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CLUBS FOR WORKING GIRLS 
 
CLUBS 
 
 FOR 
 
 WORKING GIRLS 
 
 BY 
 
 MAUDE STANLEY 
 
 n 
 
 author of 
 'work about the five dials' 
 
 HonDon 
 
 MACMILLAN AND CO. 
 
 AND NEW YORK 
 I 890 
 
 A^^ rights reserved 
 
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 «\5^ 
 
 sz-^^f 
 
 Printed by R. & R. Clark, Edinburgh. 
 
^ 
 
 TO THE 
 
 NUMEROUS FRIENDS AND BENEFACTORS OF THE 
 
 SOHO CLUB AND HOME 
 
 WHO BY THEIR CONTINUOUS KINDNESS 
 
 IN AND FOR THE CLUB AND HOME 
 
 AND BY THEIR GENEROUS AND LIBERAL GIFTS OF MONEY 
 
 DURING THE PAST TEN YEARS 
 
 HAVE MADE THE SUCCESS AND PROSPERITY OF 
 
 THE INSTITUTION 
 
Part of the first two chapters appeared in the Nineteenth Century, 
 and are republished by the permission of the Editor. 
 
CONTENTS 
 
 CHAPTER I 
 
 PAGE 
 
 The London Work-Girl .... i 
 
 CHAPTER II 
 
 The Way to Start and Manage a Girls' 
 
 Club . . . . . . i6 
 
 CHAPTER III 
 
 Evening Classes ...... 49 
 
 CHAPTER IV 
 Country Visits and Excursions ... 86 
 
 CHAPTER V 
 Amusements in the Club . . . . 120 
 
viii CONTENTS 
 
 CHAPTER VI 
 
 PAGE 
 
 Religion of the Work-Girl . . . .140 
 
 CHAPTER Vn 
 
 Difference in the Social Position of Work- 
 Girls . . . . . . .174 
 
 CHAPTER Vin i 
 
 Homes for Working Girls . . . .213 
 
 CHAPTER IX 
 Conclusion 231 
 
 Appendix . . . . . . .271 
 
I 
 
 THE LONDON WORK-GIRL 
 
 In the last twenty years innumerable 
 schemes have been brought forward, societies 
 have been established, and unions have 
 been formed for the improvement, the culti- 
 vation, and for the happiness of the working 
 classes. The minds of philanthropists are 
 fortunately so various, that the interest of 
 those who work and of those who can bestow 
 money is spread over such a large area, and 
 flows into such countless channels, that we 
 might almost imagine that all who needed 
 help would come under these beneficent 
 influences. It is true that there are organ- 
 isations seeming to reach every kind of 
 
 B 
 
2 CLUBS FOR WORKING GIRLS i 
 
 distress and misfortune both for men, for 
 horses, for dogs, and for cattle. Have we 
 not this year seen a ball taking place to 
 defray the expenses of a home of rest for 
 tired horses ? It is true that much thought 
 is given to alleviate suffering of all kinds ; 
 but do we not still reach a very small 
 number, comparatively, of toiling and suffer- 
 ing humanity ? We are trying to make the 
 lives of the working classes brighter, happier, 
 more full of pleasure, more joyous, and we do 
 succeed somewhat ; every hour of happiness 
 we can bestow on the toilers is of value ; so 
 let us not underrate the smallest effort that is 
 made ; but our lives are so short, for all we 
 would do, and power of work will so soon 
 pass from us, that we should concentrate our 
 efforts to do the most in the short time given 
 to us for work. 
 
 In these days of widespread literature and 
 newspapers an idea, once it takes hold of the 
 imagination of men, will multiply endlessly. 
 Let us take, for example, the idea of pro- 
 
THE LONDON WORK-GIRL 
 
 viding country holidays for poor children. 
 It is but a dozen years or so since the idea 
 was first formed, and now see the multitudes, 
 the thousands of children sent out into the 
 country every summer from our great centres 
 of industry, from London, Manchester, Liver- 
 pool, and from numerous towns of smaller 
 magnitude. Now in Italy children are 
 sent every summer to the seaside, and in 
 France, Germany, and Austria they go forth 
 from their great cities to the pine -forests 
 or hillsides. Universal as is this idea of 
 country holidays for children, so we hope in 
 time will be the feeling that clubs must be 
 established in the different localities of great 
 cities to carry on the work of the school, and 
 to protect and raise the working girls of our 
 country. Experience shows us that a club 
 for girls will do a great work ; for can we 
 too highly estimate a work which raises, 
 which ennobles, which brings out the best 
 traits in a girl, which by its wholesome 
 pleasures, by its varied interests, by its 
 
4 CLUBS FOR WORKING GIRLS i 
 
 human sympathies between the ladies and 
 the girls, will make their lives happy and 
 good ones ? 
 
 We might almost say that the welfare of 
 the work-girl is at the root of the important 
 questions now exercising the minds and 
 thoughts of some of the best of our genera- 
 tion : the question, How are we to improve 
 the lives of our working classes ? What can 
 we do to ameliorate their condition — to make 
 less unequal the lot of the rich and the poor ? 
 You may say. What has the work-girl to do 
 with this question ? Is it not always said, 
 and with truth, that the influence of the 
 mother over her child, the girl over her 
 sweetheart, the wife over her husband, 
 weighs much in the balance for good or 
 evil in men's lives ? We have seen it so in 
 history, we have known it to be so in our 
 own and other lives, and if we raise the 
 work-girl, if we can make her conscious of 
 her own great responsibilities both towards 
 God and man, if we can show her that there 
 
THE LONDON WORK-GIRL 
 
 are other objects in her Hfe besides that of 
 gaining her daily bread or getting as much 
 amusement as possible out of her days, we 
 shall then give her an influence over her 
 sweetheart, her husband, and her sons which 
 will sensibly improve and raise her generation 
 to be something higher than mere hewers of 
 wood and drawers of water. 
 
 Let us consider, then, the condition of the 
 work-girl in our great towns. Her working 
 and wage-earning life begins at fourteen — 
 often, indeed, at thirteen. In general there 
 is an impatience to go to work, for it means 
 a decided advance in the life of a girl. She 
 ceases to be a child— a step eagerly looked 
 forward to by all girls. If the parents 
 are poor, the girl knows how valuable will 
 be her weekly wage at home ; should her 
 parents be in easy circumstances, wage- 
 earning people, themselves in constant work, 
 the girl may be apprenticed or learn a trade : 
 here also the feeling of independence makes 
 work attractive to the child, who sees the 
 
6 CLUBS FOR WORKING GIRLS i 
 
 pleasant prospect in coming years of earning 
 good wages. The day will come when the 
 long hours of fatiguing labour will make the 
 child regret those happy schooldays she has 
 so joyfully quitted. 
 
 In several parts of London the girl will 
 for many years bring home her wages to her 
 mother, who will give her a small sum weekly 
 to put by for her clothes, the remainder going 
 into the common family purse. The daughter 
 thus becomes of importance, in one sense, in 
 the family, for does she not add to the ex- 
 chequer ? is she not a wage-earning member 
 of the household ? In Manchester girls get 
 good wages at the mill — sometimes eighteen 
 shillings a week; their work is more in request 
 than the work of men, and therefore they are 
 often the only bread-winners of the home. 
 This alters in many cases the position of 
 parents and children ; the former will not 
 venture to draw the reins too tightly, no word 
 of warning and advice will be given, for 
 fear that the girl should take herself off to 
 
THE LONDON WORK-GIRL 
 
 lodgings, enjoying the same freedom she 
 has already got accustomed to, without any 
 chance of remonstrance or reproof. The 
 mothers will often say girls must learn the 
 way of the world ; when she has done her 
 work she must have her fling ; and so she 
 will saunter through the gas-lighted streets 
 with some companion, male or female ; she 
 will be ready with a saucy word, a sharp 
 retort, a rude laugh, and often, alas ! even 
 foul words or swearing, that show how fatal 
 has been the consequence of what was at 
 first the harmless recreation of an evening 
 walk after the day s toil. 
 
 It will be asked. Has the School Board 
 done nothing for our work-girls ? Only 
 those can give a fair answer to this question 
 who have known them after their school life, 
 who have mixed with the girls, and seen the 
 effect of school on those who have scraped 
 through the first three standards, and with 
 the girls who have passed through all their 
 standards with credit. We can unhesitatingly 
 
8 CLUBS FOR WORKING GIRLS i 
 
 say that a good elementary school education 
 has done a very great deal for the children. 
 It does not signify if it has been in a board 
 school or in a denominational school, so that 
 the teachers have been good and the Educa- 
 tion Code followed. We see in the well- 
 taught working girl intelligence developed, 
 order and discipline are understood, and there 
 is in her a cultivation of mind and manners 
 which makes her often fit, on leaving the 
 school, to take work in first-rate shops, or to 
 begin service with some notion of what is 
 required of her. We have already some 
 technical training for girls — cooking, needle- 
 work, cutting out ; this they learn at school in 
 the advanced standards, and perhaps we might 
 some day have laundry and household work 
 added to the extra subjects of class teaching ; 
 if these were taught in all our schools we 
 should not hear, as we do now, that the work- 
 girl can neither wash her clothes nor clean a 
 room. Such work, if taught in the elemen- 
 tary schools in poor localities, would make 
 
THE LONDON WORK-GIRL 
 
 the girls long for something beyond their own 
 often miserable homes, which would be made 
 less miserable by cleanliness, thrift, and in- 
 dustry. With regard to the subjects now 
 taught in schools, we do not say that ad- 
 vanced rules of arithmetic, that the use of 
 the globes, that the power of singing from 
 notes, will advance the children specially in 
 their life's work ; but the discipline, the 
 order, the intelligence that has been devel- 
 oped in learning these subjects will make 
 them apt pupils in their trades, and will make 
 them better workmen and workwomen. 
 
 We still see very often the want of primary 
 education in our work-girls, for what with the 
 shifting of the parents from one locality to 
 another, what with the unpunctual and 
 drunken habits of some parents, we have 
 had girls attending our night schools, over 
 seventeen, who would not have passed in 
 the first standard. This has produced in the 
 girl a dull stupidity which has made her 
 unequal in the great competition for work. 
 
 CNIVEESITl ! 
 
lo CLUBS FOR WORKING GIRLS i 
 
 and without some helping hand such as can 
 be given by friends in a club, she must have 
 sunk below her companions. It may be 
 said, and truly so, that we can never find 
 better or cleverer servants than were to be 
 found in the last generation, who had no 
 such education, who possibly could neither 
 read nor write ; but remember that such 
 instances were the exceptionally clever ones, 
 who had not had the opportunities of book- 
 learning, and whose acuteness and ingenuity 
 triumphed over all impediments. Those 
 girls in our days who cannot read or write 
 are the neglected, the weakened in mind and 
 in body, too often by the vices and degra- 
 dations of their parents. 
 
 We may ask, when these girls go forth 
 into the world having been cared for up 
 to twelve, thirteen, or fourteen years of age 
 by the parental arm of the State, has the 
 education they have received done more for 
 them than make them more intelligent, more 
 quick of apprehension, better workwomen ? 
 
THE LONDON WORK-GIRL 
 
 We would answer, according to the higher 
 teaching they have received from their 
 mistress, morally and religiously, will the 
 girl — precocious as, we must remember, these 
 children of the poor are on all social questions 
 — be bent on leading a virtuous, honest life ; 
 but can we say more of a child of thirteen 
 than that ''well begun is half done"? The 
 great mass of girls employed industrially in 
 London, whether in factories or workshops, 
 have their homes with their parents, brothers, 
 and sisters in but one or two rooms, possibly 
 some may be in the improved workmen's 
 dwellings and will have three, and the higher 
 class four rooms for a family of often eight 
 or more children. How can the work -girl 
 find the recreation she must have after ten 
 or eleven hours of monotonous work ? Our 
 children have their lesson-time, at thirteen, 
 fourteen, or fifteen, carefully intermixed with 
 walks, games, rides, gymnastics, and the end- 
 less variety of amusements of the children of 
 well-to-do parents. Our work-girls — children 
 
12 CLUBS FOR WORKING GIRLS i 
 
 Still, though wage -earning members of the 
 family — seek their recreation where alone 
 they can find it, by loitering about the 
 streets after dark when work is over, with 
 some chosen companion ; often it is with 
 girls, sometimes in rough play with boys and 
 lads. After a time the walk round, the look- 
 ing into the shop-windows, the passing by the 
 glaring gaslit stalls in the evening markets, 
 cease to have interest. Then comes, accord- 
 ing to their means, the visit to the music 
 hall, the cheap theatres, the gin-palaces,' the 
 dancing saloons, and the wine shop ; then 
 soon follow other temptations, the easy slid- 
 ing into greater sin, the degradation and the 
 downfall of all womanly virtue. And we may 
 ask how has this catastrophe come about ? 
 from the innocent and natural wish of the 
 child to play, to be amused, to stretch her 
 wearied limbs after her long day of work. 
 Work which is well paid in the West End of 
 London, but often most cruelly paid in the 
 East End — wages that will not suffice to keep 
 
I THE LONDON WORK-GIRL 13 
 
 body and soul together in any decency, 
 embittering the hearts of those who have to 
 endure it, creating many a murmur, spoken 
 and unspoken, against the hardships of this 
 unequal world. Well, to counteract these 
 dangers, to save our poor children just start- 
 ing into womanhood, to keep the young girl 
 virtuous, to give to her friends that will be safe 
 guides, that will lead her forwards and up- 
 wards, that will make life a happiness instead 
 of a drudgery — we say, establish in every 
 locality clubs for working girls. Do not put 
 aside these pages and say, ^^ Another hobby ! 
 another vain attempt to use Mrs. Partington's 
 broom to sweep back the Atlantic!" It is 
 not a hobby. Vice, disease, and crime would 
 sweep over this great Babylon as the waters 
 of the Atlantic ; but we must raise barriers, 
 we must stem the tide of evil, and experience 
 has shown us what can be done in the short 
 space of ten years to enable us to raise, to 
 purify, and to strengthen many a girl living 
 in a neighbourhood looked on by some as 
 
14 CLUBS FOR WORKING GIRLS i 
 
 the worst in our metropolis. With the arm 
 of the Lord we will fight against this evil, 
 these sorrows, this poverty, which is making 
 our great cities into hotbeds of corruption, 
 and with help from above we must use the 
 weapons of foresight and judgment, and we 
 must turn to and provide for the girls that 
 which their parents truly say they cannot 
 provide — healthy and safe recreations, amuse- 
 ments, and occupation for their leisure 
 hours. 
 
 A club for working girls is one of the most 
 modern of all schemes, but the rapid spread 
 of such institutions, in less than ten years, 
 over England, and Scotland, and America, 
 shows how greatly they were needed. They 
 meet a want which can be met in no 
 other way ; they enlist the sympathy of 
 the upper classes, whilst they gain the con- 
 fidence of the working class. It is the 
 rapid spread of girls' clubs ; it is from the 
 repeated requests of ladies who wish to form 
 new ones, who consult us as to how they 
 
I THE LONDON WORK-GIRL 15 
 
 should begin, what rules they should have, 
 how they should get together the girls, that 
 these pages are written, in the hope that 
 they may assist others in the work of which 
 we have such a pleasing experience. 
 
II 
 
 THE WAY TO START AND MANAGE 
 A GIRLS' CLUB 
 
 Girls' clubs have been started in different 
 ways, sometimes locally, so as to benefit the 
 girls living in a certain neighbourhood, some- 
 times for girls engaged in some special 
 branch of industry, such as flower-girls, 
 laundresses, dressmakers, mill-girls, and those 
 engaged in factories. Clubs are also often 
 formed specially for members of some church, 
 into which club other girls may be allowed to 
 enter, or else the club is devoted to the use 
 of the members of the church alone. We 
 would not advocate any one scheme as pre- 
 eminently the best ; for the success of all 
 such undertakings will depend on the zeal, 
 
II TO START AND MANAGE GIRLS' CLUB i; 
 
 the tact, the energy, the capacity of the 
 promoters ; and it would be unwise to dictate 
 any one way to them : they must use their 
 own judgment in starting the club, specially 
 having in view the circumstances of the 
 neighbourhood, the amount of people in- 
 terested in the work who will come forward 
 with personal help and money, and above all 
 they should be satisfied to start in a very small 
 way, to allow the club to grow and increase, 
 however slowly, being assured that the 
 experience gained is worth some delay. In 
 some instances clubs have been started and 
 have proved most lamentable failures ; owing 
 to an undue hurry and inability to work 
 slowly. The managers have been impatient 
 to succeed, not considering that characters 
 require much time to develop under better 
 and new influences, and that by hurrying 
 such a work as this, and being too anxious 
 about results, they will only touch the super- 
 ficial parts of human nature. They should 
 remember that rude, vulgar, untidy, disreput- 
 ^ c 
 
1 8 CLUBS FOR WORKING GIRLS n 
 
 able habits, uncorrected during childhood and 
 youth, will need very patient and continual 
 correction before we can see the manners 
 of the working girl become refined, polite, 
 unselfish, and thoughtful for others. 
 
 In starting a club, and indeed in carrying 
 it out, discipline and order are the first 
 requisites. A club was established in one 
 part of London for the poorest of work-girls ; 
 they were allowed to talk to one another as 
 they would have spoken in the streets, 
 probably in their own homes ; their conduct 
 became lawless, there was no respect shown 
 to the ladies, and the club had to be closed 
 for some months, to be reopened under 
 stricter discipline. Another club we know of 
 was started for boys, with the most praise- 
 worthy desire to benefit the lads of a danger- 
 ous neighbourhood. A few respectable boys 
 were got together, who were anxious to find 
 some evening place of recreation ; but the 
 promoters were not satisfied with the progress 
 of the tortoise : they wished for rapid results 
 
II TO START AND MANAGE GIRLS' CLUB 19 
 
 and large numbers ; they admitted all who 
 chose to apply ; there was no order, no means 
 of instruction ; the respectable boys left, the 
 roughs who remained said they must be 
 allowed to smoke in their club ; all control 
 over them was gone, the language was so 
 foul that the police had to interfere, and 
 fortunately the club was soon closed, but not 
 before more harm had certainly been done to 
 the neighbourhood than good by collecting 
 together the ill-disposed lads. 
 
 The same amount of license will, of course, 
 not prevail amongst girls, but the language 
 may be as foul ; in one club we heard the 
 police say that in the streets they had not 
 heard worse language than was used in that 
 girls' club. We have heard that, the moment 
 the girls were dismissed at closing time from 
 another club, fights took place between them 
 till they rolled in the streets together, abusive 
 words being used to one another and against 
 the ladies who had spent their evenings trying 
 to amuse them. We have seen, in a club. 
 
20 CLUBS FOR WORKING GIRLS ii 
 
 ladies coming in, who were frequent visitors, 
 received by such exclamations as these : 
 ** Well, Lady James, what have you brought 
 for us this evening ? something worth having, 
 we hope," a free and easy style which does 
 not mean confidence or affection but merely 
 ill-bred familiarity. 
 
 Ladies who engage in this work without 
 previous experience are too apt to be carried 
 away by their sympathy with the hard life of 
 these work-girls, to remember their long hours 
 of wearying work, to look at their pale, care- 
 worn faces, and to think that they will add to 
 their hardships if they in any way reprove 
 them or do not allow them their fling once 
 they are off work and are come to the club. 
 But this is a great mistake ; there is nothing 
 a girl will value more than the thought that 
 she is improving herself, that she is learning 
 manners. Why, have we not been told by 
 the uneducated wife of an artisan the loss she 
 felt when sitting with her husband s friends, 
 that, from want of education, she knew no 
 
II rO START AND MANAGE GIRLS' CLUB 21 
 
 '' dictionary words," showing by this that the 
 uneducated, the rough working woman can 
 feel the loss of schooling, and is conscious of 
 the value of culture of which she has been 
 deprived. 
 
 Men can also become sensible of this 
 deficiency, as a labourer, after a winters 
 training for singing in a church choir, when 
 praised for his progress, answered, ''Why, 
 marm, we have not only learned singing, but 
 we have learned manners too." So first and 
 foremost in club management we must insist 
 on order, discipline, and good manners as 
 well as good conduct, and it is perhaps the 
 most difficult quality to find in any of the 
 well-intentioned, kind ladies who will under- 
 take this work. They must have a dignity 
 in themselves which will command respect ; 
 they must be even-tempered, showing no 
 favouritism amongst the girls ; there must be 
 no hurry, and tact is essentially needed. We 
 have seen the gentlest and most fragile of 
 ladies command a respect which the strongest 
 
22 CLUBS FOR WORKING GIRLS ii 
 
 might fail to obtain. We have known a 
 class to be left in most perfect order by one 
 teacher who had to attend to another part 
 of the club, and, for what reason we know 
 not, disorder had sprung up, slates had been 
 thrown about, and the gas turned out. Such 
 collisions should certainly be avoided, so let 
 the managers be very careful who they get 
 as coadjutors in this sometimes difficult 
 work. Any helper in a girls' club should, 
 above all, have friendliness in her manners 
 and in her heart ; to be lively is a great 
 advantage ; quietness and decorum are 
 attractive in a girls' club as elsewhere, 
 whereas pride or conceit is soon detected 
 by them. We have heard of girls in a club 
 who openly discussed the ladies who came 
 to them, saying of one, '* We don't like 
 Miss Ann, she is so stuck up ! she gives her- 
 self such airs!" We need not add that 
 such remarks should never be allowed — not 
 silenced, but, quietly and apart, the girls 
 should be reasoned with. 
 
