Josephine Butler

Josephine Elizabeth Butler (nee Grey; 13 April 1828 – 30 December 1906) was an English feminist and social reformer in the Victorian era. She campaigned for women's suffrage, the right of women to better education, the end of coverture in British law, the abolition of child prostitution, and an end to human trafficking of young women and children into European prostitution.

Josephine Butler by George Richmond, 1851

Quotes

• We read of strong men bowed down with woe, weeping as women weep, turning homewards in the hear-sickness of unavailing search, or with a certainty worse than suspense.
  • 1870

• Hearing, one day, that a poor young girl of her acquaintance had been enticed to a fashionable house of ill-fame, she ran to the place, entered the house, and claimed the girl. She found there several gentlemen of the Court, whom she rebuked with a severity, the justice of which they confessed by sudden and precipitate flight; she then took the young girl by the hand and led her from the abode of shame.
  • 1874

• It is a fact, that numbers even of moral and religious people have permitted themselves to accept and condone in man what is fiercely condemned in woman.
  • 1886