Josephine Butler

Josephine Butler, drawing by George Richmond, 1851

Portrait of George Frederic Watts , 1894

Josephine Butler, 1876

Josephine Elizabeth Butler (born April 13, 1828 in Northumberland , † December 30, 1906 ) was a British feminist of the Victorian era and the leading figure in the campaign against the Contagious Diseases Acts (laws to control infectious diseases). The French sociologist Jean Baubérot classifies Butler as one of the most important examples of the Protestant connection between moral and social engagement in the 19th century.

life and work

origin

Butler was the seventh child of John Gray and Hannah Annett. John Gray was an agricultural reformer and an outspoken opponent of slavery . She received a very religious upbringing from her mother, Hannah Annett. Her family was largely related. For example, her father was a cousin of Prime Minister Charles Gray, who was one of the British reformers . Josephine Butler's aunt Margaretta Gray was one of the early feminists of the 19th century.

Start of public engagement

Josephine Butler married the educator and Anglican priest George Butler in 1852 , with whom she had four children. Together with her husband, she had sided with the Union since the outbreak of the American Civil War in 1861 and campaigned in Great Britain for both support for this war party and its planned abolition of slavery.

Because of her anti-slavery engagement, she already had experience running a political campaign, but no experience as a public speaker. Due to her voluntary work in welfare, she was very familiar with the living conditions of prostitutes . She had evangelized for a more religious life among the destitute prostitutes in the Liverpool workhouse and those waiting for customers in the docks. In order to get over the accidental death of her only daughter, she founded a home of her own to accommodate prostitutes. At least two prostitutes dying of tuberculosis are known to have been looked after by Josephine Butler in their own homes until they died of her illness. From Butler's point of view, prostitutes were victims of their circumstances.

Fighting the Contagious Diseases Acts

In 1869 she took on the campaign against the Contagious Diseases Acts. These laws aimed at social and health control of prostitutes and made them, and not their male clients, responsible for the spread of sexually transmitted diseases. With the magazine The Storm Bell, she primarily attacked the double standards of the decrees and advocated better education and better employment opportunities for women in order to offer them alternatives to prostitution.

Their long struggle ultimately led to the decrees being suspended in 1883 and completely repealed in 1886. In the years that followed, she mainly campaigned against trafficking in women . She also helped raise the age of marriage in Great Britain from 13 to 16 in 1885. Commenting on the long-term impact her campaign had had, writer Melanie Phillipps wrote:

[In the sixteen years until the edict was revoked] this campaign changed the political landscape. The campaign challenged social and sexual conventions that had never been publicly discussed before. The campaign radicalized numerous women, hardened them against public attacks and slander, and created an infrastructure for political protest. (Philipps, p. 86)

literature

• Jean Baubérot: The Protestant Woman . In: Georges Duby, Michelle Perrot (ed.): History of women. Volume 4: 19th century . Campus, Frankfurt am Main 1994, ISBN 3-593-34909-4 .
• Melanie Phillips: The Ascent of Woman. A History of the Suffragette Movement and the ideas behind it . Time Warner, London 2003, ISBN 0-349-11660-1 .

Web links

• Josephine Butler Memorial Trust
• Works by Josephine Butler in Project Gutenberg ( currently usually not available for users from Germany )
• Newspaper article about Josephine Butler in the 20th century press kit of the ZBW - Leibniz Information Center for Economics .