II TO START AND MANAGE GIRLS' CLUB 23 
 
 There is often in the minds of people an 
 unfortunate obHquity of vision which places 
 the individual before the institution. The 
 efficiency of a school will sometimes be 
 sacrificed for fear of dismissing an incom- 
 petent teacher, and in other undertakings we 
 have seen the same fatal mistake. The 
 man of business will not hesitate to dismiss 
 the foreman or manager who is not up to 
 his work, and we should manage philan- 
 thropic institutions with the same clear- 
 sighted judgment. Ladies who undertake 
 volunteer work are often new to it, and 
 we must not expect proficiency at once, but 
 must be satisfied to show what is needed. 
 Should we, however, find that they are not 
 fitted for the work, either by disposition, 
 manner, or capacity, we must not hesitate to 
 recommend that they should find some other 
 field for their labour. I have heard of a 
 club where a lady who contributed much of 
 the funds for its maintenance was of such a 
 sensitive organisation that both the playing 
 
24 CLUBS FOR WORKING GIRLS ii 
 
 of the piano and the noise of the games 
 were too much for her ; and on her coming 
 into the club everything had to be still. 
 Can we wonder that the girls were often 
 heard to say, '' I won't come to the club to- 
 night if that old cat is there." 
 
 In more than one instance ladies have 
 said to me, '' Our club will not succeed and 
 our old members are leaving because Mrs. 
 Dash is so unpopular with them." ''Well," 
 I say, '' why do you not get rid of Mrs. 
 Dash ?" But unfortunately the lady who is 
 so unpopular may be the important lady of 
 the committee ; she may have the purse 
 strings ; she may even be the orginator of 
 the whole scheme ; but her manner is un- 
 sympathetic, and commands neither respect 
 nor affection. 
 
 Some ladies, with every desire to be of 
 use, with perfect knowledge of the subject 
 they wish to teach, may be unable to interest 
 their pupils, or their strictness or their 
 impatience may make them worse than use- 
 
II TO START AND MANAGE GIRLS' CLUB 25 
 
 less, for they will create a distaste for learn- 
 ing in the minds of their pupils. 
 
 When we hear from the superintendent 
 that she cannot get the girls to go to a class, 
 or when we hear that on certain evenings 
 but few girls come to the club, we may be 
 sure there is some reason, and should it be 
 that this or that lady is not suited to the 
 girls, let us not hesitate to make a change. 
 We have been fortunate in the Soho in hav- 
 ing most kind, bright and sympathetic ladies 
 who have helped in our club, and whose 
 absence when circumstances called them 
 away has been a cause of sorrow and con- 
 tinual regret to our girls. 
 
 In starting a club where none has before 
 existed it is sometimes well after taking a 
 room to send out invitations for a tea. Let 
 these invitations be given through district 
 visitors, employers, Sunday school teachers 
 of all denominations. After tea let some 
 lady address the girls, tell them what is pro- 
 posed to be done for them, tell them what sue- 
 
26 CLUBS FOR WORKING GIRLS ii 
 
 cess has attended clubs already established, 
 say what classes will be held, what payment 
 will be required, what amusements will be 
 provided ; then, after this address, let the 
 ladies talk individually to the girls, get to 
 know them, get their names and addresses and 
 promises, if possible, of joining the club. It 
 would be well at first starting to ask no ad- 
 mittance fee, but after a month have one of 
 twopence, sixpence, or one shilling, and admit 
 all who apply with the understanding that 
 there is no membership till a visit has been 
 paid by a lacjy to the candidate s home, after 
 which, if satisfactory, a card of membership 
 will be given. It is well to allow girls, once 
 they are members, to introduce other girls. 
 They will be anxious to introduce none but 
 girls who will be a credit to themselves, and 
 indeed it seems the only way of getting 
 members except those personally known to 
 ladies, for repeatedly has the experiment been 
 tried to give papers of clubs in the streets to 
 work-girls. They have taken the papers. 
 
II TO START AND MANAGE GIRLS' CLUB 27 
 
 expressed a wish to come, but -have never 
 made their appearance. 
 
 After a day or two it would be well to call 
 on those girls who gave their names and 
 addresses, and explain more about the club 
 to the girls and to their parents. A monthly 
 party is a good thing to propose, when every 
 member is allowed to bring in a friend and 
 where there can be dancing. By this means 
 the club gets known in its most attractive 
 aspect. 
 
 Another way of making a club known to 
 the girls of the neighbourhood is to call at 
 the factories where they are employed, and 
 by getting the foreman or forewoman in- 
 terested in the scheme, you may probably 
 be allowed to go there at the dinner hour. 
 Those girls who are likely to wish to avail 
 themselves of your club will be brought to 
 you, and you can explain to them all the 
 advantages and pleasures you propose to 
 give them in the club ; you can distribute 
 hand-bills with full details of all that is done 
 
28 CLUBS FOR WORKING GIRLS ii 
 
 there, which they can give amongst their 
 companions. 
 
 A great deal may be done in getting a 
 club known in a district by window bills, 
 and money spent on printing in this respect 
 is well spent. In London and in other large 
 towns the working people have little com- 
 munication one with another ; their acquaint- 
 ances are generally made amongst their 
 companions in work, and though they live 
 within a stone's throw of a girls' club, they 
 may never have heard of it. The showy 
 window bill may attract their attention, and 
 they may then look in and find a home 
 and friends they had never thought of. 
 
 In a country town in the west of Eng- 
 land a club was started where girls freely 
 came in, and where there was generally 
 music. One evening a girl appeared in a thick 
 white frock in which she had been singing 
 in public-houses ; strange to say, this was the 
 only garment she had on. Her voice was 
 beautiful, and she had a natural talent for 
 
II TO START AND MANAGE GIRLS' CLUB 29 
 
 singing, and was attracted into these rooms 
 by the sound of music ; the pleasant friendly 
 kindness of the ladies and the homelike ap- 
 pearance of the rooms caused her to come 
 again and again, till the ladies arranged for 
 her by her own wish to go into a home and 
 to be trained for service. 
 
 Members who come in like this will be 
 exceptional cases ; and we must look out for 
 all sorts of ways for getting the club known. 
 
 It is of no use asking girls to whom one 
 is unknown ; they will not come ; they are 
 distrustful of such invitations, and shyness also 
 will prevent their entering a strange place. 
 
 The best way of starting a girls' club, but 
 that is not always possible, is to make it the 
 outcome of a night school, or through the 
 work of a district visitor. There you have 
 a natural connection between members and 
 ladies, and you will have the friendliness on 
 one side and the confidence on the other side 
 engendered by the intercourse already carried 
 on between them. 
 
30 CLUBS FOR WORKING GIRLS ii 
 
 Then, in arranging classes, only settle on 
 such for which you can be certain to have 
 teachers ; they may be paid or unpaid teachers 
 — it matters not if they are of the right 
 sort. They must know how to teach, they 
 must have the gift for teaching, for remember 
 that these scholars are all voluntary ; there 
 can be no compulsion ; and also that they are 
 handicapped by long hours of hard work by 
 which their bodies are tired out, and which 
 may a little dull their brains. But if your 
 teachers love teaching, they will get brighter 
 as the lesson goes on, and their pupils will 
 forget fatigue and lassitude, and will be eager 
 and attentive to get all they can from their 
 instructors. 
 
 It is most important to secure a good 
 superintendent in a girls' club ; much of the 
 success of the undertaking will depend on the 
 person you place there. It is a great advan- 
 tage to the girls to have visits from ladies, 
 and they should take each their special 
 evenings for visiting the club, but let there be 
 
II TO START AND MANAGE GIRLS' CLUB 31 
 
 one manager, who is always there, and who 
 will know all the members and be known by 
 them. We have had the experience of a 
 lady as a superintendent, and also one of the 
 same class as the girls, and we do not re- 
 commend either one or the other as absolutely 
 the best ; the essential is to find a woman 
 with great friendliness, love for the girls, warm 
 sympathy, order, and liveliness, who will 
 never be tired, or rather who will never let 
 her feelings, mental or physical, interfere with 
 the work of the club. At Nottingham and 
 in some other places a different system is 
 carried on ; there is no regular superinten- 
 dent, but the ladies take their turns at the 
 club. The numbers at such clubs are not so 
 numerous as some London clubs, and where 
 there are over one hundred or more members 
 with an average of over fifty attendance, a per- 
 manent superintendent seems necessary. The 
 salary required for a superintendent will be 
 some consideration when funds are low, but as 
 it will only occupy the evenings of a working 
 
32 CLUBS FOR WORKING GIRLS ii 
 
 woman, a very large pay will not be required. 
 Should the superintendent be a lady, her 
 salary need not be much more, as it would not 
 be wise to engage one who would have to 
 depend on this salary for her maintenance. 
 
 It is better never to close the club ; this 
 is sometimes done when ladies are out of 
 town, but the sense of continuity is very 
 important to ensure a regular attendance at a 
 club. In some instances we have heard of 
 free teas on Sundays being given to the girls 
 who have come in the week ; this implies 
 that the girls were doing a good action by 
 coming to the club, whereas they should get 
 to feel that they are enjoying a privilege by 
 possessing and making use of the club. It 
 will generally be found necessary to form a 
 committee of ladies, to which gentlemen may 
 be added ; but in starting a club it will be 
 well if the guidance and management of it 
 be left in the hands of one or, at the 
 most, two ladies, who habitually visit the club 
 in the evening, and who will best know the 
 
II TO START AND MANAGE GIRLS' CLUB 33 
 
 requirements and characteristics of the girls. 
 It is very essential also that there should be 
 perfect accord between the ladies and super- 
 intendent, as the girls are on the alert to 
 gauge the amount of confidence placed in 
 their superintendent. We have known the 
 usefulness of a club much marred by the 
 annoyance felt by the ladies at the greater 
 attachment and confidence shown to the 
 superintendent than to themselves. It is 
 but natural that they should be more at their 
 ease with the one that is always with them. 
 Undue familiarity should be discouraged, as 
 it will often lower the respect the girls feel 
 for those placed over them. It would be 
 well, when the club is first started, for the 
 committee to meet every week, but as 
 everything settles down once a month will 
 be sufficient, when the lady who has been 
 in charge can give her report. It is a good 
 plan, when the club has got quite into work- 
 ing order, for each lady of the committee to 
 take a month at a time for looking through 
 
 D 
 
34 CLUBS FOR WORKING GIRLS n 
 
 the superintendent's book, her attendance 
 marks, the register of fees, and her log- 
 book, and to visit the club one evening a 
 week during her month of duty. 
 
 The committee of ladies should be mostly 
 composed of those who work in the club ; 
 they will know best how the work is to be 
 carried on, what classes the girls require, 
 and what amusements should be given to 
 them. It may be well to have some members 
 on the council who, though unable to work 
 in the club or visit it in the evening, will be 
 useful in other ways — getting friends to con- 
 tribute funds or to provide amusements ; but 
 in general I should recommend that only 
 those who would work for the club in one 
 way or another should be asked to become 
 members of the council ; the mere attendance 
 at a committee does not constitute work. 
 
 In many ways it is advantageous to keep 
 a register of attendances ; the girls like it 
 themselves ; they are glad to think that the 
 ladies look through these registers and ob- 
 
II TO START AND MANAGE GIRLS' CLUB 35 
 
 serve those who are oftenest in the club. In 
 another way it is useful : if a girl has been 
 long absent from the club or comes in less 
 often than before inquiries are made. It has 
 happened that the mothers have fancied their 
 girls were attending the club every evening 
 when they were really elsewhere, and in this 
 way a girl has been more than once checked 
 in giddy ways. 
 
 The attendance register should be ruled 
 for every day, and marked daily ; a month's 
 attendance may be entered in two folio pages, 
 so that at a glance the girls' attendance can 
 be seen. In some clubs each girl's name is 
 entered on a new page every day ; such a regis- 
 ter would not enable one to see at a glance 
 how often each member has been in the club. 
 
 For the payments of girls, whether it be 
 twopence or a penny a week, the following 
 register can be adopted. We require in our 
 club that the quarterly fee should be paid by 
 all members over seventeen years of age who 
 have been over one quarter in the club, Vi^hich 
 
36 
 
 CLUBS FOR WORKING GIRLS 
 
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II TO START AND MANAGE GIRLS' CLUB 37 
 
 will give them time to see if they care to 
 belong to it permanently. 
 
 In the log-book should always be kept the 
 ' record of the ladies who visit the club, any 
 special event, any new members joining, or 
 any other fact of interest it is well to note. 
 In some clubs there is a limit of age for 
 admittance. There are some difficulties in 
 admitting girls under fifteen when they seem 
 to be but children, and when the number of 
 members is very small it is best to keep the 
 girls more of an age ; but my feeling is very 
 strong that girls who have left school at 
 thirteen or fourteen, and have gone to work, 
 should be encouraged to come to a club 
 specially with the object of attending classes ; 
 they are generally anxious to improve them- 
 selves, and the argument of idle hours spent 
 in the streets after their day's work and the 
 danger of such practices applies as much to 
 them as to older girls. In our club in Soho 
 the average age is seventeen, but we are glad 
 to admit the girls of fourteen who have been 
 
38 CLUBS FOR WORKING GIRLS ii 
 
 at the four or five schools of our immediate 
 neighbourhood, and who therefore Hve close 
 by and who are anxious to come. The older 
 ones are apt to talk of the smallness of the 
 new members, but they are reminded that 
 they joined when children, and of the advan- 
 tage the club has been to them. Where the 
 arrangements of the house make such a thing 
 possible, it would be well to have a separate 
 room for the elder members and those who 
 wish for quiet and reading and who do not 
 need supervision. 
 
 It seems very necessary to provide at a 
 club the means of cheap refreshment, and it is 
 well to let the girls undertake this work them- 
 selves. We must at first choose those girls 
 who seem most capable and whom we con- 
 sider fit to undertake this duty. The charge 
 should be small — a penny and halfpenny a 
 cup of tea or coffee, buns, pastry, etc. , all accord- 
 ing to the usual prices at coffee-taverns. If 
 properly managed there should be no expense 
 attaching to the refreshments, and, indeed, 
 
II TO START AND MANAGE GIRLS' CLUB 39 
 
 there will be a little profit when many are 
 present ; and it is an advantage to the girls 
 to take some little trouble for w^hat they can 
 see is so entirely to their own advantage. 
 
 Every club should have its library. Books 
 are now so cheap and friends are so kind 
 in giving them that there should be no 
 difficulty in establishing one. Novels and 
 stories are most in request, and as it is 
 very usual for girls to buy the penny serials, 
 which must do them much moral harm, 
 we are glad to put other stories of less 
 sensational character in their way. These 
 novelettes are known to be of such a bad 
 nature that girls will keep them concealed 
 from their mothers, most of whom do not allow 
 them to be brought into their house. They 
 are full of sensation and crime, pretending to 
 depict the lives of Lord Edwards and Lady 
 Janes, who are by the authors supposed to 
 spend their lives in a continual state of melo- 
 dramatic action. There is nothing in these 
 tales to improve or to elevate ; they are 
 
40 CLUBS FOR WORKING GIRLS ii 
 
 taken in week by week, so that they keep 
 up in the readers' mind a perpetual excitement 
 and a longing that in their poor little lives 
 some great sensation should have a place. A 
 mistress who had taken from us a girl as 
 general servant complained of the number of 
 novelettes she took in every week ; this 1 
 found was true, and with wages of ^lo'a year 
 the girl spent fourpence a week on literature. 
 On speaking to the little servant of this extra- 
 vagance I thought there seemed some excuse 
 when I was told that she had to spend every 
 evening alone in a kitchen that swarmed 
 with black beetles and that no other books 
 had been offered to her by her mistress. 
 Books are lent out at many of the low shops 
 at a halfpenny a volume, and so girls as well 
 as boys can get at translations of the worst 
 French novels without difficulty, and once such 
 a taste is got we know what it must lead to. 
 Our library is managed by two girls, 
 who each take one evening a week to 
 give out books ; they levy fines for the books 
 
II TO START AND MANAGE GIRLS' CLUB 41 
 
 that are not punctually returned, and they 
 keep them covered with brown paper and 
 labelled. We had, as in all libraries, much 
 trouble about getting books returned ; but 
 the following rules have been of some use in 
 preserving the library — 
 
 1. Any one borrowing a book must return it to one of 
 the librarians herself. The book must not be left with 
 any one else. 
 
 2. If a book is not finished at the end of two weeks, 
 leave must be asked for a further loan. 
 
 3. A fine of |^d. if kept over two weeks ; over three 
 weeks, id., and -|d. for each succeeding week. 
 
 4. If not returned, the borrower is responsible for the 
 value of the book which she must pay to the librarian. 
 
 5. No book may be lent from one member to another. 
 
 Some girls will make up their minds 
 to go through all the works of one author 
 — Dickens, Miss Sewell, Walter Scott. 
 Books about girls and advice to them are 
 cared for, and a small-sized book is not liked 
 as much as a larger one. It is very useful 
 to have a savings bank, as the facility by 
 which the money, either pe nce o r shillings, 
 
42 CLUBS FOR WORKING GIRLS ii 
 
 can be put by greatly encourages that 
 excellent habit of saving. We need have no 
 fear, as some seem to have, of being over- 
 thrifty as a nation ; we are astonished, on the 
 contrary, to find how little forethought there 
 is, and how as holiday time comes round no 
 provision has been made, though wages have 
 been good and regular. We hear of feather 
 clubs ! but not often of boot clubs. When a 
 girl has learned the value of saving at a club 
 bank she will get her post-office savings 
 bank book and have something put by for her 
 marriage or for the rainy day. 
 
 A free registry is also of use, for when a 
 club has been long established ladies will 
 often apply there for servants, and girls will 
 frequently wish to give up business and take 
 to service. 
 
 In some clubs baths have been introduced ; 
 they will be rather expensive but of great 
 value to the girls, who will be quite willing to 
 pay for their use. 
 
 We know of baths at girls' clubs in Liver- 
 
II TO START AND MANAGE GIRLS' CLUB 43 
 
 pool and Manchester, and we wish that there 
 were space in London clubs to admit of such 
 a convenience. 
 
 With regard to the payment of fees we 
 found much trouble at first ; when we allowed 
 the girls to pay weekly there was often a jar 
 in the friendly relations in reminding the girls 
 that unpaid fees meant non-membership, so 
 we ruled that nothing less than three weeks' 
 fee of sixpence should be paid in advance. 
 Now we have gone a step further in asking 
 quarterly fees from the senior members. In 
 case of poverty the discretion of the managers 
 may always be used to help those who really 
 need assistance. 
 
 We have spoken of a girls' committee. 
 This is a very important element in a girls' 
 club— as necessary as in men's clubs of all 
 sorts ; but we cannot expect to start a club 
 with members fit to take a responsible part in 
 the management. At the opening of a club, 
 in the address that is given, we would hold 
 out as an object before us the work of a girls' 
 
44 CLUBS FOR WORKING GIRLS n 
 
 committee, and explain how it can be accom- 
 plished. The whole question will be new to 
 the girls, so they must feel their way slowly, see 
 what is wanted, what duties could properly be 
 discharged by the committee, and at the end 
 of a year the members will have got to see 
 in which girl they can best place confidence ; 
 a day should be named, the voting papers 
 prepared, and six to twelve members can 
 then be chosen by all the club. It is well 
 to have two members on duty every even- 
 ing, in case of the unavoidable absence 
 of one of them. The committee members 
 should undertake every evening the refresh- 
 ment bar, buying the food and keeping 
 the accounts ; they should undertake the 
 library, appoint two days in the week for 
 lending and receiving back the books ; they 
 should between them see that the class-rooms 
 are ready each evening ; some of the com- 
 mittee members should give out the games, 
 see that the new members are introduced to 
 other girls, and that no one sits neglected by 
 
II TO START AND MANAGE GIRLS' CLUB 45 
 
 herself. Then, on the evenings of the soirdes 
 — we wish we could find an English word 
 equally descriptive of the evening entertain- 
 ment — the committee should again act as 
 hostesses, send out invitations, receive the 
 guests, and keep up the life and amusement 
 of the evening. 
 
 But a girls' committee will require look- 
 ing after for some time ; they have not 
 learned business habits and regularity, they 
 have not learned the importance of an 
 engagement nor the necessity for punctu- 
 ality except at the shop or the factory, and 
 so though we have started them at the right 
 road, taught them how to hold committees, 
 still ladies who are more conversant with 
 such duties must inquire occasionally, and 
 look how their books are being kept. 
 
