This summer I am writing about some of my favourite Christian heroes and a particularly fascinating one is Josephine Butler β She is little known today despite being one of the most important Englishwomen of the nineteenth century. She worked tirelessly for decades trying to rescue prostitutes and prevent women being trafficked into prostitution and, in doing so, exposed a dreadful business that many people β especially men β would have preferred to remain hidden.
Unfortunately, she paid the price: those who tackle an unmentionable evil often become unmentionable themselves. Josephine was born into an upper-middle-class Christian family who were very much interested in social reform and who treated her education with a seriousness rare at that time. She married a man who not only loved her deeply but shared her faith and was prepared to treat her as an equal. Just when a life of quiet respectability seemed guaranteed, tragedy struck with the death of a daughter in , and Josephine β always sensitive to injustice β began to occupy herself in charity work, visiting workhouses and rescuing prostitutes from the streets.
A combination of social and economic factors had meant that prostitution was widespread in Victorian Britain. It was covered by weak laws and policed with a harsh insensitivity. Josephine adopted a double strategy. She simply befriended prostitutes, speaking to them of Jesus and, where possible, offered them a way out. Some she housed in her own house, others in hostels.
It took courage as she was subjected to repeated verbal and sometimes physical attacks. For a woman to speak publicly was unusual in the Victorian era and for one to speak on sexual matters was felt to be an outrage. Despite frequent ill-health Josephine tirelessly travelled backwards and forwards across the country speaking everywhere she was allowed to.
She soon made strategic friends and, as the years passed, saw bad laws repealed and good laws introduced. In the s she began a campaign against child prostitution which resulted in the age of consent being raised from 13 to 16, a move which made the prosecution of the men involved possible.
