Josephine Butler Archive

There are two original copies of published works, however, the majority of the collection are duplicated, reproduction facsimiles from the University of Liverpool's Special Collections & Archives.

On her death in 1906, the Victorian social reformer, Josephine Butler, was described in the leading obituaries as one of the 10 most significant persons of the previous century. She was an early feminist with a commitment to the rights and dignity of women and a fierce opponent of injustice and inequality. Her campaigns and compassion were fuelled by her Christian faith. In the face of sustained opposition, hypocrisy, and mockery, she insisted on truth above everything and resolved that she would be heard. She lived a remarkable and courageous life and her achievements brought comfort, hope and new freedoms to abused women and trafficked children.

Josephine Elizabeth Butler, nee Grey (13 Apr 1828-30 Dec 1906), was born at Milfield Hill, Glendale, Northumberland to a prosperous and progressive family, whose high social standing, religious activities and wide intellectual contacts formed the background to a life of campaigning for the treatment of men and women as individuals equally deserving of respect, and bound by the same moral standards. She was unusual among nineteenth-century feminists in having family ties to the Whig aristocracy: Lord Grey, the Whig prime minister during the passage of the Reform Act of 1832, was her father's cousin. Except for two years at a school in Newcastle, Josephine was educated at home. She distanced herself from fashionable society, preferring to identify herself as a member of the provincial middle classes.

Butler credited her family with endowing her with a lifelong commitment to humanitarian reform, republican values, and vital Christianity. Religion was central to the Grey family life. From her mother, a descendant of Huguenot silk weavers, Josephine was imbued with a devout religiosity, free of any allegiance to a particular sect or creed. From her father, an agricultural reformer and anti-slavery advocate, she gained a love of justice and social compassion as well as a horror of slavery and arbitrary power.

On 8 January 1852, Josephine Grey married George Butler at Corbridge, Northumberland. He had been a tutor at Durham University, and then a Public Examiner at Oxford University. In 1866 they moved to Liverpool following her husband's appointment as Head of Liverpool College. George Butler encouraged his wife in her public work, and he would suffer set-backs in his own career on account of his wife's notoriety. Although she became the leader of a campaign widely characterized as the 'revolt of the women', Butler gave special credit to the support of her husband and sons: 'It seems strange that I should have been engaged in taking up the cudgel against men when my father, brothers, and sons have all been so good' (Walkowitz, Prostitution, 121).

Josephine took up plight of girls in the Brownlow Hill workhouse and established a Home of Rest for girls in need. The feminist concerns and devout Christianity informed both her work in support of the higher education of women, in which she worked closely with Anne Jemima Clough and Millicent Garrett Fawcett, and in 1868 she became President of North England Council for Promoting Higher Education of Women. In the following year she was Secretary of Ladies' National Association for the Repeal of the Contagious Diseases Acts (extended by legislation in 1866 and 1869), in Britain and its colonies. After the repeal of the Acts in April 1886, she continued her opposition to the official regulation of prostitution in Europe and America through her leading role in the International Federation for the Abolition of State Regulation of Vice. In 1883 the Contagious Diseases Acts were suspended and repealed in 1886.

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Duplicates from the Josephine Butler collection at University of Liverpool: Special Collections and Archives, generously donated to Liverpool Hope University.

Photocopies and photographic images can be supplied for private study purposes only, depending on the condition and size of the original documents, as long as it complies with copyright law and Data Protection legislation.

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London School of Economics: The Women's Library
Catalogue Reference 3JBL

University of Liverpool: Special Collections and Archives . Catalogue reference NRA 19372 Butler.