 The committee should have a book in 
 which the minutes are entered every week, 
 and a monthly report should be prepared by 
 the chairwoman, and after being presented 
 to the committee and approved by them 
 
46 CLUBS FOR WORKING GIRLS ii 
 
 should be sent to the secretary of the ladies' 
 committee or council, as they may be called. 
 In the report the chairwoman may, by the 
 request of the other girls, suggest any altera- 
 tion in the rules or propose amusements or 
 changes in the work of the club. We have 
 had a variety of proposals from our girls ; 
 they have asked for an extra evening for 
 dancing when the ladies were all away and 
 there were no classes, and to this we agreed. 
 At other times they have proposed to have 
 parties or dramatic entertainments, and it 
 was by their wish that a bazaar was got up 
 at our club, and carried out by themselves. 
 They formed themselves into a bazaar 
 committee of twenty girls who resolved to 
 work, and this they did most energetically. 
 Our excellent printer undertook to attend 
 the committees, showing them how the goods 
 received were to be entered as stock, and 
 how all the different books were to be kept. 
 
 In other clubs we hear of sales of work 
 being got up by the members for the benefit 
 
II TO START AND MANAGE GIRLS' CLUB 47 
 
 of the club, and in another one we heard that 
 whenever their funds were low they would 
 get up a concert to which their friends would 
 come, so raising the small sum required. 
 We were once asked by the committee to 
 allow playing cards ; but this was not 
 thought advisable, and on the reasons being 
 given for the refusal the girls cheerfully 
 acquiesced in the decision of the council. 
 
 We feel that a girls' committee could 
 really manage the club entirely alone, but as 
 those who form the committee are all work- 
 ing girls, finishing their work at seven or 
 eight, or later, in the evening, it would be 
 too much to expect of them to give up so 
 much of leisure as would be needed for the 
 whole management of the books, registry of 
 attendances, and payment of club fees. 
 During our superintendent's three weeks' 
 holiday last year the club was managed by 
 the girls' committee, and everything was most 
 satisfactory. 
 
 We have reached this point after nearly 
 
48 CLUBS FOR WORKING GIRLS ii 
 
 ten years of work in our club. Slowly and 
 gradually the girls have learned that order 
 conduces more to the general w^ellbeing and 
 comfort than disorder, and that culture and 
 refinement are to a certain extent within their 
 reach. They have realised that their club 
 has been of inestimable value to themselves, 
 that it has given them interests which have 
 brightened their days, that through the club 
 they have found friends who have helped 
 them on in this life and shown them a higher 
 life worth striving for. We have not wished 
 to take our girls out of their class, but we 
 have wished to see them ennoble the class to 
 which they belong. 
 
Ill 
 
 EVENING CLASSES 
 
 The establishment of classes and the proper 
 management of them is a very important 
 question to be considered in connection with 
 a girls' club. Most managers will haye 
 some classes, but they are not always carried 
 on with regularity or system. It is best to 
 settle the days for the various classes, and to 
 let it be written up in the club or printed on 
 the handbills that are given away. We find 
 that in many clubs the managers say they 
 do not need evening schools for the girls that 
 have been at the Board Schools — that, hav- 
 ing passed through all the standards, the 
 girls need no further instruction. In one 
 instance we heard of factory girls belonging 
 
 E 
 
so CLUBS FOR WORKING GIRLS iii 
 
 to a club who would often recite passages 
 from Shakespeare which they had learned at 
 school ; but who would not, we were told, care 
 to pursue any further their learning. We 
 think that it must only have been so because 
 the classes were not started, or because the 
 teachers were not suitable, that the girls did 
 not appear to desire more advanced learning. 
 Not only do we see a great advantage in the 
 cultivation of the intelligence and intellect of 
 work girls ; but we feel that when the clubs 
 are only formed for amusement they have 
 not that hold on the members that we desire 
 to obtain. A settled programme of classes is 
 best ; not, as in some clubs, left for the lady 
 who happens to be in the club each evening 
 to choose what subject is taught. We know 
 that the girls tire of amusement alone, for 
 where that has been the only pursuit no 
 game has continued in favour above a week 
 or two, and the ingenuity of the ladies has 
 been exercised in devising fresh pastimes. 
 Let us take first into consideration the 
 
in EVENING CLASSES 51 
 
 classes that will form a regular evening school. 
 It should begin afresh each year in Sep- 
 tember, and work up to the Government 
 examination in the spring. 
 
 There is a great advantage in putting 
 these classes under Government examination; 
 it is a help to the teachers and to the pupils. 
 The latter are accustomed to work in 
 standards, and if they should have left school 
 in the lower forms they are much pleased to 
 obtain year by year certificates which record 
 their advancement. We would recommend 
 that the classes should be put under a trained 
 teacher, possibly an assistant teacher in 
 some school, or one who has left the pro- 
 fession, and she should also have volunteer 
 help. There are some untrained teachers 
 who, with experience and an attractive 
 manner and special aptitude for teaching, 
 may even get a larger class together than 
 the regular trained schoolmistress ; but they 
 are the exception, and the good attendance 
 at evening classes will always depend 
 
52 CLUBS FOR WORKING GIRLS hi 
 
 mostly on the fitness in all respects of the 
 teacher for such work. We expect that in 
 all girls' clubs there will be found girls who 
 have not mastered the three R's. Some 
 may desire to improve especially in their 
 handwriting, some in keeping accounts, 
 some in composition. It may seem hardly 
 credible in these days of school-boards that 
 we have had many girls in our club so 
 deficient in learning that we had to place 
 them in the third, second, and even the first 
 standard. It is wonderful to see the per- 
 severing efforts of a girl of nearly twenty 
 in these lower standards, and how much she 
 can learn in the course of six months with 
 two nights' schooling a week, and we should 
 do all we can to encourage the elder girls, 
 who are anxious to overtake the deficiency 
 of the past, to join these classes. The gross 
 ignorance of not being able to read and write 
 is, however, the exception ; but many girls 
 having had their intelligence quickened at a 
 good school are anxious both to keep up 
 
Ill EVENING CLASSES 53 
 
 what they know and to learn more. Geo- 
 graphy and history, of which they learn 
 little at the ordinary elementary schools, can 
 be made attractive for the more advanced 
 pupils, and composition is always a pleasant 
 way of improving the mind, as by taking a 
 variety of subjects week by week for com- 
 position we can train them to think, and lead 
 them to habits of reflection which must 
 improve their lives as well as develop their 
 mental faculties. We may carry on the 
 reading of the sixth and seventh standards 
 into lessons of elocution, a most delightful 
 talent for all to possess ; and once the 
 elements of learning are given to a girl such 
 as she will possess on leaving the sixth 
 standard, she can with little difficulty obtain 
 great intellectual enjoyment through the 
 cheap standard books now attainable by all. 
 We have found an elocution class the source 
 of great pleasure to our girls ; many have 
 proved themselves most apt pupils, some 
 taking the emotional, some the heroic, and 
 
54 CLUBS FOR WORKING GIRLS iii 
 
 some the humorous parts. We know one 
 girl who learned most of her pieces whilst 
 peeling potatoes, in no way to the detri- 
 ment of the potatoes, as she is an excellent 
 servant. 
 
 The most generally popular class is that 
 of singing, and we find that in all clubs there 
 is a good deal of singing, but we shall not 
 get the same advantage by the girls merely 
 learning to sing from ear, and catching up 
 this or that tune from their teacher, as we 
 shall if we teach them the principles of music, 
 give them the power of reading at sight, and 
 an appreciation of good music. A lesson 
 once a week of an hour and a half will very 
 soon give the pupils a real desire to learn, 
 and we find that, instead of being a weariness 
 to them to repeat a difficult passage in their 
 songs dozens of times till they have mastered 
 it, they are delighted to know that they have 
 conquered a difficulty. In this, as in all 
 lessons, the teacher must be able to convince, 
 her pupils that their labour has taught them 
 
Ill EVENING CLASSES 55 
 
 something, and that the one or two hours 
 spent in some definite intellectual exercise 
 has not only improved their minds but rested 
 their tired bodies, by the employment of 
 other faculties which during the hours of 
 monotonous labour had been left dormant. 
 
 We would recommend the manager of a 
 club to employ a teacher who knows the 
 tonic sol-fa system, as most of the girls will 
 have learnt it at school, and so it will be 
 easier for them to take it up again. But 
 managers cannot always find all they require 
 in a teacher, therefore should the best 
 teacher at hand be one who only knows the 
 old notation, let that one be employed 
 regardless of the advantages of the other 
 system. We have had the experience of 
 several different teachers in a singing class, 
 and know how rapidly the members will fall 
 off if the teacher is not both capable and 
 bright. After the class has attained some 
 efficiency a concert is desirable. Now also 
 may the elocution class be turned to account. 
 
56 CLUBS FOR WORKING GIRLS iii 
 
 as recitations may be intermixed with the 
 songs. In the early days of a club the 
 concert may be made up of glees sung by the 
 girls, whilst ladies may assist in the solos. 
 
 These concerts may be made paying ones 
 for the benefit of the club with penny or 
 threepenny tickets, and the choir derive 
 much pleasure from the fact of their perform- 
 ances increasing the funds of the club. 
 When the singing has yet further advanced 
 a singing competition of several clubs is of 
 great use. Two such competitions have 
 been held in the Soho club room, when nine 
 clubs of the Soho Club Union competed for 
 a challenge picture of St. Cecilia, to be held 
 for one year and then again to be competed 
 for. One song was chosen for all to sing, 
 April of Gaul, by the judge. Professor Henry 
 Thomas of the Guildhall school of music, and 
 each choir was to choose one other song which 
 they sung. As there was a difficulty in 
 settling which choir should begin, lots were 
 drawn for places. Singing competitions, like 
 
Ill EVENING CLASSES 57 
 
 concerts, give a very proper interest in the 
 lessons, a point to look to and an object for 
 continued study. 
 
 In all towns where a girls' club is started 
 we soon find others springing up, some 
 connected with the Church, some with the 
 Nonconformists. The choirs of these may 
 thus join, and a friendly feeling and inter- 
 change of ideas with them will be brought 
 about. 
 
 The singing competition of the pupil 
 teachers' centres in London was held this 
 year at the Portman rooms, and friends were 
 admitted by shilling tickets. A hall might be 
 hired for club competitions, as no club-room 
 would be large enough to hold more than the 
 choirs themselves, and it is well for the friends 
 and other club members to be able to attend. 
 
 Another class which is general and much 
 liked is one for needlework, cutting out of 
 under garments and dressmaking. This 
 may be carried on whilst a story is being 
 read, but if the pupils are backward it would 
 
58 CLUBS FOR WORKING GIRLS iii 
 
 be best to devote all the attention to needle- 
 work. Sometimes garments are made, and 
 the girls are paid for making them, and they 
 are afterwards sold at quarterly sales for the 
 price of the material. In other cases the 
 girl chooses the garment she wishes to make, 
 and which she wants for her own use ; she is 
 shown how to cut it out and make it, and 
 each week she gives the teacher some pence 
 towards the cost of the material, and when 
 that is paid she takes possession of the 
 work. 
 
 In some clubs they have an odds-and-ends 
 evening, when scraps are given and the inge- 
 nuity of the girls is put to the test by the articles 
 they contrive to make out of these pieces of 
 material ; sometimes it will be for Christmas 
 trees, or for bran pies ; and there are many 
 other ways of disposing of these little presents. 
 Work may sometimes beengaged in formission 
 work or for some other charitable object. We 
 hear of dolls being dressed in some clubs for 
 children's hospitals, or toys being made for a 
 
Ill EVENING CLASSES 59 
 
 like object. Many of our girls have made all 
 their underclothes at the club before their 
 marriage, getting the matron to cut them out, 
 and some bring their father s shirts to be cut 
 out and make them of an evening. Miss 
 Calder, well known in connection with the 
 cooking classes at Liverpool, has lately been 
 making a tour of school inspection in Ger- 
 many, and has been very much struck with the 
 tidiness of the children's clothes worn in the 
 poorest districts ; this she thinks is owing to 
 the afternoon schools established for the girls 
 who have left school and who are over four- 
 teen. There they mend, patch, and do other 
 plain needlework, which is thoroughly taught. 
 Could we not in our clubs have a mending 
 class, where the garments would be brought 
 by the girls and where patches would be put 
 on or skirts turned or stockings darned ? We 
 need not speak of hats retrimmed, for such is 
 the importance of this article of dress in the 
 eyes of the work -girl that she will always be 
 able to manipulate her hat with feathers or 
 
6o CLUBS FOR WORKING GIRLS iii 
 
 flowers to meet the exigencies of the newest 
 fashion. 
 
 At schools children are taught to patch 
 and to darn on scientific principles, and the 
 small samples of needlework are excellent ; 
 but the application to practical life is not 
 always carried out, for we can see many 
 a pinafore or frock which need mending, 
 gaping holes that call for patches or darnings. 
 
 A bazaar may sometimes be got up by 
 the members for the benefit of their club, 
 when each girl will contribute, giving if 
 possible something belonging to her own 
 trade, or she will make up useful clothes. 
 The great thing is to give an interest to the 
 girls, to show them the way of helping, and 
 then to leave them to carry it out. 
 
 Cooking is in some cases a very useful 
 subject to teach, and has been very success- 
 fully carried out at Salford ; but many girls 
 are too tired with their day's work to stand 
 for one and a half or two hours in a kitchen 
 for a regular demonstration lesson as taught 
 
Ill EVENING CLASSES 6i 
 
 by the School Board, so we must not expect 
 as numerous a class here as in other subjects. 
 At Salford they had a bread-baking class 
 which consisted of six ; they each in turn 
 made the bread entirely themselves, and as 
 soon as one girl had accomplished the feat 
 she was removed from the class and another 
 took her place, so that five girls were always 
 watching the process. The girls met at 
 6.30, and whilst the bread was rising sat in 
 the kitchen chattering. At the close of the 
 evening the bread was brought into the club- 
 room and exhibited by the bread-maker ; the 
 largest loaf she had herself, the smaller ones 
 were given to the other members of the class. 
 A penny each per lesson was paid, and six 
 pounds of flour was the quantity used, making 
 the cost, with the barm, not above ninepence. 
 
 At the same club they have one lesson 
 a week on practical cookery. Again only 
 six girls join, who pay their pennies for the 
 material, which they consume when cooked. 
 
 A musical drill class is of much use to the 
 
62 CLUBS FOR WORKING GIRLS iii 
 
 girls, and if possible gymnastics, parallel 
 bars, jumping, and a ladder. Their health 
 is much improved by these exercises, and the 
 discipline and exactness so essential to such 
 performances has a beneficial effect upon the 
 more boisterous members. An occasional 
 display to their friends is very encouraging 
 to both pupils and teachers, the ball exercises 
 are extremely graceful, and can be diversified 
 endlessly. In clubs newly started and in 
 rough neighbourhoods we should recommend 
 musical drill as the first class to begin with, 
 as it is a very popular one, and indirectly 
 will teach them order and discipline. Many 
 ladies have learned these exercises, and 
 should none be found a member of a 
 class in some other club might be engaged. 
 Three of our girls have proved efficient 
 teachers at four of the clubs in our Union, 
 and a club member may often be found who 
 can play the accompaniments. There is a 
 book, called Music and Drill, by S. A. 
 Bedding, published by Griffith, Farren and 
 
Ill EVENING CLASSES 63 
 
 Co., which gives easy tunes and diagrams of 
 exercises which will be useful to teachers. 
 
 Laundry work might now be taught in girls* 
 clubs, as there are trained teachers instructing 
 such work in elementary schools both in 
 Liverpool and in London. The course is 
 supposed to be completed in nine lessons of 
 two hours each. Twelve children form a 
 class, and some instruction about the qualities 
 of starch, blue, etc., is given before the 
 manual work commences. The children 
 take great delight in the lesson, and no 
 doubt our girls would also enjoy it. 
 
 In addition to these regular classes in a 
 girls' club we would recommend occasional 
 courses of lectures, consisting of six or more, 
 with an examination at the end, when the 
 numbers of marks the girls have got will be 
 notified to the club. We do not recommend 
 prizes to be given — it would have the tendency 
 of making the girls work for other and lower 
 objects than the actual improvement to them- 
 selves and for the love of learning — and we 
 
64 CLUBS FOR WORKING GIRLS iii 
 
 would here observe that it is well for teachers 
 to exact a very regular attendance at their 
 classes, and to expect a message or written 
 excuse from those who do not attend, once 
 they have engaged to do so. The girls 
 should understand that the teacher gives up 
 much to attend week after week, giving up 
 all other engagements, often pleasant ones, 
 to be with the girls, and that in return she 
 expects regular attendance and attention. 
 If the teacher takes this high standpoint, 
 she will rarely be disappointed. There are, 
 of course, sometimes lively and saucy girls 
 who will give trouble at first ; but a teacher 
 who has tact and brightness will soon over- 
 come these difficulties. One evening a lady 
 who was teaching a class found one girl 
 very troublesome, disturbing the others by 
 her constant remarks, on which the lady 
 said : ''I think, Fanny, if you knew how 
 difficult it often is to teach, you would do 
 your best to help me, instead of disturbing 
 your companions as you do ; it may be hard 
 
Ill EVENING CLASSES 65 
 
 to learn, but it is far more difficult to teach." 
 '*Oh Miss Jones! I should so like to try, do 
 let me ! " was the unexpected answer of 
 Fanny. It was difficult to help smiling, but 
 the lesson went on more quietly, and after 
 it was over Miss Jones took her irrepressible 
 pupil aside, and tried to show her how wrong 
 it was to disturb the whole class, on which 
 she was answered by the saucy Fanny, 
 *' Why, now, you would not like me to sit 
 through the lesson with a solemn face ! you 
 would at once say, * Why, what has happened 
 to little Fanny, she looks so dull and sad 
 this evening?'" If a teacher can be good- 
 humoured enough to meet with such repartees 
 we may be sure that she will be successful, 
 both in enforcing attention as well as in 
 getting the affections of her pupils. 
 
 The courses of lectures which have been 
 given and have been much enjoyed by our 
 Soho girls have been on physiology, nursing, 
 botany, English literature, history, Greek 
 mythology, and ambulance classes. The 
 
66 CLUBS FOR WORKING GIRLS iii 
 
 management of a Bible class we shall consider 
 in another chapter. English literature was 
 much enjoyed by our Soho girls, and visits 
 to the library of the British Museum gave 
 them an enlarged view of the subjects taught. 
 In the history they were also much interested, 
 and it was made more real to them by visits 
 to Westminster Abbey and to monuments and 
 churches in London. On a visit to Canter- 
 bury, when in the cathedral, one of the girls 
 exclaimed, '' Why, that is exactly how we read 
 of it in the book," thus realising perhaps 
 for the first time that accounts in books of 
 historical events were real and true stories. 
 
 The book that had been read to them 
 during a week's stay at Westgate was 
 Memorials of Canterbury, by Dean Stanley, 
 which has such a graphic and pictorial 
 account of the three great historical events 
 of that cathedral and neighbourhood that 
 none better could have been found to give 
 them their first idea of history. 
 
 The plan of carrying out the teaching 
 
Ill EVENING CLASSES 67 
 
 given in class by visits to the British Museum, 
 National Gallery, Westminster Abbey, and 
 other places of interest in London, which we 
 have always done in our club, will not only 
 give additional interest to the study of history 
 or art, but will develop the power of observa- 
 tion so sadly deficient in many. 
 
 Great interest was given to girls who had 
 to walk a long way to work by telling them 
 something about architecture ; they began to 
 observe with interest whether the capitals of 
 the columns they passed were Doric, Ionic, 
 or Corinthian. If this idea in education were 
 carried out for girls in the secondary schools 
 and in the upper classes, lessons would never 
 be dull or thought tedious. Want of observa- 
 tion is a defect which interferes very much 
 with the proper fulfilment of most duties in 
 every condition of life. The mother who 
 has no observation will notice no change 
 in her child, which might be a warning of 
 coming illness ; the servant who is deficient 
 in this quality will be a useful machine, but 
 
68 CLUBS FOR WORKING GIRLS iii 
 
 Will not be that careful, thoughtful servant 
 who seems to forestall every requirement by 
 her kindly observation of what her mistress is 
 needing. The entire absence of observation 
 was so inconvenient in a maid whom a lady 
 was training for service that she had to 
 adopt the plan by which the great conjuror 
 Houdin was taught observation, and she was 
 sent out, to walk down one street and up 
 another, and bring back to the lady an exact 
 and detailed account of everything she had 
 seen. This training was successful, and the 
 observation which should have been de- 
 veloped in her in childhood was matured 
 after she had grown up. Now there is much 
 we can do for our club girls in like manner to 
 make their walks of interest, and to exemplify 
 that interesting little story of '' Eyes and 
 no Eyes" told to us by Miss Barbauld in 
 Evenings at Home, 
 
 We have had ambulance classes and 
 lectures on physiology, which have inter- 
 ested the girls very much, and they passed 
 
Ill EVENING CLASSES 69 
 
 their examinations most creditably. Some 
 lectures were given by a lady who had been 
 a friend to our club from its very foundation 
 on Greek heroines. She chose this subject 
 partly from its being one she was well ac- 
 quainted with from giving archaeological 
 lectures at the British Museum. She also 
 hoped that these lectures would give the 
 girls something good and noble to think of 
 quite outside their lives. The subject of the 
 lectures were Sacrifice of Iphigenia, Self- 
 devotion of Andromeda, of Alcestis to her 
 husband, and of Antigone to her father, the 
 Faithfulness of Penelope to her husband, and 
 of Clytemnestra to Agamemnon. 
 
