Personal reminiscences of a great crusade by Josephine Elizabeth Grey Butler
QR code
"Personal reminiscences of a great crusade" by Josephine Elizabeth Grey Butler is a memoir written in the late 19th century. It charts Butler’s campaign against state regulation of prostitution and the Contagious Diseases Acts, presenting a blend of personal witness, political strategy, and moral argument. The focus is on building a broad movement—women, working men, clergy, and public figures—to defend civil liberty and women’s dignity from coercive medical-police systems. The opening of
the book sets the stakes of the struggle, offers a brief biographical sketch of Butler’s formation (family influences, marriage, charitable work, and grief that turned her to rescue work), and then explains how regulation began in France and was later introduced in Britain. It recounts early warnings and protests—from Harriet Martineau, Florence Nightingale, Nonconformist leaders, and rescue workers—leading to Butler’s decision to act and the Women’s Protest with its core arguments about liberty, justice, and public health. She describes taking the fight to the nation when elites were unresponsive, finding strong support among working men, enduring press silence, and receiving international encouragement from figures like Victor Hugo and Mazzini. The narrative highlights mass meetings, a hostile Glasgow student disruption, and border-county rallies, then turns to electoral battles, especially at Colchester against Sir Henry Storks, where mobs tried to silence reformers but the abolitionist side prevailed. Further scenes include a huge Manchester meeting, clerical hostility at the Nottingham Church Congress, and a government bill that the movement helped defeat. Chapter III reframes the cause as a defense of constitutional liberties as much as of women, and notes rapid organizational growth, allied reforms, and renewed election pressure on ministers, closing as activists shift a crowd to their own meeting at Pontefract. (This is an automatically generated summary.)
Download for free
For your e-reader or reading app — Kindle, Kobo, Apple Books, Calibre etc.
Kindle → Use Send-to-Kindle
Kobo, Nook etc → Transfer via USB
Phone, tablet or computer → Open in a reading app
Other formats & older devices
There may be more files related to this item.
About this eBook
| Author | Butler, Josephine Elizabeth Grey, 1828-1906 |
|---|---|
| Title | Personal reminiscences of a great crusade |
| Edition | New edition. |
| Original Publication | London: H. Marshall & Son, 1910. |
| Credits | Richard Tonsing and the Online Distributed Proofreading Team at www.pgdp.net (This file was produced from images generously made available by The Internet Archive) |
| Language | English |
| LoC Class | HQ: Social sciences: The family, Marriage, Sex and Gender |
| Subject | Women -- Social and moral questions |
| Subject | Prostitution -- Great Britain |
| Subject | Child prostitution -- Europe -- History -- 19th century |
| Subject | Child prostitution -- Great Britain -- Prevention |
| Subject | Prostitutes -- Legal status, laws, etc. -- Great Britain -- History -- 19th century |
| Subject | Social movements -- Religious aspects -- Christianity |
| Category | Text |
| eBook-No. | 78588 |
| Release Date | May 3, 2026 |
| Copyright | Public domain in the USA. |
| Downloads | 1085 downloads in the last 30 days. |
Project Gutenberg eBooks are always free!