persons in office and high life, the silence of some from whom one hoped for encouragement, the calumnies of the Press, and occasionally the violence of hired mobs. ‘ But, she adds, ‘ the working classes were always with us;’ and the forces of organised religion by degrees ranged themselves largely, and in many cases enthusiastically, on the same side. One of Her* Earliest Helpers in the movement was Mrs Butlers cousin, the Rev. ( has. Birrell, a gifted Baptist minister at Liverpool —Mr Augustine Birrell s father. Among the distinguished women who supported the movement were Florence Nightingale, Harriet Martineau, and Mary Carpenter. The agitation spread to the Continent ; international congresses were held, and a central office* for the propaganda was establish* d in Switzerland. In France, Mgr. Dupanloup and M. Yves Guyot were among those who welcomed the Butlers'aid. In England a Royal Commission was appointed in 1871, hut reported against t he object of the agitation, though Mr CowperTemple and Mr Applegarth dissented from the view of their fellow Commissioners. The first debate and division on the subject in the House of Commons took place in 1873, when the attack on the Contagious Diseases Acts was repelled by 2of) to 128 votes. Ten years more of persistent agitation led to a practical victory; the enforcement of the obnoxious laws was suspended in consequence of a vote of the House of Commons. In April, 1886, the Acts were re]>ealed. “Canon Butler died in 1890, and of his life Mrs Butler has published 4 Recollections.’ Mrs Butler also wrote a life of Catherine ot Siena; a biography of Oberliu ; and a sketch ol her sister, Mine. Meuricoffre; beside such controversial books and pamphlets as 4 Government by Police, and ‘ Personal Reminiscences of a Great Crusade. She did not consider the crusade ended with the legislation of 1880 ; and in 1898, in a prefatory note to a pamphlet

«ta king tlie continuance in India of the system abolished in England, she wrote .- 4 1 love my country. It is because of iuy great love for her . . . that I will not cease to denounce the crimes committed in her name so long as I have life and breath.