 The girls attended these lectures and 
 passed an examination which was set to them 
 as it would have been set for the girls of a 
 high school, and so well had they attended to 
 the teaching that to two were awarded a star 
 of distinction ; one of them was so keen 
 about the stories she had heard that she 
 found at a book-stall a large classical diction- 
 
70 CLUBS FOR WORKING GIRLS m 
 
 ary that she bought for a shilling. Two of 
 the girls who had attended these lectures 
 worked at a factory, where they were em- 
 ployed all day in the monotonous occu- 
 pation of folding up small packets of black 
 lead ; they forgot the tediousness of their 
 work in talking over these Greek heroines 
 of whom they had been told in these inter- 
 esting lectures. The subject may appear to 
 be of little use to working girls, but we must 
 consider first that when ladies or gentlemen 
 who are specialists in their line are so kind as 
 to instruct a class they must choose their own 
 subject, and again that any noble thoughts or 
 heroic actions, though they are but myths, 
 will certainly raise the thoughts above the 
 commonplace and vulgar tone of ordinary life. 
 
 In all courses of lectures I think that it 
 is of great advantage to have an examina- 
 tion — questions that the pupils have to 
 answer by themselves after the course is 
 over. 
 
 We have occasionally given prizes for the 
 
Ill EVENING CLASSES . 71 
 
 best essay and given out a subject once a 
 month, and the marks have been given by 
 some one outside the class. 
 
 A debating society was also started in 
 our club by a lady who belonged to one 
 in connection with University College in 
 London, and during the months that she was 
 with us and guided the discussions, the girls 
 entered quite into the spirit of the debate. 
 After the first evening they chose themselves 
 the subjects they would discuss, taking 
 amongst others, '' The amusements of work- 
 ing people," ** The good or bad influence 
 of the Drama," '* Education," ''Total absti- 
 nence," ''Whether life is most pleasant in 
 town or country ? " 
 
 Two girls wrote papers, for and against, 
 and after reading them the discussion began. 
 This lasted about half an hour, when votes 
 were taken to see which side had the majority 
 of adherents. We had these debates once a 
 month through the winter, and they gave a 
 great deal of pleasant enjoyment to the girls. 
 
72 CLUBS FOR WORKING GIRLS iii 
 
 In these latter pages we have been speak- 
 ing mostly of what we would do for the higher 
 class of work-girls, not high in position but 
 in mental culture and intellectual activity. 
 As ours is a very mixed club both as to age 
 and conditions, we have also to consider the 
 quite untrained minds of the girls who have 
 carried away from the elementary schools no 
 advantage, and who have lost the little culture 
 they gained there by the continuous mono- 
 tony and drudgery of unskilled labour. For 
 them an ordinary well-conducted evening 
 school is the best education, and we may also 
 awaken their intelligence by games. Even a 
 dull girl may waken up at the letter game, 
 and find that she is able when amongst 
 perhaps brighter companions to take her part 
 in making words out of the letters before her. 
 Our work with many girls is to help them 
 to find out their own powers and to raise 
 them more in their own estimation, for if a 
 girl is stupid the fact of being thought so will 
 put out even the small spark of intelligence 
 
Ill EVENING CLASSES T>> 
 
 that remains in her. A club for the girls 
 should be like a large family, where every 
 variety of character and disposition is con- 
 sidered, and where the ladies who look after 
 it should deal with the girls not as with a 
 company of soldiers who are being drilled, 
 but as separate responsible beings. 
 
 The managers will be dependent for the 
 subjects of the lectures on the special studies 
 of their volunteer helpers, and they should, 
 above all things, in laying out a programme 
 of classes, find out what will be most accept- 
 able and most required by the girls, whose 
 taste must vary in different towns, or even 
 localities of the same town. In some in- 
 stances girls will have come from such a good 
 elementary school that they have already got 
 habits of discipline and a desire for higher 
 intellectual interests. We think it should be 
 pointed out to the girls how much they must 
 lose of the teaching they have already received 
 if they do not keep it up by practice at 
 evening classes. Children are often pressed 
 
74 CLUBS FOR WORKING GIRLS m 
 
 on SO that at eleven they are able to leave 
 school as half-timers on having passed the 
 third standard. We think this has a bad 
 effect upon them ; they are too young to 
 value learning, and are often glad to have 
 done with it altogether. It is certainly a 
 loss to the child when it completes school-life 
 before thirteen. We cannot finish this 
 subject of evening schools better than by 
 quoting the points specially recommended 
 in the minority report of the Royal Com- 
 mission on Education for the conduct of 
 evening schools — 
 
 (i) That the desire and need of young 
 people for healthy physical exercises be re- 
 cognised. A system of calisthenics and 
 musical drill would give healthy training to 
 the body, would be likely to attract scholars, 
 would provide the outlet to physical energies 
 which educators know to be necessary to 
 adolescent youth, and would further impart 
 moral discipline and train the scholars in 
 habits of order and obedience. 
 
Ill EVENING CLASSES 75 
 
 (2) That the methods and subjects of in- 
 struction should be such as will awaken the 
 interests of the pupils and give them 
 pleasure in the pursuit of knowledge, rather 
 than cram them with information merely 
 committed to memory. For this purpose the 
 teaching should be mainly oral, and be given 
 in connection with real objects, and should in 
 many cases have a direct bearing on the 
 pupils' own lives and avocations. By these 
 means the faculty of observation will be 
 cultivated and developed, and an increased 
 interest will be aroused in the duties of 
 life. 
 
 (3) The education, so far as it bears 
 directly upon the daily work of the scholars, 
 both on the intellectual and practical sides, 
 should be, if only in an elementary sense, 
 technical. One way in which the interest of 
 the majority of scholars can be secured is by 
 making clear the benefit they derive from 
 learning. The dwarfing effect of an excessive 
 division of labour will be lessened, and the 
 
76 CLUBS FOR WORKING GIRLS iii 
 
 intelligence and skill applied to manual work 
 will both give the worker a greater pleasure 
 in it, and inspire a worthy ambition to excel. 
 In addition to drawing, art handwork has 
 also been suggested as likely to prove most 
 attractive to both boys and girls, who are 
 greatly interested in what they do with their 
 own hands. By these means scholars should 
 be trained to dexterity of hand, accuracy of 
 sight and touch, and to the perception and 
 enjoyment of neat workmanship and of beau- 
 tiful form. 
 
 (4) The course of reading should be such 
 as to fill the minds and imaginations of the 
 pupils with noble examples of duty. Music 
 should be taught, so as to elevate the taste 
 and prepare the scholars to enjoy in their 
 home-life and elsewhere the pure pleasure 
 which song alone can impart. It should also 
 be remembered that some scholars attending 
 evening schools desire not so much the sys- 
 tematic continuation of their education as to 
 supplement some special deficiency of which 
 
Ill EVENING CLASSES 77 
 
 they are conscious. Thus some will wish to 
 improve their handwriting, and others their 
 knowledge of accounts ; some their power of 
 correct composition and grammatical expres- 
 sion, while lads intending to be mechanics 
 want to learn drawing and practical geometry. 
 The following are the classes carried on 
 at the Soho Club — 
 
 Monday. — Evening school under Government inspec- 
 tion ; French class. Dramatic class. 
 
 Tuesday, — Singing, old notation ; mending, patching, 
 and darning. 
 
 Wednesday. — Gymnastics ; art needlework. 
 
 Thursday. — Evening school, elocution class, Bible 
 class. 
 
 Sunday. — Bible class. 
 
 The following accounts of girls' clubs in 
 America will give an idea of the classes 
 carried on there for working girls — 
 
 My dear Miss Stanley — My sister May has 
 written of your kindness to her and has sent me the 
 report of the Club which you gave her. She also has 
 asked that I should send you particulars of our Clubs for 
 working girls. The 38 Street Working Girls' Society 
 
78 CLUBS FOR WORKING GIRLS m 
 
 grew naturally from a class of factory girls which met 
 with me on Tuesday evenings. This Society started the 
 others in New York, as well as suggesting the plan to 
 many workers in other places. As during one year so 
 many clubs were formed, it seemed wise at the very 
 beginning of the movement to unite the several Clubs, 
 and last March the Association of Working Girls' 
 Societies was formed. It was an interesting gathering, 
 as for the first time in New York a thousand women of 
 all classes met alone (without men) to discuss business 
 matters. On the platform there were over fifty, consisting 
 of the officers both ladies and working girls, who formed 
 the Central Council of the New York Association. Each 
 Club was represented by four to six members. On the 
 floor the members met, each wearing a small bow of 
 ribbon showing to which Club they belonged. I 
 enclose the constitution of the 38 Street Society. 
 This with the member's card has been practically 
 copied by the majority of the other Clubs. The leaflet 
 is used by the members in bringing in others. We have 
 had join now over 335 since the Society was formed in 
 March 1884 ; a hundred have left for good cause in the 
 majority of cases, several have married, and several 
 have moved away. Fully two-thirds of the members are 
 factory girls, others work in shops, some iare out at 
 service, or do shop work at home. During this summer 
 nearly five hundred will go from the Association on 
 vacations, paying a small sum, the boarding places and 
 rest of the expenses being furnished by the Working 
 Girls' Vacation Society. Many day excursions are also 
 taken, when we ladies go with our fellow members. An 
 inside organisation has been formed in the 38 Street 
 
Ill EVENING CLASSES 79 
 
 Society, composed of about fifty members, who are banded 
 together to help others. One duty is to carry flowers to 
 sick people living in tenement houses. During June 
 and July they thus visited and left sweet blossoms to over 
 a hundred and sixty sick ones. The house in 38 Street 
 is sub-let, except for four or five rooms — the rent of these 
 the girls meet. The monthly meetings are most business- 
 Hke and thoroughly enjoyed. The Librarian is a 
 charming lady who lives in part of our house, paying 
 rent ; as she must support herself and mother, and so 
 could not give up every evening, an outside elderly lady 
 friend who loves girls and yet cannot work among them, 
 pays her a salary to act as her substitute. As President 
 I appointed her librarian ; to fulfil her duties she has to 
 be there each evening, and so looks after many details. 
 Indirectly much direct religious influence is exercised. 
 Next winter Sunday Bible classes will probably he started 
 in several Clubs. It was delightful to see from your 
 report how similar some of our work is, though we 
 knew nothing before of yours. Our work is very new, 
 only yet in its infancy. We are thankful to our Heavenly 
 Father for the past, and look to Him for continued 
 blessing. Many plans for the future are being discussed. 
 We ladies are intimate friends with many of our members, 
 and feel that our influence must tell during the many 
 evenings we spend with them ; the girls however are 
 the ones in the Society affairs to advise and counsel us. 
 
 Pardon please such a long letter, but from my sister's 
 letter I judged you desired just these details. Wishing 
 your Club the richest of blessings, believe me, very 
 sincerely yours, Grace H. Dodge. 
 
 New York City, U.S.A., 1885. 
 
8o CLUBS FOR WORKING-GIRLS iii 
 
 The Yonkers Library Association. 
 
 Our membership roll is perhaps no longer than it was 
 a year ago. Many new names have been added, but 
 other names have been removed, leaving about 120 on 
 the list. The progress is shown more in the life of the 
 organisation, for there is a deeper interest and an earnest- 
 ness of purpose among the present members which is a 
 very satisfactory element. 
 
 Our classes have continued about the same as hereto- 
 fore. The choral class on Monday evenings, which 
 numbers through the year about thirty members, has 
 given several pleasant entertainments for the members of 
 the association and their friends. 
 
 One of these was a " pay concert," from which 30 
 dols. was realised, and used to pay expenses incident to 
 this branch of instruction. At the closing exercises in 
 June, part of a cantata, "The Flower Queen," was 
 rendered, and at the Christmas festival, in addition to the 
 carols, a Kinder symphony was performed. 
 
 The needlework department has sixty members. 
 They have devoted themselves largely to crewel 
 samplers, Kensington embroidery, crotchet and lace 
 work. 
 
 There was an exhibition of last season's work in 
 June, and a few articles were sold. This year, besides 
 the regular lessons, a class for advanced workers has 
 been formed with a view of preparing articles for sale 
 at the close of the year. The profits of such sales will 
 be divided equally between the Library Association 
 treasury and the makers of the articles. 
 
 There was a millinery class last spring of twenty 
 
Ill EVENING CLASSES 8i 
 
 members and a dressmaking class this fall of about 
 thirty. We hope that their summer bonnets and winter 
 suits have shown the general beneficial effects of these 
 courses of instruction, and we hear that a few of the 
 girls have taken up dressmaking as a trade. 
 
 We have at present a class of fourteen in book- 
 keeping and penmanship, which we trust will create a 
 desire for the keeping of private accounts, if it accom- 
 plishes nothing more. 
 
 One other course I must not omit to mention — the 
 wax-flower class of twenty. Should this develop taste 
 for the pursuit of botany or the starting of a flower 
 mission, we would feel that it had been useful as well as 
 ornamental. In addition to the classes we have weekly 
 gatherings for business or social meetings, tales, readings, 
 etc. 
 
 Once a month tea and crackers are served, and on 
 state occasions cake ; games are played, and new 
 members have a chance to become acquainted with the 
 old ones. Talks on domestic economy were given. 
 
 Health talks, also, we have had. Last April Dr. Dio 
 Lewis, in whose death the Library Association certainly 
 lost a friend, gave three exceedingly interesting lectures 
 on this subject, and this year we have had a medical 
 service every Thursday evening — free to the members of 
 the Association — conducted by Dr. Sarah E. Post. 
 And we, too, have a Lend-a-Hand Club, which, although 
 still quite in its infancy, has, nevertheless, a report to 
 make. Its first effort was in behalf of the Yonkers 
 Nursery and Home. The girls furnished and presided 
 at one of the tables of a fair given in aid of the object, 
 and in this way we were able to add 50 dols. to the net 
 
 G 
 
82 CLUBS FOR WORKING GIRLS m 
 
 proceeds. Several dresses and garments which had 
 been made for the purpose were sold and then presented 
 by the purchasers to the nursery children, thus doing 
 double duty. Christmas cards and papers found their 
 way into two hospitals during the holiday season, and 
 since then some of the girls have been working for our 
 Charity Organisation Society. 
 
 And now I must add a word concerning our Free 
 Circulating Library for Self-supporting Women. This 
 supplies four hundred applicants with good literature 
 from eighteen hundred volumes. 
 
 Two hundred books are constantly oif the shelves, 
 while the yearly circulation amounts to 4000. Our 
 Book Committee has just provided us with a printed 
 catalogue, by means of which we believe the circulation 
 will be largely increased. 
 
 The library is supported by subscriptions, and we 
 are in hopes of raising in time an endowment fund, 
 so as to have a permanent source of income ; we have 
 already started this fund with 1000 dols., the recent 
 generous gift of one of our friends. As our little home- 
 like building is secure to us, free from rent, during 
 twenty years, our running expenses are not large. They 
 seldom exceed 600 dols. including everything, even the 
 purchase of books. 
 
 When we consider that the visits made to the 
 building during the year, counting for the library as well 
 as for the evening classes, number nearly 8000, we 
 ought to feel that our little red brick house is indeed a 
 centre of attraction. But numbers could tell of the 
 individual benefits here derived, of the personal pleasure 
 here realised. While we wish to increase our work, our 
 
Ill EVENING CLASSES Z^ 
 
 desire is not so much for larger statistics as for wider 
 influence, an influence for good carried by each member 
 far beyond their walls. Our hope is not so much for 
 more members, though we welcome them most heartily, 
 as that each member should here find strength and 
 encouragement and brightness for her daily duties, and 
 that there may come to her, as perhaps never has come 
 before, a realising sense of the dignity of labour and the 
 power of a noble womanhood. 
 
 YoNKERS, N.Y., March 1887. 
 
 San Francisco Girls' Union. 
 
 This Society is formed in the interest of the self- 
 reliant, self-respecting girls of San Francisco, and un- 
 protected strangers. It will be conducted upon business 
 principles, compromising in no way womanly independ- 
 ence, and proposed to be largely self-supporting when 
 fully established. Its object is not only to do for the 
 worthy girls of the city what the Y.M.C.A. is doing for 
 young men, viz. : open attractive rooms for music, 
 reading, etc., evenings ; take cognisance of their personal 
 and business wants ; but also to sub-let all private rooms 
 in the society's building to those without or too remote 
 from home and friends, and furnish board at moderate 
 cost. In short, the spirit of the " Union " is to give 
 every bread-winning and aspiring girl, whatever the line 
 of her honest endeavour, the protection and friendly 
 interest that her case requires ; and also to acquaint the 
 patrons of skilled and domestic industries in the way of 
 supply with the best self-supporting classes of our sex. 
 
 In this enterprise (already auspiciously opened at 
 
84 CLUBS FOR WORKING GIRLS iii 
 
 the Society's building), looking to brighter lives and 
 happier homes, as greater fidelity and skill bring 
 greater appreciation, an interested public is kindly 
 invited to co-operate personally, by sustaining and 
 beneficiary memberships — calling at the " Union " 
 between the hours of 3 and 5 p.m. in a business way, 
 and as visitors when receptions are announced through 
 the press. Morally this work appeals to all who value 
 honesty and purity in womanhood, and to every parent 
 who recognises the possibility of its required protection 
 and aid for the loved daughters of their own fireside. 
 
 Numerous statistics proved that in the estabhshments 
 of centres for Christian effort in behalf of the young 
 girls of any city — tiding them over times of enforced 
 idleness and special temptation — many have been saved 
 to a true and pure womanhood who, otherwise weak, 
 inexperienced and friendless, would swell the sad list 
 of those who go down to a fathomless immoral grave. 
 
 To the Self-supporting Girls of San Francisco. 
 
 The society for mutual benefit called the " San 
 Francisco Girls' Union," located at 714 Bush Street, 
 invites you all to its membership and privileges. Call 
 in a business way, between the hours of 3 and 5 p.m.^ 
 or if engaged, between 7 and 9 Tuesday or Thursday 
 evenings. Rooms and board are furnished from 15 to 
 18 dollars per month, with use of attractive parlours, 
 music and reading. 
 
 Especially suited is this home to meet the wants of 
 girls employed in public business places, without parental 
 homes and the sympathy and protection impossible to 
 
Ill EVENING CLASSES 85 
 
 lodge and restaurant life. To this class its convenient 
 location, social and home-like atmosphere must only be 
 understood to fill its neat and sunny rooms and capacious 
 dining hall. All beneficiary members are entitled to 
 such business aid as the Society can give. 
 
IV 
 
 COUNTRY VISITS AND EXCURSIONS 
 
 Amongst the rapid growth of benevolent and 
 wise charities none, as we have already 
 noticed, are so remarkable as that of country 
 holidays given to poor children and to young 
 women. The desire is now very generally 
 felt by those who themselves enjoy the 
 pleasures of country homes, or indeed of 
 country visits to their friends, to give to the 
 poor and to those of the working classes 
 whose lives are spent in the toil of great 
 cities the enjoyment of some days or a few 
 weeks in the country. Working lads do not 
 need this change as much as the girls, for the 
 former will often go into the country on 
 Sundays or holidays, with their fishing rods. 
 
IV COUNTRY VISITS AND EXCURSIONS 87 
 
 or for a long walk, or on bicycling expedi- 
 tions ; whereas the children and girls would, 
 but for these country holidays, never have 
 the benefit and the advantage of country 
 life, so needful to all, both physically and 
 mentally. 
 
 Mothers, whilst rejoicing over the pleasures 
 given to their children, say sadly : *' Such 
 things were not thought of in our day ; we 
 have had to work from year to year ! we 
 never saw the country or had a day's holiday!'' 
 This is most true of thousands of our working 
 women in London. I sent one who was in the 
 shoemaking trade in the East End for her first 
 country visit to a convalescent hospital; she 
 told me that from a child she had worked hard, 
 first to help her parents, then after she married 
 she had to work on to help her husband, as his 
 wages alone would not have kept the children. 
 There was no time for holidays, only for 
 work ; no beauty brought to her life, only toil 
 — unceasing, endless toil. Her daughters were 
 now married and they were beginning afresh 
 
88 CLUBS FOR WORKING GIRLS iv 
 
 their married life of labour. That country- 
 visit, coming for the first time in her life to 
 this toiler when she was nearly half a century- 
 old, made her life seem more bearable, and 
 made her feel that she also might have some 
 of the pure joys of this world, which she had 
 often been told by the socialist preachers 
 belonged only to those with money, who 
 would never bestow on the poor anything 
 that they could keep for themselves. 
 
 There are many of our working people 
 who have never been brought in contact with 
 any but hard, harsh, money -loving people, 
 whose hearts are bitter within them at the 
 disparity of fortune, who cannot believe that 
 lords and ladies are other than those unreal 
 personages that they read of in their penny 
 serials. 
 
 Now of all ways to touch the hearts of the 
 poor and the suffering there is none to com- 
 pare to that of a country visit. I do not know 
 what longer experience others engaged in 
 philanthropic work may have of such invita- 
 
IV COUNTRY VISITS AND EXCURSIONS 89 
 
 tions ; the first that was given to me was from 
 a lady whose heart and head were always 
 full of plans for the happiness and for the 
 uplifting of others. About twenty years ago 
 she asked me to send down to her beauti- 
 ful home by the Wye some work -girl who 
 needed this blissful change. The girl I sent, 
 a lace cleaner by trade, visited this happy 
 home, was free to roam through woods and 
 over commons ; the bright beautiful joyous 
 welcome of the hostess made her feel really 
 at home, and the three weeks of happiness 
 were but too soon over. 
 
 The experiment was so successful that the 
 invitation was repeated, and another lady 
 with the same loving sympathetic heart, 
 who has also passed away from us, gave 
 me the same happy privilege of selecting 
 guests for these summer holidays. Now 
 many ladies do the same, and girls from 
 many clubs and parishes throughout Lon- 
 don, from the Girls' Friendly Society and 
 the Young Women's Christian Association, 
 
 'i%s 
 
 ERSITY ) 
 
90 CLUBS FOR WORKING-GIRLS iv 
 
 go forth in August and September to the 
 country. 
 
 I know of some mill-girls in Yorkshire 
 who save money throughout the year to pay 
 for a poor London girl to come down to their 
 country side, where she is their guest. Is it 
 not true that we have but to start some 
 practical way of showing kindness, and the 
 idea spreads and unites many hearts in 
 the earnest desire of giving happiness ? ' 
 
 In many different w^ays our girls are 
 invited to the country. Sometimes, as in our 
 first experience, they are the guests in a 
 lady's own house, more often are they lodged 
 and boarded in cottages, under the supervision 
 of the lady herself. The cottagers we find 
 are very kind to the girls, making them most 
 happy and comfortable. Sometimes the 
 ladies, whilst lodging the girls in cottages, let 
 them have meals with their own servants ; 
 others have rooms set apart for these holiday 
 parties, and invite three or four girls at a 
 time, giving them each five shillings a week, 
 
IV COUNTRY VISITS AND EXCURSIONS 91 
 
 milk, vegetables, coals, and light. The visitors 
 keep house together, and have the amusement 
 of providing for themselves. In other places 
 a regular guest-house is arranged, as at Castle 
 Howard, where eighteen women and girls 
 are received for eleven months of the year. 
 A matron is in charge, who attends to the 
 cooking, whilst the guests help in the house- 
 work. This guest-house has been established 
 nine years, and has become a most valuable 
 institution for over - worked and delicate 
 women and girls from the manufacturing 
 towns of Yorkshire. 
 
 At Wilcote, in Oxfordshire, a similar plan 
 has been adopted on a smaller scale. Here 
 for a great many years three rooms that 
 were built adjoining the stables have been 
 occupied all the summer and autumn by three 
 or four guests. There is no matron, so the 
 rule, and a very wise one, is made that no 
 girl should come down without some older 
 person who will look after them. Sometimes 
 a mother and baby can be sent, or small child- 
 
92 CLUBS FOR WORKING GIRLS iv 
 
 ren and older girls ; no limit is put to age, but 
 they must be respectable. The housekeeper 
 looks after them, the guests are responsible 
 for the housework and cooking in their apart- 
 ments. From the days of Elisha no doubt 
 countless guest-chambers have been estab- 
 lished by many kind and sympathetic people, 
 and in many different ways have we heard 
 of this hospitality being carried out. There 
 is a host we know of who in his country 
 house has set apart some rooms to receive 
 poor ladies, — poor in the goods of this 
 world, but poor also in the lack of any of 
 life's pleasures. Another gentleman we 
 know of who in his little house in London 
 had always one room set apart, not for a 
 friend, but for the sorrowful or sick who 
 needed this change and rest. No doubt many 
 will in their experience have known of similar 
 instances of thoughtful hospitality, for very 
 much is done quietly, perseveringly, and per- 
 sistently, that is never heard of beyond the 
 immediate circle of friends, and perhaps not 
 
IV COUNTRY VISITS AND EXCURSIONS 93 
 
 always by them. Whilst mentioning a few of 
 the country homes that have been established, 
 we by no means think we speak of all, but 
 only of the few, whose hospitality we know 
 of from experience. 
 
 At Babbacombe in Devonshire the Misses 
 Skinner have built a delightful home of rest 
 for business girls, who are taken in for five 
 shillings a week if they have a subscriber's 
 letter, or without for twelve shillings, and have 
 a return ticket at the price of a single fare. 
 This is for the higher class of work -girls. 
 Another home was opened a few years ago 
 at Heme Bay by the Sisters of East Grim- 
 stead at Hackney, and the cost there is 
 twelve shillings a week and the return journey 
 is five shillings. At Brighton, Lymington, 
 and Eastbourne are seaside homes of the 
 same kind ; also in Lancashire and Yorkshire 
 are there several established. 
 
 We had a most kind friend to our Soho 
 club, whom we have just lost, who had for 
 many Bank holidays invited three girls to 
 
94 CLUBS FOR WORKING GIRLS iv 
 
 go to a cottage near Virginia Water on 
 the Saturday before the Easter, Whitsun, 
 and August Bank holidays. The girls stayed 
 there either till the Tuesday evening, or, 
 when that extra day has not been granted 
 to them, have been able to return to London 
 in time for eight or nine o'clock work. The 
 girls chosen have been those who would 
 have had no other holidays granted to 
 them but the Bank holidays. These, we 
 are thankful to say. Parliament has given 
 to all. Many have but these few days 
 throughout the year for holidays. A week 
 or more would in many cases be beyond 
 all possibility of obtaining from employers. 
 These days have been so delightful to the 
 girls and a source of such real happiness 
 that I would recommend the same plan to 
 be followed in connection with other clubs 
 both in London and in country towns. 
 
 It is extraordinary how much the girls 
 will see in that very short visit. One of 
 them, an upholstress, a fragile -looking girl, 
 
IV COUNTRY VISITS AND EXCURSIONS 95 
 
 told me how she had walked through 
 Windsor Park in the morning, a distance 
 of eleven miles, seen the State apartments 
 in the castle, come back by train, had her 
 dinner, walked to Holloway College and 
 back, and again after tea walked to a 
 lady's house for whom she had a letter, 
 making throughout the day seventeen miles 
 of walking. 
 
 Virginia Water, with its lovely surround- 
 ings, is particularly suited for such visits, as 
 there are so many points of interest all round, 
 and the girls delight in long walks whenever 
 they get to the country. 
 
 The absolute necessity of a convalescent 
 home for many hospital cases is so well 
 established that most of our large London 
 hospitals have a convalescent home attached 
 to their institutions ; but many of our work- 
 girls need this change after long months 
 of unceasing toil as much as if they had 
 gone through a severe illness. The long 
 hours of work, the confined air of the work- 
 
96 CLUBS FOR WORKING GIRLS iv 
 
 room, and the heavy atmosphere of the 
 streets, with the small overcrowded tenements 
 which they inhabit, all produce a languor and 
 fatigue which would often develop some 
 disease if this life-giving change to the 
 country were not possible. Very often the 
 girls have told me that the doctor says : 
 *' You are not well certainly, but if you had 
 not been in the country last summer you 
 would have had a severe illness by now." 
 
 I would recommend that the girls should 
 pay their own journey when able to do so, 
 though there are cases when such an expense 
 would prohibit this enjoyment. 
 
 I would also enjoin all ladies who have the 
 privilege of selecting visitors for these country 
 visits to be very particular to know the 
 possibilities of saving which exist in the 
 case of each girl whom she sends away. 
 If the girl cannot pay on the first occasion 
 she may be able to do so on a future 
 one, when she has learned by experience 
 the value of the invitation, both as regards 
 
IV COUNTRY VISITS AND EXCURSIONS 97 
 
 health and enjoyment. All the year will 
 she have remembered and talked of the 
 kindness she has received during her last 
 country visit. The lady who is entrusted 
 with the selection of girls should find means 
 to make saving by small sums practicable 
 throughout the year. Above all, she should 
 inquire very particularly into the state of the 
 girls' wardrobe, for many have been found 
 prepared for the country visits with splendid 
 feathers and lace adornments, who have most 
 sadly wanted a wholesome and tidy change 
 of linen. When will our work-girls become 
 like the German maidens, careful to possess 
 a good stock of underclothing, strong and 
 well made '^ We do not wish them to spin 
 their own flax like the German girls ; but 
 we do wish them to know how to cut out 
 their shifts, their night-gowns, and to be 
 provided with a tidy stock of underclothing. 
 We might perhaps pay more attention in our 
 girls clubs to getting up occasional needle- 
 work parties for this object. 
 
 H 
 
98 CLUBS FOR WORKING GIRLS iv 
 
 The girl who looks white and listless from 
 her long months of labour returns from her 
 country visit with often the delight of a sun- 
 burnt face. Health to them is the greatest 
 beauty, and at the seaside I have seen them 
 wet their faces with sea water and let it dry 
 in the sun, in the hopes that they should 
 go home with reddened complexions. All 
 languor seems at once gone when they are 
 in the country ; they breathe in with delight 
 the fresh sweet air, they gather with joy the 
 smallest flower, and their one talk is of the 
 beauty of the country. They may not know 
 which is the oak, the beech, or the poplar ; 
 but they know that the fields are lovely, 
 that the running water is clear and sparkling, 
 and that the sky is free of smoke, and that 
 all nature rejoices with them in a summer 
 holiday. I cannot certainly say enough of 
 the physical benefits of these country visits ; 
 but how much more there is to say on the 
 moral aspects of these holidays ! Only the 
 two are so interwoven that we can hardly 
 
IV COUNTRY VISITS AND EXCURSIONS 99 
 
 separate one from the other. The embittered 
 feelings engendered by poverty, the often 
 vulgar and pert manners of those bred in 
 towns, and the small interests of those who 
 have never been away from the busy, the 
 hurrying, the distracting throngs of our 
 cities, seem to be corrected by these visits. 
 
 All the better nature of our work -girls 
 is brought out by this acquaintance, this 
 knowledge of nature. Poetry is then to be 
 understood. To us who have so often seen 
 the sea with its wondrous and ever-changing 
 aspects of beauty — who have seen the rushing 
 streams, the rivers, the mountains, the storms, 
 the clouds, the forest- — poetry speaks to us in 
 a language that we can understand. When 
 wearied with our town life, with the confine- 
 ment of endless streets, are we not refreshed 
 when we remember the sublime beauties of 
 nature that we have so often enjoyed ? I 
 think that till the work -girl has ^^^n the 
 country she has not that longing for it that 
 we see in her afterwards. Once she has 
 
loo CLUBS FOR WORKING GIRLS iv 
 
 seen the green fields, the sunny streams, 
 and the luxury of the country flowers, we 
 may often see developed in her the same 
 love of nature that those most cultivated 
 possess ; and do we not then give to her 
 a possession and a knowledge that must 
 add to her happiness, and make her work 
 less burdensome ? 
 
 Let me here say that work is not in itself 
 an ill. I look on it as one of the best things 
 in life, as it makes pleasures the greater by 
 the very contrasts. Work is, though, more 
 burdensome now than formerly, from the 
 monotony of the endless subdivisions of labour 
 which is needed to produce the article at the 
 cheap rate at which the public demand it. 
 
 Sometimes two companions have been 
 away together, and then day after day at 
 their work they will recall to one another 
 some slight incident of that holiday, short 
 indeed, but long enough to have filled the 
 mind with beautiful pictures of our bountiful 
 mother earth. 
 
IV COUNTRY VISITS AND EXCURSIONS loi 
 
 Uneducated people, or we should perhaps 
 say English people, are often very undemon- 
 strative even when they feel most keenly, and 
 so the lady who has been most hospitably 
 entertaining work-girls may not know how 
 much joy she has given ; but let us who 
 know these girls, tell them that no pleasure 
 is to be compared to that of country visits. 
 Such a visit as eighteen of our Soho club 
 girls once had with me in Surrey may not 
 again occur in the annals of working girls' 
 clubs. There we were welcomed and 
 entertained and made happy from a 
 Saturday to a Tuesday by the kindest of 
 friends. The girls might go in and out of 
 the house at their good pleasure ; they 
 might be up with the lark, and see the 
 fresh dew on the flowery pastures ; they 
 might walk in the garden, and they slept 
 in lovely guest-chambers where everything 
 was dainty and fresh. 
 
 We Londoners know what an exquisite 
 pleasure it is to find ourselves the first 
 
I02 CLUBS FOR WORKING GIRLS iv 
 
 morning awaking in the quiet and delicious 
 fragrance of a country home. We seem to 
 get rid of the smoke, the dust, the toil of the 
 town, and to be truly happy ; our burdens 
 seem cast off; and if it is so to us who live 
 always in pleasant houses, in broad streets, 
 what must it be to the work-girl from the 
 narrow street and noisy court ? With some 
 pleasures there is a proportion to be gauged 
 between expense, trouble, and result ; but 
 here there is no proportion. The happiness 
 conferred is out of all proportion to the 
 expense, to the trouble, of the host. The 
 girl seems for her short visit to possess to 
 the full her share of all the good things of 
 life, and she receives kindness and sym- 
 pathy — the bulwarks, as we may well call 
 them, of life. 
 
 Again I must say that we should re- 
 member that the work-girl has not the habit 
 of visiting, so let us give her, before she 
 starts, a few words of advice. We have 
 already overlooked her wardrobe ; shall we 
 
IV COUNTRY VISITS AND EXCURSIONS 103 
 
 not remind her of the cleanliness, the order 
 of the country ; recommend her politeness 
 and consideration for her hostess and grate- 
 ful attention to the servants, and no flighti- 
 ness of conduct ? When sending girls to 
 stay in the country, if not in Homes under 
 the care of a matron, where they are care- 
 fully looked after, we should be very 
 cautious as to the sort of girls we send ; 
 much serious harm may come of what should 
 only be a benefit. A lady told me she had 
 had much difficulty in a mining district in 
 keeping the girls who came from the towns 
 from making in many cases dangerous 
 acquaintances. Before closing the subject 
 of country visits I should like my readers to 
 judge for themselves the appreciation felt 
 by a London work -girl for the beauties of 
 nature. This girl was in no way above her 
 companions ; she had had but the ordinary 
 elementary education, but from her first 
 country visit at seventeen she found she 
 loved nature better than all else, and has 
 
I04 CLUBS FOR WORKING GIRLS iv 
 
 been year after year the happy guest of many 
 kind friends. 
 
 Visit to the New Forest. 
 
 On Friday, 20th August, Evelyn Duggin and myself 
 were most kindly invited down to the New Forest by a 
 lady, Mrs. Maxwell ; we started from the Waterloo Station 
 by the nine o'clock train for Winchester, arriving at that 
 old town by half-past ten. After staying there for two 
 hours we had to get into the train which was to take us to 
 Lyndhurst ; the country through which we passed was 
 indeed lovely, especially Southampton ; we were delayed 
 here, which gave us a chance of seeing the beautiful 
 breakwater and the Gulf Links. These Links are small 
 islands which are joined together by narrow strips of 
 land ; on these horses were feeding, and in the water the 
 children were paddling, swimming, and ducking each 
 other under the waves, it made us quite happy to look 
 at them. The train moved on again, and in a short time 
 we found ourselves at Lyndhurst Road Station, where a 
 gentleman was waiting to take us in his dog-cart. 
 
 The road from the station leads through the forest ; 
 we drove past pretty houses covered with creeping plants 
 and large yellow roses, and surrounded by orchards, with 
 the forest in the background forming a very nice picture. 
 After a drive of about three miles we came to the village 
 of Lyndhurst; here we saw the station-house. Crown 
 Hotel, a beautiful Church and the Queen's House, 
 where resides the master of the forest. Driving on we 
 met cattle, pigs, and geese, the geese making a loud 
 noise on our approach. When we passed Bank Hill, 
 
IV COUNTRY VISITS AND EXCURSIONS 105 
 
 Mrs. Maxwell's house was pointed out to us, and I do 
 not think there could be a prettier one. Alighting at a 
 house a little farther up we were welcomed by Mrs. Wade, 
 Eliza Sabin, and Emma Lockyer, who were waiting to 
 receive us. Here we were to stay for our holidays ; when 
 we had refreshed and rested ourselves Eliza and Emma 
 introduced us to the forest and to some of the inhabitants. 
 
 We saw a flying-snake just above our heads. The 
 next morning Evelyn and I went into the forest by our- 
 selves, where, after going through a lovely glade, we 
 picked a handkerchief full of large mushrooms ; these we 
 were very careful of, for fear of breaking such beauties ; 
 we bore them home in high glee. Imagine our dis- 
 appointment when we were told by Mrs. Wade that they 
 were all cowherbs or toadstools, and there was not one 
 mushroom amongst them. 
 
 In the afternoon we went to see the river ; it is called 
 the Slab ; it is but a shallow stream, but its water is very 
 clear and the banks of it are plentifully covered with 
 vegetation of all kinds. The next day we were taken to 
 see the big oak, which measures eight yards round the 
 smallest part of the trunk, and its great boughs spread 
 far over the roads. On our return we saw the scissors 
 beach, which is in the shape of that most useful article. 
 
 We never seemed tired of wandering through such a 
 lovely place. When taking our walk over the hill which is 
 at the back of Mrs. Maxwell's house, we saw on the left 
 one part of the forest enclosed; this is where the game is 
 bred. In this enclosure it is so dark that the rays of the 
 sun could not shine through the thick foliage and inter- 
 lacing boughs. On our right was the common ; this was 
 covered with bright coloured heather, blazing away as if 
 
io6 CLUBS FOR WORKING GIRLS iv 
 
 trying to make up for the darkness on the other side. 
 Looking across this dazzHng colour nothing was to be 
 seen but the forest, which walled this heath in on all 
 sides, and the blue heavens smiling over all things. 
 Everything was so beautiful and calm, here the silence 
 only broken by the song of the birds and the soft 
 cooing of the wood pigeon. This was my favourite place 
 when I wanted to read and did not want to be disturbed 
 by the cows and pigs. 
 
 When by myself I often followed the course of one 
 of the streamlets which were so numerous ; they led me 
 into such lovely parts of the forest, which were 59 lonely 
 and wild, and yet so peaceful and shady, that it used to 
 put me in mind of that pretty song that was often sung 
 by the Club girls — 
 
 O forest deep and gloomy, 
 Or woodland, vale and hill. 
 
 The music seemed as if it were composed for this forest 
 which was indeed deep and gloomy, and yet it was delight- 
 ful walking here forgetting everything save the beauty of 
 the woods which surrounded you on all sides, and the 
 murmur of the water as it ran over its pebbly bed. As I 
 went farther up the stream I came to an opening, and 
 found myself standing on a hill ; the scene before me 
 was very picturesque ; there was the white winding road 
 leading through the forest, and large fields of grass mixed 
 with heather, and where cattle and horses were quietly 
 grazing, a pretty thatched house, a duck pond in front of 
 it, with white ducks sailing on it, the sound of children's 
 voices, and the tinkle of the bells on the cows' necks, who 
 were going home to be milked, were all in perfect harmony 
 
IV COUNTRY VISITS AND EXCURSIONS 107 
 
 with the place. On the following Sunday I went with 
 some friends to Rinefield House ; on our way there we 
 came across a large beech tree ; one of its limbs had 
 been blown off by the wind, and was about two yards 
 and a half round. Going up the hill we crossed some 
 beautiful spots and green glades where the sun shone on 
 ferns and shrubs, making them look golden in the 
 mellow^light; the ground was carpeted in some places and 
 dotted in others with little patches of soft moss. At 
 length we came to Rinefield House ; it is an old deserted 
 mansion ; we could not go over it as it was locked, and 
 there was not any one in charge of it ; it is surrounded by 
 an orchard, and near the gate are two very curious trees, 
 called puzzle monkeys ; outside the orchard are large 
 fields of feather grasses. This house stands on a hill, and 
 the view from it is most splendid ; it is really so beautiful 
 that I cannot describe it. As we gaze over this spot of 
 beauty, the sun is sinking behind the blue line of the 
 tree tops, and the soft white mist is rising in the valley, 
 and as we bend our steps homewards through the woods 
 again, there are various cries coming from the darkening 
 forest ; it is quite dark when we reach home. So ends our 
 walk of some miles to see the old mansion of Rinefield. 
 September has now come in with its falling leaves, 
 which put me in mind of these lines. 
 
 Comes autumn from the sunset skies 
 With nutbrown hair and dreamy eyes. 
 But summer haunts the woodland yet 
 Her fair face showed her eyelids wet. 
 And lingers as if loth to go — 
 From lonely man who loved her so. 
 
io8 CLUBS FOR WORKING GIRLS iv 
 
 We are going to the village and find ourselves sur- 
 rounded by sixteen piglings, who run at us and then 
 beat a hasty retreat when we turn round to them, and 
 directly we turn our backs they are at us again squealing 
 all the time. 
 
 On the third of September my three friends left me 
 to go to London whilst I remained in the forest. I could 
 not go out in the day much as it was raining, but the 
 evenings were lovely. When returning from one of my 
 walks I was surprised to see a beautiful lake, as I thought, 
 but on coming up to it, it was the fog ; on looking round 
 I seemed to be on an island, for wherever I looked there 
 was this mist spread over the ground, just like a river 
 with the moonbeams shining on it. Returning from the 
 horses' grave which we had been to see, I hear the cry of 
 the owl as he flies from an old tree after some little bird 
 who is late home, and then there is wafted across the 
 breeze the gentle hee-haw of the donkey. My week is 
 nearly up and I must bid good-bye to the forest which 
 holds such charms for me, and to all my kind friends down 
 here ; and now I must conclude my short and very poor 
 account of what I have seen and felt in the forest. 
 With many thanks to Mrs. Maxwell for her kind in- 
 vitation, and to Miss Stanley for sending us down for 
 such a pleasant holiday. 
 
 After a country holiday we would place 
 next in enjoyment the happy day excursions 
 into the country or to some kind friend's 
 house, when work - girls are invited and 
 
IV COUNTRY VISITS AND EXCURSIONS 109 
 
 made so welcome and happy that the enjoy- 
 ment of the day and the remembrance of it 
 afterwards seems to brighten all the hours of 
 work. We have been invited out in parties 
 of ten, of twenty, of fifty, and once of a 
 hundred, and our girls generally say : 
 *' Well, this is the best day we have had." 
 The present kindness brings to their hearts 
 such grateful appreciation of all that is done 
 for them. 
 
 For the last twelve years we have been 
 asked out, and we who have been continu- 
 ally with the girls often recall our first after- 
 noon party at Campden Hill, and mark the 
 change that has come over our club 
 members through the influence of these 
 parties and of the club. The first time we 
 went out, as we came out of Kensington 
 Gardens two girls suddenly disappeared into 
 a public-house, saying they wanted some- 
 thing to drink. On another occasion, after 
 spending a whole day in the country with 
 our girls, when we got back to the London 
 
no CLUBS FOR WORKING GIRLS iv 
 
 Station at ten at night, not a girl came to say 
 good -night; each rushed off without one 
 word of ''thank you" to those who had 
 laboured all day on their behalf. I mention 
 this to show that the material out of which 
 we have got our present club members was 
 in some instances as uneducated in manners 
 and refinement as any we hear of in other 
 clubs. The constant intercourse with ladies, 
 the notice that was taken of this want of 
 manners, and the good feeling that has 
 been called out by continued kindness have 
 made the members of our club what we now 
 generally find them, courteous and grateful 
 for the kindnesses that are showered on them. 
 One of our kind friends who has for six 
 years invited girls to her country house 
 for a whole day's pleasure, wrote after 
 the last Bank holiday that she and her 
 friends found a marked improvement year 
 by year in the manners, the appearance, the 
 dress of the guests ; and for all clubs this 
 continuation of invitations from the same 
 
IV COUNTRY VISITS AND EXCURSIONS iii 
 
 kind ladies we should say was of immense 
 value. 
 
 When visiting girls' clubs in some of our 
 provincial towns I regretted to hear how rarely 
 they were invited to any of the country houses 
 or villas in the neighbourhood. A dozen 
 girls invited out to tea on a Saturday after- 
 noon from one of our smoky manufacturing 
 centres would be of the greatest advantage to 
 the club. 
 
 Everything in a lady's house will be a 
 silent lesson to the girls — the order, the refine- 
 ment, the neat dresses of the maidservants. 
 
 These I have heard admired by girls who 
 saw to what they might attain if they would 
 seek service. Then if amongst the invited 
 guests are any that are heavily weighted with 
 the cares and sorrows of life, how cheering 
 will be this little party with the nice tea, the 
 prettily served table, and the kind words 
 addressed to each guest by the lady, who can 
 feel, from sympathy though not from experi- 
 ence, the troubles of the work-girl. 
 
112 CLUBS FOR WORKING GIRLS iv 
 
 England is so full of noble parks, of 
 beautiful gardens, of pleasant pleasure- 
 grounds, and many in these splendid abodes 
 of wealth throw them open to their poorer 
 neighbours. We wish that all who have such 
 possessions would do likewise, but we would 
 urge also on those who possess smaller 
 houses and less means to do something for 
 the toilers of great cities. A homely tea 
 with a kind welcome will do as much for our 
 girls as the most splendid repast. It is not 
 possible perhaps for those who give the feast 
 to go out into the streets and lanes of the 
 city and gather in the guests ; but they may, 
 through the various agencies now established, 
 through district visitors, through managers 
 of clubs for girls, or for boys, invite a few 
 or more to their houses. It is not the 
 grandeur of the entertainment that makes the 
 charm. It is the luxury of repose, of refine- 
 ment, of sympathy and pleasant surroundings 
 that makes these days the bright ones of the 
 year, that gives fresh courage for work, gives 
 
IV COUNTRY VISITS AND EXCURSIONS 113 
 
 happy recollections in the future grind of the 
 incessant treadmill of the working life. 
 
 We who are at ease, how much we have 
 to give, how much we can share with others, 
 not only of our money but of the many talents 
 committed to our care. Our culture, our 
 experience, our knowledge of life, can we not 
 make use of them for those less fortunate in 
 this world's lot ? How attractive to the 
 work -girl will be the young lady with 
 pleasant easy manners, who will not only 
 talk to her, but will lead her on to talk of 
 her own life, of her difficulties, of her 
 pleasures, and of her troubles. 
 
 On some occasions a Bank holiday 
 party may be arranged for all the club 
 members who may like to join, each con- 
 tributing to the expense ; thus all may share 
 in the day's pleasure. 
 
 We have generally found the girls eager 
 to go very early. On one occasion they said 
 to me : '' May we start very early on Monday, 
 so as to have a good long day in the 
 
 I 
 
114 CLUBS FOR WORKING GIRLS iv 
 
 country ? " — '' Willingly ; what o'clock would 
 you like me to meet you at the station ? " 
 ** At seven ! " they all exclaimed. That was 
 rather too early, but we met at 8 a.m., and 
 had a long and successful day, which I shall 
 describe, so that others who would organise a 
 day in the country, and have not yet arranged 
 one, may see how easily such a pleasure can 
 be given. 
 
 If it is a Bank holiday, when the station 
 will be crowded, by all alike bent on pleasure, 
 get your tickets the day before, with the 
 understanding that all unused tickets may be 
 returned. Alas ! how often have we found 
 our party less than we expected ; one or more 
 girls after engaging to come having failed at 
 the last moment, with an utter disregard of 
 the inconvenience caused by waiting for 
 truants. But in time even this disregard of 
 the importance of an engagement may be 
 overcome. Let each girl have a card on which 
 the hour of meeting is written clearly, and 
 appoint the time so as to leave a margin 
 
V COUNTRY VISITS AND EXCURSIONS 115 
 
 before the train starts. If you have fifty or 
 a hundred in your party divide them off 
 amongst leaders, ladies if possible, in whose 
 railway carriage they will go, and who will 
 be responsible for their being present at 
 various times of the day. Require implicit 
 obedience to the orders of the general, or 
 otherwise there will be accidents and mishaps. 
 On the occasion of which I am speaking our 
 destination was Richmond. From the station 
 we went up the town to the bridge, and then 
 by the new pleasure grounds to the Star 
 and Garter, on through the park towards the 
 Kingston gate. There our little parcels of 
 luncheons were opened, and we sat down and 
 refreshed ourselves. Our next move was to 
 walk across the park to the Roehampton 
 gate, where we sat down at a farmhouse 
 for a refreshing and substantial tea. It is a 
 good custom for every one to bring their own 
 dinner, and to depend on tea at four o'clock 
 for the day's meal. In that way, the fare 
 being paid for by the girls, the expense would 
 
Ii6 CLUBS FOR WORKING GIRLS iv 
 
 not be beyond the means of any managers 
 of a club. With games and singing after tea 
 and a walk through the garden, three more 
 hours passed pleasantly away till we had to 
 walk back to Barnes Station, and got our party 
 into London again before ten o'clock. 
 
 There are many delightful expeditions to 
 be made near London — to Pinner, where Mr. 
 Barber, Q.C., has so kindly made a play- 
 ground for holiday parties, and where a walk 
 up the hill, and round it, will take up a good 
 part of the day. Then an excursion to 
 Epping, or to Burnham, or to Hatfield, 
 where that beautiful house is open to the 
 public on Bank holidays, and where a good 
 tea can be had at the Salisbury Coffee Tavern 
 in the town of Hatfield. 
 
 From Bradford many expeditions are made 
 in the neighbourhood, and a house was taken 
 on the Lancashire coast for the members of 
 one of the clubs in that town to go to for a 
 week or a fortnight's sea air. 
 
 Very delightful expeditions might be 
 
IV COUNTRY VISITS AND EXCURSIONS 117 
 
 arranged with girls of a few days in the 
 country, such as boys from their clubs have had. 
 
 The experience we have had of such 
 expeditions was once four days spent near 
 Ramsgate in an iron house lent to us by 
 Mr. Weigall. There we had a sort of picnic, 
 cooking and doing everything for ourselves — 
 a party of twenty. At another time some 
 rooms were most kindly lent to us one 
 Whitsuntide by the proprietor of a hotel 
 at Westgate-on-Sea, and we spent a week, 
 sixteen of us, making expeditions to Canter- 
 bury and Ramsgate, and the enjoyment was 
 perfect. 
 
 This seems a very simple way of giving 
 great happiness. Would it be possible to 
 lend some rooms in a country house to any 
 lady who would undertake the charge of 
 work-girls, whom she would bring with her, 
 to spend a few days in the country ? She 
 should take upon herself the responsibility 
 of providing the commissariat for the party. 
 In these cases the girls would contribute 
 
ii8 CLUBS FOR WORKING GIRLS iv 
 
 themselves towards the board and pay their 
 own journey. If no rooms in the country 
 house were available, some over stables or 
 laundries, when the family were absent, might 
 be turned into guest-chambers. 
 
 We hear of parties of working men from 
 Mr. Barnett's at Whitechapel going to Paris, 
 Germany, and Italy. We do not aim at such 
 undertakings with our club girls, but we 
 might make walking tours in England and 
 Wales, the expense of which need not be 
 very great. 
 
 But what seems most practicable would be 
 the invitation during the Easter or Whit- 
 sun holiday, when, country places are often 
 deserted, to a little party of work-girls 
 with the ladies who know them and would 
 look after them. We might be afraid of 
 putting forward such a proposal had we not 
 already found in many who have the means 
 to help, and the beautiful houses to dwell in, 
 a most real and hospitable desire to allow 
 others to enjoy with them these blessings. 
 
IV COUNTRY VISITS AND EXCURSIONS 119 
 
 This has been for some years an idea 
 which I have longed to see carried out, for 
 I am sure it is a practical one, and I hope 
 that some of my readers may wish to make 
 the experiment. 
 
 Without girls' clubs we might not have 
 been able to make such a proposal, but 
 where girls have been known by ladies night 
 after night in the club and in their own homes, 
 and where the lady would select the party 
 herself, we should have no doubt of the suc- 
 cess of such an invitation. The housekeeper 
 or housemaid left in charge would in most 
 cases be ready to welcome such a party, if it 
 were put before her what great happiness is 
 given to work-girls by their spending a few 
 days in the country. 
 
V 
 
 AMUSEMENTS IN THE CLUB 
 
 In our last chapter we spoke only of the 
 pleasures outside the club ; but a great deal 
 of amusement and happiness can be given 
 within, and to know how this can be accom- 
 plished is most important, as our first object 
 is to make the club the centre of enjoyment 
 and recreation for the girls who belong to 
 it. 
 
 The idea of what amount of amusement 
 is needed in the life of a human being differs 
 very curiously according to the position in 
 life of the individual whose interests we are 
 considering. The lady would think it next 
 door to imprisonment to be deprived of her 
 daily drive, her ride, her lawn tennis, her 
 
V AMUSEMENTS IN THE CLUB 121 
 
 walks, or her visits ; and the maidservant 
 may be considered well off by some if she 
 has her Sunday afternoon to go out twice 
 a month. Readers of our little Soho Maga- 
 zine have sometimes said : *' You seem to be 
 always having amusements and parties in 
 your club ; we are surprised at such constant 
 dissipation." 
 
 Life should be made up of honourable 
 work and labour for the welfare of others ; 
 but should not pleasure and happiness enter 
 largely into every one's life } and should not 
 those who labour and toil long hours have 
 in their lives as much innocent pleasure and 
 happiness as possible ? 
 
 One of the greatest benefits of a girls' 
 club is that we can there offer to the girls safe 
 pleasures that will enliven and cheer them, 
 and will not lead to frivolity and dissipation. 
 In some clubs they are satisfied to give 
 their girls a Christmas tree and a summer 
 picnic. I think that any of us who 
 have known what a happy youth meant will 
 
122 CLUBS FOR WORKING GIRLS v 
 
 think that two parties in twelve months would 
 not have satisfied us ; and I can safely say- 
 that it will not satisfy the working girl. So 
 if we do not provide more than the Christ- 
 mas tree and the summer picnic the girls 
 will find amusements of their own outside 
 the club ; and our object is to make the 
 pleasures within the club of greater attraction 
 than any outside. ' 
 
 In most clubs there are monthly parties. 
 To some of these the members ask their 
 girl friends ; the managers of other clubs 
 think it well frequently to ask young men, 
 but in our Soho club this privilege of the 
 young men element is only given once a 
 year ; at the dramatic performances and at 
 the concerts young men can come, as the 
 admission tickets are sold. 
 
 The question of dancing is looked on in 
 a very different way by those who have in 
 various parts of London and in country 
 towns the care of girls' clubs. 
 
 Let us state the reasons for and against 
 
V AMUSEMENTS IN THE CLUB 123 
 
 dancing. Those who approve of it look on 
 it as a health-giving exercise ; they think it 
 is a pleasant and natural diversion for girls, 
 whom they find are satisfied and happy to 
 dance one with another for the mere pleasure 
 of the movement. Any one who has worked 
 about the poorer parts of a town will have 
 seen that the English girl has a natural love 
 of dancing. This taste does not, as many 
 suppose, belong only to the Southern nations. 
 No sooner does an organ strike up in the 
 London streets than the pavement is covered 
 with small couples, dancing round in time to 
 the inspiring tune, for the love of dancing is 
 as much inborn in the squalid and tattered 
 little children from the crowded courts of our 
 cities as in the Spanish girl who, with her 
 castanets and graceful movements, delights 
 the English traveller. 
 
 Those who oppose all dancing in girls' 
 clubs will generally do so because they think 
 that by encouraging girls to dance they will 
 get such a love for dancing that they must 
 
124 CLUBS FOR WORKING GIRLS v 
 
 necessarily be drawn into those dangerous 
 saloons and become habitual frequenters of 
 dances. 
 
 It is not that we are unaware of the 
 dangers that attend those who frequent 
 public dances that we approve of dancing 
 in a girls' club ; but it is because we think 
 that by allowing girls to dance in their club 
 one with another we take from them the 
 wish to go elsewhere for that amusement. 
 
 So sensible are even the opponents of danc- 
 ing of its advantages as a physical exercise 
 that we find them introducing Sir Roger de 
 Coverley into their clubs, but they call it a 
 game and not a dance. The girls know 
 differently, but are content to call it a game 
 if by that means they can get a dance. 
 
 We think it best to speak openly with the 
 girls of dancing halls, to tell them how much 
 we disapprove of them, of the dangers they 
 must run by going to them, and of the unfit 
 companions they must mix with there. 
 
 In the West End we are surrounded by 
 
V AMUSEMENTS IN THE CLUB 125 
 
 such places, and there are some of all sorts 
 more or less dangerous. Some of them are 
 conducted with great propriety ; there is a 
 Master of the Ceremonies, who is always 
 present. There is the dancing room, the 
 refreshment room, and the gallery, to which 
 those who are tired of dancing can go and 
 look on at the dancers ; but all is public, and 
 those who are present are expected to behave 
 decorously. But there are other dancing 
 halls so full of suggestions and possibilities 
 of evil that, as a girl said who went to one in 
 search of a friend whom she wished to draw 
 away from such company, '' Such places as 
 that would soon make a girl one of the 
 worst." The girls are dressed in low-necked 
 gowns, which are of silk or satin, or some 
 light material, all much beyond the means of 
 any w^orking girl's earning. 
 
 The company the girls find is such as 
 must take away all modesty, and if it does 
 not sully her virtue, must seriously endanger 
 it. Many working mothers whom we know 
 
126 CLUBS FOR WORKING GIRLS v 
 
 would far rather see their daughters dead 
 than to think that they frequented such 
 places. 
 
 To some of these the girls go by paying 
 one shilling entrance, to others two shillings 
 and sixpence, and at some they are only 
 admitted by ticket, given to them by the 
 members of various trades. I have known 
 girls in our club who have gone to these 
 dances and balls, and I have spoken to 
 them and urged them to give them up, 
 showing them the dangers of such amuse- 
 ments, and the perils they run, and the un- 
 fitness of the companionship in which they 
 find themselves. Sometimes they will give 
 up these pleasures on being reasoned with, 
 sometimes they will not listen to the warning 
 voice. It is not the taste for dancing, but 
 for unhealthy amusement, which becomes all- 
 engrossing, and ruin generally follows. 
 
 One girl will often lead another in her 
 workroom to these dances, telling her how 
 jolly they are, and how easy it is there to 
 
V AMUSEMENTS IN THE CLUB 127 
 
 pick up a young man. And if she goes, as 
 is too often the case, the whole week's wages 
 will be spent in the ball dress, another week's 
 wages may go for shoes and gloves, and 
 debts will be incurred ; and thus not un- 
 frequently the temptation to provide for 
 these pleasures by dishonest or by immoral 
 ways will be yielded to. 
 
 In shops where girls are lodged the hour 
 for return may be eleven every night ; but 
 on one evening they may stay out till twelve. 
 If later than eleven they are fined the first 
 time one shilling, the second two shillings, 
 and the third time they are dismissed ; but 
 up to eleven they may be at these dances, 
 if it seems good to them, for no one will ask 
 where the evenings are spent. We cannot 
 exaggerate the dangers to respectable girls 
 of the dancing rooms. Some girls will go 
 alone ; they will soon get partners either by 
 being asked to dance, or they will them- 
 selves ask the young men. They will walk 
 home together, appointments will be made, 
 
128 CLUBS FOR WORKING GIRLS v 
 
 and soon we should hear of their saying, 
 if they had belonged to a girls' club, that 
 the club is very slow, that they want more 
 fun and young men. We have known 
 some of our club members who had reached 
 this point and who yet have been brought 
 to see the folly and the dangers of such 
 a course. Such hold had the club and 
 the friends in the club on them that they 
 have given up the dances and found again 
 pleasure in the quieter amusements of their 
 club. 
 
 Now will come in one of the many benefits, 
 blessings, we should say, of a good girls' club. 
 The managers must know the dangers of a 
 working girl's life. They must understand 
 the temptations to which she is exposed; then 
 they should reason with the girl and win her 
 back to the sober life, showing to her the great 
 danger she is incurring. If friendly relations 
 are already established she will succeed in 
 this the greatest work that can be done for 
 girls — that is, the preventive work, which will 
 
V AMUSEMENTS IN THE CLUB 129 
 
 always be of more importance than any 
 fescue work, for it will have kept the girl 
 innocent and pure in the midst of a life of 
 temptation and snares. 
 
 We then who approve of dancing contend 
 that It is a natural instinct of the girl which 
 we should satisfy by giving her dancing at 
 her club ; but let it be given at stated times 
 and days, or otherwise the lady in charge 
 will probably be tormented every evening 
 to allow dancing. At the Peoples' Palace 
 dancing has been allowed this last winter, 
 and with certain rules and regulations and 
 under proper supervision we should wish to 
 see it allowed at all the institutions started 
 for the benefit of working women. We feel 
 sure that by allowing dancing in a club 
 the girls will be satisfied, and that instead of 
 leading them to attend dancing halls, it will 
 keep them from it. I am sure this will be 
 the case from my own knowledge and 
 experience of girls, and from what the girls 
 have told me. It is true that a very few of 
 
 K 
 
I30 CLUBS FOR WORKING GIRLS v 
 
 our club members have left the club and 
 gone habitually to the dances, some as often 
 as two or three times a week, but they 
 have not taken to that habit from the love of 
 dancing but from the love of dissipation. 
 
 The dances the girls like in our club 
 are, Valses, Polkas, Schottisches, Quadrilles, 
 Lancers, and the Morris dance. We should 
 especially encourage country dances, in 
 which all the girls can join. Many in our 
 club can play dance music, so on the Friday 
 evening, when dancing is allowed, the girls' 
 committee arrange for one or the other to 
 attend and be at the piano. In this way 
 many ladies might help by teaching country 
 dances and joining in it themselves. Let us 
 quote what the Bishop of Bedford said about 
 dancing this year at the Church Congress at 
 Cardiff, showing what opinion his East-End 
 experience has given him in this much dis- 
 puted question — 
 
 Many will, perhaps, hardly be prepared to sanction 
 dancing. I never knew such people to dance as our 
 
V AMUSEMENTS IN THE CLUB 131 
 
 East-Enders. I never could dance myself, but I often 
 wonder how it came to pass that I escaped the contagion 
 during my ten years of East-End life. I should like to 
 have the verdict of an impartial jury who should be their 
 own witnesses of the dancing at the occasional parties 
 that are given in either the People's Palace or the club 
 in Victoria Square. If dancing is one of the works of 
 the flesh it is not to be tolerated under any conditions 
 by those who would live and have others live according 
 to the will of God ; or, if it is in its nature provocative 
 of what is evil — if it cannot even be said of it with truth 
 it is a harmless amusement, then we cannot look at it. 
 But if it is not actually forbidden to Christians to dance 
 if used in moderation, it is a healthy and invigorating 
 amusement, and if it can be enjoyed without danger to 
 the morals of the company, then it is a permissible form 
 of recreation for those who desire to use it. This is the 
 contention of those who are responsible for its introduc- 
 tion and practice in the two institutions to which I have 
 referred. The scruples of many, I know, have been re- 
 moved after constant and careful observation. The 
 dress of the guests, especially of the women, compares 
 favourably with the dress of those who belong to what is 
 known as " society." The behaviour of men to women 
 and women to men has been worthy of the imitation of 
 many who are known as their "betters." I am con- 
 vinced that every one, whether clergyman or layman, 
 who adds something to the innocent enjoyments of 
 human life has joined in a good work, inasmuch as he 
 has diminished the inducement to vicious indulgences. 
 God knows there is enough of sin and sorrow in the 
 world to make sad the heart of every Christian man. 
 
132 CLUBS FOR WORKING GIRLS v 
 
 No one, I think, need be ashamed of having sought to 
 cheer the darker hours of his fellow-travellers' steps 
 through life or to beguile their hearts when weary and 
 heavy laden. So far as my experience goes, I have 
 never found that the cause of morality and religion was 
 promoted by sternly checking all tendencies of our 
 nature to relaxation and amusement. If men are too 
 ready to enter upon pleasures which are dangerous or 
 questionable, it is the part of wisdom and benevolence 
 to supply them with sources of enjoyment which are 
 innocent and permissible. We may differ as to the 
 propriety of this or that source of enjoyment, and differ 
 about what is innocent and what is permissible, but 
 we can hardly have any difference about the necessity 
 of removing occasions of temptation, and providing, 
 especially for those whose portion furnishes little that is 
 bright and enjoyable, some relaxation and something 
 to enliven the dulness and the monotony of their 
 lives. 
 
 At the Christmas party, when young men 
 are invited, we ask our girls to give us the 
 names and addresses of any young man they 
 wish us to ask. Sometimes it is one with 
 whom they are ''keeping company," or a 
 brother, or a brother's friend. We tell the 
 girls not to mind if they have not young 
 men, as we can provide them with partners. 
 And amongst all the eighty or ninety girls we 
 
V AMUSEMENTS IN THE CLUB 133 
 
 have asked not half have cared to ask us for 
 an invitation, as they were not going out with 
 any young man, and have not been ashamed 
 to say so. For these we have invited for 
 partners young men from the surrounding 
 choirs or Bible classes, and friends of the 
 ladies interested in the club have kindly 
 helped us, so that we have had a fair propor- 
 tion of male as well as female partners. We 
 have two parties at Christmas. To the first 
 one we ask all members under seventeen, 
 and the members who have been in the 
 club less than six months, and to the other 
 party we ask the girls over seventeen and 
 their young men. 
 
 We have heard of a parish in London 
 where there are dances every Wednesday 
 for young men and women, under the direc- 
 tion of the vicar, which only close at twelve 
 o'clock. We cannot think that a good 
 thing ; as it must keep up a continuous 
 and dangerous excitement. Our club closes 
 on ordinary occasions at ten o'clock, on 
 
134 CLUBS FOR WORKING GIRLS v 
 
 soirde evenings at 10.30, and at Christmas 
 we may keep on till 11.30. But late hours 
 should not be encouraged ; the girls would 
 keep the family up by being late, and can do 
 themselves no good, as they must be ready 
 for their work at eight o'clock in the morning. 
 
 At the soirdes, which generally take place 
 once a month on Saturdays, we have games 
 as well as dancing. Some girls prefer 
 them, and they are often made more sociable 
 by a few games. For instance, there is 
 nothing like musical chairs for starting the 
 evening ; then, when tired with dancing, 
 we have the magic art, or blowing out the 
 candle blindfolded, which causes vast merri- 
 ment, or questions and answers to discover 
 what has been thought of ; forfeits, and many 
 such like lively diversions. The great 
 thing is to bring all into the game, and to 
 give confidence to the bashful, and to keep 
 up the spirit of the evening. 
 
 In some clubs a barrel organ has been 
 used ; but a piano can be got for a very few 
 
V AMUSEMENTS IN THE CLUB 135 
 
 pounds, and I would always recommend the 
 purchase of one, and it is unlikely that no 
 one connected with the club could use it. In 
 some cases it is very pleasant for a story to 
 be read to the girls as they work, and much 
 pleasure is given by the letter or word- 
 making game, dominoes, spindlekins, fish- 
 ponds, draughts, and the cards of happy 
 families. 
 
 In many clubs we find the girls much 
 amused with the magic - lantern and with 
 dissolving views. 
 
 The concerts and the dramatic entertain- 
 ments got up by the girls afford much amuse- 
 ment, though in the latter case we must 
 be careful that the girls who are keen 
 about the drama do not monopolise every- 
 thing in the club and make it dull for the 
 others. What we must aim at is to make 
 the proposals for amusements spring from 
 the girls themselves, so that the managers 
 should not always have to originate club 
 amusements. 
 
136 CLUBS FOR WORKING GIRLS v 
 
 A pleasure that we find is often given in 
 connection with a club is Saturday afternoon 
 walks ; at Hammersmith the girls are taken 
 by boat or for walks, and so get to care 
 about the country and to value the walk 
 with their friend and teacher. 
 
 The singing is often made use of to learn a 
 service of song,such as ''Christie's Old Organ," 
 ''Poor Mike," or the "Children's Hour." 
 These when learned will give a very pleas- 
 ant evening at the club to friends. We 
 have started this year one musical evening 
 a week, when ladies have come either alone 
 or with friends to sing and to play. Some 
 have brought violins, some the harp, some 
 have played classical music. The girls have 
 sat about the room, enjoying, we may say, 
 chamber music, in the most luxurious manner. 
 Amateurs have now so improved that their 
 playing is no longer scrambling through 
 a few pieces ; but they are often musicians. 
 One lady used to give the girls a little 
 account of the composer's life and works 
 
V AMUSEMENTS IN THE CLUB 137 
 
 before she began, and they learnt to appre- 
 ciate the beauty of different styles of music. 
 
 We have not yet spoken of music halls, 
 but can liardly leave the subject unmentioned 
 when talking of music. The same argument 
 will hold good of music as of dancing ; if we 
 provide good and pleasant music in a club 
 the girls will not go elsewhere to hear it. 
 The music halls differ very much in the East 
 and in the West End. 
 
 Mr. Charles Booth in East London tells 
 us that the music-hall entertainment is by the 
 mass of the people preferred to the drama. 
 And there are many music halls where the 
 performances are unobjectionable, the key- 
 note being coarse rough fun. 
 
 The girls in the East End will often 
 attend these entertainments, finding there the 
 recreation they need so much after their long 
 days of work, but when a club is provided it 
 is easy to give them pleasures that will make 
 them care more for the refined music than for 
 the vulgar coarseness of the public music halls. 
 
138 CLUBS FOR WORKING GIRLS v 
 
 In the West End these places of amuse- 
 ment are not frequented at all by the respect- 
 able work-girl ; the songs might be considered 
 more refined, but they are far lower in 
 morality, and the questionable innuendoes 
 will probably make the success of the song. 
 
 The company the girls must meet at 
 such places would be degrading to them as 
 well as dangerous, and there is, I am sure, a 
 strong feeling amongst the working girls of 
 the West End that a music hall is an unfit 
 place for them to enter. But for fear that 
 the taste for music cultivated in the girls 
 should tempt them to attend low concerts or 
 music halls, we would recommend that they 
 should be warned of the dangers that attend 
 any girl who becomes a frequenter of such 
 places. 
 
 We think that amusement is necessary 
 for club girls, and that it is very easy for 
 ladies to provide it for them. The first 
 thing is to have variety in occupation — 
 not always amusement, not always classes. 
 
V AMUSEMENTS IN THE CLUB 139 
 
 Thus with dancing, music, and games the 
 evenings will be well filled. Another very 
 important element in the question of amuse- 
 ment is to make the girls feel at their ease, 
 that there should be no constraint on them. 
 There should be a restraint on their manners, 
 but the tone will soon become free from 
 vulgar boisterousness if ladies will take a part 
 in the evenings of recreation. 
 
VI 
 
 RELIGION OF THE WORK-GIRL 
 
 I HAVE generally found amongst the working 
 classes, whether men, women, boys, or girls, 
 that the religion, or more properly the 
 denomination they have belonged to, has 
 depended chiefly on that of the teacher or 
 friend who has first stirred in the soul of the 
 other the aspirations after spiritual truths. 
 Whilst saying this I must of course exclude 
 the Roman Catholic, whose faith is taught to 
 him dogmatically in early life, and whose 
 change to any other religious views would in 
 the uneducated mind probably mean only 
 indifference or unbelief. But a vast portion 
 of our working classes attend no place of 
 worship. 
 
VI RELIGION OF THE WORK -GIRL 141 
 
 I have taken the percentage of those who 
 went to church or chapel in a street where I 
 knew every house, and every family in each 
 house, and I have found it to be lamentably 
 small. A town population in this respect 
 differs entirely from a country one, where the 
 feeling of respectability, the desire to do as 
 the neighbours do, the pleasure of the walk 
 and of the meeting friends at church or chapel 
 will be a motive apart from a religious one for 
 inducing the parishioners to come there. In a 
 town the working classes live so much alone 
 that these motives would have no influence 
 on them, and we may conclude that, as in the 
 upper classes, no one is now obliged to go 
 to church merely because it is the proper 
 thing, so in the working classes in towns, 
 those who attend church or chapel will be 
 there for some higher motive than that of 
 appearing respectable. 
 
 Let us take the life of our work people 
 from their childhood and see what religious 
 influences are brought to bear upon them. 
 
142 CLUBS FOR WORKING GIRLS vi 
 
 At the Board Schools they learn the Bible, 
 
 and most valuable is this knowledge to them 
 
 in every way ; but the morality and the 
 
 religion they learn from these lessons depends 
 
 on the amount of religious feeling of the 
 
 teachers, male or female. The teaching of 
 
 the schoolmaster or mistress will not differ 
 
 much in this respect, be it board school or 
 
 church school, for in the latter the clergyman 
 
 does not always give religious instruction, 
 
 and most of the teachers in denominational 
 
 schools will be satisfied to teach the facts of 
 
 the Bible to satisfy the Diocesan Inspector, 
 
 who may, on his examination, find the 
 
 children well up in the catechism and parts of 
 
 the Bible ; but he will not be able to test the 
 
 amount of true religious spirit the teacher has 
 
 put into his lesson. We may therefore take 
 
 it for granted that not much religious influence 
 
 is brought to bear upon the child at the day 
 
 school. If this is so, is it not incumbent on 
 
 the spiritual pastor of a parish to see that on the 
 
 Sunday proper instruction, and from religious 
 
VI RELIGION OF THE WORK-GIRL 143 
 
 people, should be given to the children, and 
 that the Sunday school should be so well 
 taught that the parents will wish their children 
 to attend ? Often the parents learn indirectly 
 lessons of holiness and righteousness from 
 the lessons that have been taught to their 
 children. 
 
 At the Sunday school the child will often 
 get from that earnest and devoted army of 
 Sunday school teachers, whether in church or 
 chapel, the most definite religious teaching 
 both in respect of doctrine, moral precepts, 
 and safe guides for a good life. I have 
 found evidence of this amongst our girls, and 
 have heard them speak with deep affection of 
 their former Sunday school teacher, telling me 
 of the remarks they had made on this or that 
 passage of the Bible, and of the advice they 
 had received from them for their conduct. For 
 instance, when speaking of the law amongst 
 the Jews which called on them to give a 
 tenth of their produce to God, I told them 
 of a man of wealth whom they had all heard 
 
144 CLUBS FOR WORKING GIRLS vi 
 
 of who had always carried out this practice, 
 and had devoted a tenth part of his income to 
 philanthropic and religious purposes. One 
 of the girls in the class said that her Sunday 
 school teacher, a poor dressmaker, had years 
 ago told her that it was always her practice to 
 put by a tenth of her earnings to the service of 
 God. Another girl told me that her teacher, 
 a poor seamstress, handicapped by deformity, 
 had always taken to the seaside with her every 
 year one^ of her Sunday school class, saving 
 up week by week for this work of charity. 
 
 In those who have had such teaching, we 
 may say the seed has been sown ; but when 
 childhood is. passed, when the Sunday school 
 is left off, when church may not be attended, 
 the conversation amongst companions will 
 certainly not be on religious topics, and the 
 whole subject may be put on one side, if not 
 forgotten — put on the shelf for some later 
 day when it is supposed the pleasures of 
 youth will be over, and there will be time 
 for serious thought. 
 
VI RELIGION OF THE WORK-GIRL 145 
 
 If we are convinced that through religion 
 alone we obtain perfect happiness and have a 
 secure basis for a good life, we will wish that 
 on the foundation of religion our girls clubs 
 should be built. We must then consider how 
 we can best attain that object, and how we 
 can best reach the greatest number. I think 
 it will not be by putting religion forward first, 
 by severity, by exclusion of all amusements, 
 called by some worldly pleasures. Were we 
 to open a club on these lines we might have 
 the serious-minded — the girls who are already 
 well behaved and steady, but we should not 
 gather into our net the frivolous, the careless, 
 the pleasure-seeker, the waverer, who may be 
 in danger of toppling over the precipice to 
 the abyss below. 
 
 Gather in all who will come who are not 
 leading an immoral life, make the club so 
 attractive that they will be lured away from 
 the temptations spread around every working 
 girl with such alarming fascinations. Then 
 if you love what is good and noble yourself, 
 
 L 
 
146 CLUBS FOR WORKING GIRLS vi 
 
 lead the girls to care for what is good, to 
 admire what is noble, and should you fail to 
 bring them to a knowledge of God, should 
 you be unable to awake in them a desire after 
 holiness, lead them to it through attach- 
 ment to yourself, by which motive, though 
 not the best, they may attain to the higher life. 
 
 Reading lives of great and noble men and 
 women who have led a life of self-sacrifice 
 and holiness will often awaken a desire for 
 something beyond the selfish gratification of 
 our own interests, therefore we should bring 
 such lives prominently before our girls. 
 
 If we find the girls in a club have already 
 teachers and attend Bible classes, urge on 
 them greater attention and more reverence, 
 but in most cases you will find that the girls 
 have forgotten the lessons of childhood, be- 
 cause they have put aside all Sunday classes 
 and too often have ceased to attend Divine 
 service. Some who were confirmed have 
 even forgotten if they were confirmed or not, 
 they have never followed up the teaching 
 
VI RELIGION OF THE WORK-GIRL 147 
 
 of confirmation, they have never attended 
 the Holy Communion. It had been to them 
 as to too many, a mere form, and had left no 
 trace behind. This is frequently the case, 
 and most often amongst girls from the 
 country, where confirmation has been a mere 
 custom and a habit for children who have left 
 school. I should hope that not many have 
 seen the preparations for confirmation carried 
 on as I have in former years, during the space 
 of three Sundays. The first Sunday the cate- 
 chism was said straight through, the second 
 Sunday it was repeated backwards, and on 
 the third Sunday the tickets were given with 
 directions for attending the confirmation in 
 the ensuing week. 
 
 The Nonconformists are very zealous 
 about Sunday schools, and the children attend 
 these regularly, but they are not often taken 
 to chapel. Consequently when they cease to 
 go to Sunday schools they may never attend 
 chapel, as they have not acquired the habit 
 of so doing. 
 
148 CLUBS FOR WORKING GIRLS ' vi 
 
 Again you will find others who, having 
 been brought into contact with Secularists, 
 have been tempted, often from curiosity, into 
 Halls of Science, as those meeting-places are 
 called, where working people are told that 
 the belief in Christ must be put down, that 
 His name has wrought more evil than all else 
 in the world, and that it is only the ignorant 
 and down-trodden who will follow the worn-out 
 truths so-called of Christianity. These girls 
 may tell you that they are proud of the name 
 of Atheists, and others will say they would 
 rather not hear anything of religion, for they 
 might become religious and get laughed at 
 in the workroom, or that they know if they 
 attend a place of worship they must give up 
 doing many things they know are wrong, 
 and they are not prepared to make such 
 sacrifices. So I would say begin gently, ask 
 them to attend a Bible class ; but do not press 
 them to do so ; choose the time for your class 
 that will be most convenient to themselves, 
 and make it so bright and so interesting that 
 
VI RELIGION OF THE WORK-GIRL 149 
 
 they will be won by you, and will willingly 
 listen to your teaching. I think we should 
 be very careful to let no advantages accrue 
 to the girl who attends the Bible class ; it 
 would be so easy to engender cant or 
 hypocrisy to become supers for this or that 
 denomination. Children, alas ! have learned 
 that treats, that free dinners, that even country 
 holidays may be obtained through their attend- 
 ance at Sunday school, so that we find many 
 children attending two schools of different 
 denominations, indeed sometimes three on the 
 same Sunday. A very strong feeling exists in 
 the East End that most philanthropic work is 
 done in order to advance the interest of some 
 church or chapel ; so that by gifts given, 
 an attendance may be secured at the services. 
 We should beware of giving any grounds 
 for such suspicions. No extra teas, no 
 singling out of the members of the Bible 
 class for some special pleasure. During 
 many years I have had a Bible class for 
 the club members ; some also attended a 
 
ISO CLUBS FOR WORKING GIRLS vi 
 
 class at the club held in the evening by 
 another lady, and latterly a clergyman has 
 had a class one evening in the week, out of 
 which grew a confirmation class, asked for by 
 the girls, and later still a guild, proposed by 
 themselves, with the same clerical friend as 
 warden. The guild consists now of forty 
 members, who meet once in three months at 
 the club ; they undertake to do some work 
 for the guild, and many kind, generous, and 
 thoughtful acts of charity have been done by 
 our girls. One poor girl, who was blind, was 
 paid for to learn chair-caning by the united 
 savings of some of our girls ; another, who 
 was too poor to pay her own club fees, was 
 paid for. Garments have been made by 
 guild members, and one girl who had gone to 
 service saved up her money, which she gave 
 to send a poor girl into the country, saying 
 that she wished to do something for others in 
 return for the kindness shown to herself, and 
 should she ever save more she would bring 
 it to be used in the same way. The 
 
VI RELIGION OF THE WORK-GIRL 151 
 
 poor are often talked of as possessing all the 
 virtues. Patience, charity, and unselfishness 
 are said to belong to them, and are denied 
 to the rich. My experience leads me to say 
 that patience does belong to them, but with 
 regard to unselfishness they need to learn 
 that lesson as much as those above them. 
 We must, however, make much more allowance 
 for selfishness in their characters than we 
 should for the richer part of the community. 
 Have not the poor to earn a precarious living, 
 with often no certainty that the next day, or 
 the next week, or month, they will have even 
 sufficient food, owing to the uncertainty of 
 their employment 'i On a Saturday, when 
 their wages are paid to them, they may be told 
 they will not be required the following week. 
 They may never have had a kind word, or one 
 of encouragement given to them by their em- 
 ployers. No joys, no pleasures may have 
 fallen to their lot ; they may have had to grind, 
 to labour, to struggle, as it were, for existence. 
 Now if we find the working classes selfish, 
 
152 CLUBS FOR WORKING GIRLS vi 
 
 who have almost to fight for existence, can 
 we be surprised? But acknowledging that 
 this is a fault, how can we cure it in those 
 that we are particularly interested in, viz. 
 working girls ? The existence of the club, 
 the assembling them in a common centre, 
 is an education in many ways. We can 
 give them opportunities for preferring others 
 before themselves ; pleasures, flowers, gifts 
 of various kinds may be shared and not 
 seized at enviously one from another ; little 
 opportunities of serving others may be 
 pointed out, and the united life and wellbeing 
 of a club may serve as an illustration of the 
 responsible place the very smallest amongst 
 us holds in this world, where we each have 
 our surroundings, our small world, which is the 
 better or the worse for our conduct. 
 
 Girls will sometimes say : ''It does not 
 matter what I do ; I am nothing to any one ; 
 I only harm myself by my folly, my extra- 
 vagance, or love of pleasure." But, indeed, 
 the poorest girl in the workshop or the 
 
VI RELIGION OF THE WORK-GIRL 153 
 
 factory will influence those who are with her 
 day after day. We have heard of a girl saying 
 to another : *' It must be pleasant to be well 
 thought of Do you think I could ever be 
 like Mary?" Example will ever be more 
 than precept, and so let us teach our girls 
 how great is their responsibility, how great 
 is their power for good or evil. 
 
 From the circumstances of the crowded 
 condition in which working people live, 
 selfishness has been really taught by mothers 
 to their children as a quality to be cultivated. 
 They live either in artisan dwellings five 
 stories high, or in houses not meant for 
 separate families, but that have become 
 such through the changing fashion of neigh- 
 bourhoods. Soho was once the resort of 
 nobles, where they had their town residences. 
 Have we not here the house where the Duke 
 of Portland lived in the last century. Sir 
 Thomas Lawrence's studio, the mansions of 
 the Lord Gerrards, the Earls of Carlisle, the 
 Dukes of Grafton, now either turned into 
 
 (fUNlVERSITX) 
 
154 CLUBS FOR WORKING GIRLS vi 
 
 business houses or divided up into separate 
 dwellings ? 
 
 Wherever the workman lives he has close 
 to him, with doors adjoining, a neighbour 
 whose respectability he can only gauge on 
 his arrival by the amount of chairs and 
 tables he brings with him, and so it has be- 
 come to him almost a matter of necessity 
 to keep himself to himself, and to do no 
 neighbourly action ; and this feeling, taught 
 by the parents, has engendered a quality of 
 selfishness amongst the girls which it is 
 perhaps difficult to fight against. 
 
 We shall need to point out to our girls 
 the beauty of unselfish devotion to others, 
 and to show them that it is of no use being 
 filled with admiration for the lives of good 
 men and women if we do not try to tread 
 humbly in their footsteps. 
 
 Kindness of heart and generosity are often 
 inborn qualities, but there is no reason why 
 all should not acquire them. We know one 
 little girl, now a club member, who was called 
 
VI RELIGION OF THE WORK-GIRL 155 
 
 always in her family the ministering angel. 
 A large family of eight children living in two 
 rooms, where the father worked at his tailor- 
 ing, gave plenty of opportunity for Nelly to 
 minister to others ; and, as her mother said, 
 '' Nelly is always on the look-out for something 
 to do for others ; she will run to shop before 
 and after school for father ; she will wash the 
 little ones ; she will take them out of the way 
 of father s work/' This little maiden of twelve 
 was the joy and light of the family. 
 
 Many clubs are started with a distinctly 
 outward religious aim — I say outward, for if 
 we knew the motives of the promoters of 
 most clubs, we should probably find that 
 religion had prompted their work, though 
 they may not have considered it expedient 
 to put it forward in the same way. Besides, 
 many who have undertaken philanthropic 
 work, not reckoning that religion would 
 take any part in it, have, through their 
 practical experience with the individual, 
 found that without religion they could not 
 
156 CLUBS FOR WORKING GIRLS vi 
 
 give to the hard -worked, the weary one, 
 that rest and peace that would comfort and 
 sustain him as no mere political -economy 
 precept or moral teaching can do. 
 
 We may organise, we may develop 
 schemes for the improvement of working 
 people ; we may raise them politically and 
 socially ; we may establish sanitary conditions 
 of health ; we may give them opportunities 
 for intellectual development ; but when we 
 come to speak as men to men of their 
 sorrows, their trials, and their loneliness, we 
 find that to give them comfort we must place 
 before them as we would place before our- 
 selves the joy and the hopes of religion. 
 
 Our sympathy is good, but better still if 
 we can point out to them the Divine sym- 
 pathy and love. Our strength will encourage 
 the weak, but better still is it when we can 
 show that God can give strength to the 
 feeble and raise up those that have fallen. 
 
 '* I believe," says a lady who had for a 
 year spent her whole time in organising and 
 
VI RELIGION OF THE WORK-GIRL 157 
 
 herself working in South London, in connec- 
 tion with other ladies connected with the 
 Universities, *' that there is no scheme except 
 the practice of Christianity by rich and poor 
 alike which can solve the social problems 
 with which we are brought daily face to face." 
 
 The Guild of Good Life at Hoxton has 
 done much in a neighbourhood immortalised 
 by W. Besant in the Children of Gideon, 
 Poor Melindas and Lotties work there still, 
 and may they not perhaps have found the 
 rest they needed if they have come to 
 Hoxton Hall? This guild consists of 500 
 members, who meet many evenings in the 
 week for work, singing, for concerts and for 
 instruction. The basis of their membership 
 is Total Abstinence, as the plan of two 
 kinds of membership first adopted was not 
 found to work well. 
 
 In the higher class of work-girls and in 
 the very lowest we may have this evil of 
 drink to fight against, but those who are 
 untouched by this evil are, we are thankful 
 
158 CLUBS FOR WORKING GIRLS vi 
 
 to say, by far the greater number, and it is 
 difficult to persuade them of the danger of^ 
 drink, for in the self-confidence of youth 
 they feel themselves safe from intem- 
 perance. 
 
 These words, taken from a Manchester 
 paper, give, we fear, a true account of the 
 state of many of the lowest class of work- 
 girls not only in that town but in many other 
 large towns of this kingdom. 
 
 Drink is the great curse among the very poor of 
 Manchester, and many of the mill-girls have miserable 
 homes and unhappy lives, because their mothers cannot 
 resist spirits. 
 
 " Oh, teacher," said a pretty little girl, while the tears 
 fell down her cheeks, " I lent the dress you gave me to 
 my eldest sister, because she'd nothing respectable to go 
 in when she went to look for a place, and mother got 
 hold of it. Mother's pawned the skirt for drink. I've 
 only the body left. Mother's given me the pawn-ticket, 
 but I've no money to get the skirt back. I give mother 
 half a crown a week. She hadn't ought to have pawned 
 my skirt ! " 
 
 This is no unusual occurrence. Our representative 
 visited the home of a mill-girl who was obliged to go 
 into lodgings, about seven years ago, because her 
 mother pawned her clothes for drink, leaving her 
 
VI RELIGION OF THE WORK-GIRL 159 
 
 nothing to wear, even in the mill, much less on 
 Saturday or Sunday. During her absence from home 
 things went from bad to worse. At last this noble 
 girl, who had saved up a little money while living 
 away from home, determined to rent a small house. 
 She took her whole family, including the drunken 
 mother, as lodgers in this house, having arranged 
 with her father that he should give her his wages. 
 She then allowed her mother half a crown a week ; 
 and with the rest of the money she managed to make 
 a comfortable home for her father and her brothers 
 and sisters. 
 
 In Edinburgh the love and indulgence in 
 drink is so prevalent amongst the lowest class 
 of work-girls that a girls' brigade has been 
 formed ; where, instead of the volunteer oath, 
 the temperance pledge is taken, which unites 
 in one the brigade. 
 
 When drink is the master instead of the 
 servant nothing but total abstinence is of 
 any use, and we wish all our girls would 
 belong to the blue ribbon army, and so be 
 of use to those who are in danger of falling. 
 How often is a whole life made shipwreck of 
 by this miserable and devouring passion ! 
 
 To cure women of the habit of drinking 
 
i6o CLUBS FOR WORKING GIRLS vi 
 
 is indeed most difficult, and let those who 
 undertake it be prepared to give perha]3s 
 years of sympathetic help, let them not think 
 it can be done in a moment. Taking the 
 pledge is the best help we can have ; and 
 though that may be broken again and again, 
 yet we may hope on. 
 
 A chaplain at one of our London prisons 
 found himself on one of his rounds in the 
 cell of a woman who had been brought in 
 for nearly the hundredth time ; each time 
 it had been for some low brawl or disorderly 
 conduct through drink. He spoke to her as 
 he did to all under his care, and his words 
 pierced through the hardened drunkard's 
 heart ; she fell on her knees, and from that 
 day her behaviour in prison changed, and by 
 the time her sentence was over the chaplain 
 felt that he would have hopes of her ultimate 
 recovery. Three months more of probation 
 she had in a Home, learning tidy habits and 
 decent ways ; after that she emigrated, and 
 in a year's time a letter came from the 
 
VI RELIGION OF THE WORK- GIRL i6i 
 
 mistress in whose service she had been 
 placed, saying that the woman had proved 
 a most excellent servant. Two years later 
 a letter came to the chaplain from the man 
 she had married, thanking him for the good 
 wife he had got. 
 
 The Welcome, in Jewin Street, Alders- 
 gate, is a distinctly religious work which 
 is brought to bear on work-girls, and great 
 results have been achieved from the work 
 of the ladies at the numerous Bible classes 
 held there on the week-day evenings. The 
 restaurant is always open, and is a great 
 boon to the thousands of work -girls who 
 stream out of the warehouses in its immediate 
 neighbourhood. 
 
 I have been at a mission service there, 
 and found all seats filled, the girls listening 
 attentively to the words of a young lady, 
 who was earnestly calling on them to come 
 to Christ as a sure refuge. 
 
 Much work is also done amongst the 
 girls in large factories in the city and the 
 
 M 
 
i62 CLUBS FOR WORKING GIRLS vi 
 
 East End by ladies visiting them during the 
 dinner hour. They come to them as friends, 
 with a loving interest, trying to bring to 
 them the words of Christ, which will often 
 sound to their ears as a whispering echo of 
 childish lessons, long since forgotten in the 
 turmoil and in the bustle of working days. 
 
 Permission must first be asked of the 
 manager of the factory, when that is granted 
 the ladies will see the forewoman and try to 
 get her sympathy in this mission work. At 
 first the girls may receive them with sup- 
 pressed laughter or with rude indifference, 
 but the earnest worker will go on in faith, 
 nothing doubting but that God will bless her 
 humble efforts. Let me take you on a 
 visit to a factory in Bethnal Green, where for 
 a year this work has been carried on for one 
 half hour once a week. We arrive at 1.30 ; 
 half an hour has already gone of the dinner 
 hour ; most of the workwomen have finished 
 their mid-day repast ; some few are still eating 
 the steak and potatoes that they have cooked 
 
VI RELIGION OF THE WORK-GIRL 163 
 
 in the workroom. This is a shoe factory, 
 and they have not, as is sometimes the case, 
 a separate room for meal time. The room 
 holds fifty workers ; half we find there, the 
 others have gone out to their dinners, and 
 they come in quietly, after the little service 
 has begun. The lady brings with her hymn- 
 books, Sankey^s well-known words and tunes ; 
 she stands as they sit at their tables and 
 machines ; she gives out the hymn, they all 
 join heartily yet thoughtfully. Then she 
 asks them to remain seated, but to close their 
 eyes for prayer, and with a few earnest words 
 she leads them up to the Father of all and 
 to the Saviour of mankind. Next she reads 
 to them a portion of the Gospel, and with 
 simple words she explains to them the 
 meaning of a parable. Another hymn follows, 
 this time chosen by the girls themselves, and 
 then a short prayer, beseeching God, who 
 knows what are the trials of all those pre- 
 sent, to send them comfort and strength. 
 Throughout this little service all is reverent ; 
 
i64 CLUBS FOR WORKING GIRLS vi 
 
 it is as if one sister were speaking to another. 
 On the face of the sister who comes to these 
 workers is a look of heavenly joy, and on the 
 faces of those who listen seems to come calm 
 and peace. It is now five minutes to two, the 
 bell will soon ring ; each takes her place, the 
 machines are put in motion, the work is in 
 full swing, but will not that message be 
 thought of as the treadle is worked and as 
 the stitches are sewn ? The girls are tidily 
 dressed, many pretty faces are amongst 
 them, and they earn good wages for their nine 
 and a half hours a day. A few have one pound 
 a week, some eighteen shillings, and so on, 
 gradually lessening till the pay lowers to the 
 six shillings a week of the learners. 
 
 Does it not raise in our minds a feeling 
 of astonishment that the overlooker of the 
 factory or workshop should allow these ladies 
 to enter his premises and mix with his 
 ''hands"? What is the reason, we ask 
 ourselves, that such a privilege is allowed, 
 that intruders may penetrate where so often 
 
VI RELIGION OF THE WORK-GIRL 165 
 
 we see written up '' Admittance only for those 
 on business " ? May we not conclude that 
 this Christian message of peace, of hope, of 
 love is seen to transform the rude, untamed, 
 boisterous, careless girl into the careful, 
 attentive, industrious workwoman ? 
 
 Yes, kindness will touch and reach the 
 hearts of all, and Christian love unlocks 
 many a stubborn soul. 
 
 These factory hands in our great cities are 
 protected by our laws from working before 
 they are fourteen years of age, but then comes 
 emancipation from all control save that of 
 parental love. If that does not exist, if there 
 are no home ties, the girl becomes only a 
 ''hand." She may turn her back on church 
 or chapel, she may never hear the Word of 
 God but in horrid oaths, in blasphemous 
 language. She is hardened, she is careless, 
 she has no thought for the future, only to get 
 through her daily task and to have plenty of 
 larks when that is done. There comes across 
 her sometimes a real loneliness — a loneliness 
 
i66 CLUBS FOR WORKING GIRLS vi 
 
 of soul, a desire to be something to some one ; 
 the inner voice is not stifled, and the thought 
 of something higher, something nobler than 
 a spree presents itself to her as the lady- 
 speaks to her. Remember she has probably- 
 had no talk with any one above her in wisdom 
 or station since she was at school, and 
 possibly she may not then have had a 
 sympathetic teacher, or one who had spoken 
 to her otherwise than a unit that formed 
 part of Standard II or III. If you can 
 imagine the loneliness of the girl who is thus 
 placed, you will see what a beneficent, lov- 
 able being is that lady who comes to her 
 with gentle manners, with tender sympathy, 
 and then how willing shall we find her to 
 accept this message, '' Come unto me all ye 
 who are weary and heavy laden," — a message 
 from that loving Master who through His 
 own suffering on earth could enter into the 
 weariness and loneliness of each one of us. 
 
 By these visits to the factories the girls 
 are made friends with and they are in- 
 
VI RELIGION OF THE WORK-GIRL 167 
 
 vited to come in the evening to clubs. 
 Walks are arranged for the Saturday after- 
 noons, and life becomes to them bright and 
 worth living. 
 
 In some clubs the evening is opened and 
 closed with prayer; whether this is advis- 
 able or not depends mostly on the members 
 belonging to the club, and the regularity of 
 their attendance and the attendance of a 
 permanent lady or superintendent. 
 
 When I had a night school for boys I 
 always finished with a prayer, but have never 
 done so at the club. There is generally at 
 the club much fun and gaiety and last words 
 as we close, and I hardly think that a great 
 number would compose themselves sufficiently 
 to look on such a custom with reverence. 
 Should a dozen or more girls be alone with 
 a teacher in a classroom she can finish her 
 instructions if she likes with a prayer ; the 
 girls are composed and collected, and would 
 be able to enter into the spirit of their teacher. 
 
 The religious teaching amongst girls will 
 
1 68 CLUBS FOR WORKING GIRLS vi 
 
 show itself in many ways. In one town, we 
 know of girls who made themselves fhto 
 bands of purity, and who resolved to give up 
 ever visiting the penny theatres so common 
 in manufacturing towns, where highly sensa- 
 tional dramas are carried on in booths or tents. 
 
 In another club we hear of girls forming 
 themselves into companies called the Help- 
 yourself Society and the Help-one-another 
 Society. 
 
 We also find them giving up one evening 
 a week for work for the poor, for making 
 toys for hospitals, or for Mission work. 
 All these occupations which are distinctly un- 
 selfish should be encouraged in every way. 
 
 Some may be willing to help in Bands of 
 Hope, and we have had girls who visited 
 regularly aged women in their own homes 
 or those who were sick. The Sunday 
 evening may be made very pleasant to the 
 girls by the singing of hymns after evening 
 service, or before Christmas by practising 
 carols, but this to be a success requires the 
 
VI RELIGION OF THE WORK-GIRL 169 
 
 presence of a lady who will somewhat 
 conduct the singing. 
 
 What we desire to do by religious teaching 
 and influence is to raise the standard of life. 
 We must know the temptations that our girls 
 are exposed to ; we must speak of purity, of 
 honesty, and of charity, that ill-used word, 
 which should convey to us chiefly the spirit 
 of love and sympathy, which makes all men 
 akin. 
 
 We know that young men must enter into 
 the thoughts and lives of our girls, so let 
 us speak of them as those that may some day 
 be nearer than friends ! their husbands. 
 
 If 1 know a girl well, I will often ask her 
 if she is keeping company with a young man, 
 and she will be pleased to tell me all about 
 him ; if he has yet been taken home to see 
 mother ! — a very important step in courtship. 
 For the keeping company may be a matter 
 of many years. I have known marriage not 
 come for nine years or more, and during that 
 time the couple will consider themselves 
 
I70 CLUBS FOR WORKING GIRLS vi 
 
 bound so far that neither will take another 
 partner out for walks or amusements, fiut 
 until the time for marriage is fixed on, they 
 are not engaged, and on both sides are 
 free to part. During the stage of keeping 
 company there are often, as we may imagine, 
 foolish misunderstandings, and even in these 
 cases are the girls glad of the advice of a lady, 
 whom they know they can trust to hear their 
 confidences and not betray them. Amongst 
 the respectable London work-girls there is a 
 strong feeling that every steady girl can take 
 care of herself, and that she need fear no insult 
 or advance from the strangers who will address 
 her ; and I almost concur in that opinion, 
 but then it is not all girls that are steady, 
 and the dangers they run are from the plea- 
 sures and the amusements offered to them, 
 too often with no good intention. Having 
 had the experience of country girls as well as 
 London ones, I must say that I consider that 
 the London work -girl has a higher moral 
 tone and practice than the country girl. 
 
VI RELIGION OF THE WORK-GIRL 171 
 
 In many parts of London where clubs are 
 established the manners of the girls are of the 
 very coarsest and lowest description, and with 
 these there should be certainly plain speaking, 
 and decency of manners should be enforced. 
 A lady went once in her Victoria to an East 
 End club, and was surprised on coming out to 
 find that the carriage was not waiting for her, 
 but standing some two streets off in the large 
 thoroughfare. The reason of this disappear- 
 ance was that as soon as the coachman was 
 left by his mistress several girls rushed into 
 the carriage and threw their arms round his 
 neck at some peril to himself, saying, ** Dear 
 coachman, do give us some of your silver but- 
 tons." The poor victim of these endearments, 
 thinking he would soon be dragged off his 
 box, had to get assistance to be delivered 
 from the embraces of these girls. But such 
 manners may be corrected. And have we not 
 great pity for girls who have lived in such 
 surroundings that modesty is unknown to 
 them ? In these cases not only of outward 
 
172 CLUBS FOR WORKING GIRLS vi 
 
 manners must we speak, but of the import- 
 ance of virtuous conduct. 
 
 Let us take another of the temptations 
 of a working girl's Hfe — that of dishonesty. 
 Too often it is the love of dress that leads 
 a girl at first to pilfer, and if undetected to 
 help herself still more largely. 
 
 Girls with a strong sense of honesty are 
 often sorely tried and perplexed with the 
 dishonest habits forced on them by their 
 employers. For instance, they are made to 
 show an article as a bargain, to say that it is 
 reduced in price, whilst they know that in 
 reality it is part of the regular stock. This 
 may seem but a trifle, but when it becomes 
 habitual the feelings of rectitude of the girls 
 will be undermined. 
 
 Worse still for a girl is it when the fore- 
 woman substitutes her own work for that of 
 the establishment — work that is hidden away 
 the moment the madame enters the room. 
 What must the girl do ? Show up the fraud, 
 denounce the forewoman — can we expect such 
 
VI RELIGION OF THE WORK-GIRL 173 
 
 courage ? She can do as I have known a 
 brave and honest girl to do, leave a good 
 place, and when the cause of her leaving 
 has come to the knowledge of her employer, 
 boldly confront the dishonest forewoman and 
 with witnesses prove her statement. But 
 this fraudulent practice is so common, with 
 others of a similar character, that too often the 
 work-girl's ideas of honesty get clouded, and 
 the whole tone of her moral nature is lowered. 
 Whilst working for the general improve- 
 ment of girls, boys, men, or women of the 
 labouring classes, let us not in our zeal 
 for improving their material condition forget 
 that along with these objects, most important 
 certainly for their welfare, we should also, if 
 we ourselves feel the comfort and value of 
 religion, endeavour to provide for its culture 
 and advancement, and let this be one of the 
 aims of a girls' club, to point out to our girls 
 from whence they may get help and strength 
 to lead good and honest lives. 
 
VII 
 
 DIFFERENCE IN THE SOCIAL 
 POSITION OF WORK-GIRLS 
 
 A LADY who was visiting one of our West- 
 End girls' clubs, whilst talking to a member, 
 said : '* Should you call yourself a good speci- 
 men of a working girl ? " The question, we 
 must say, was a curious one to put, but it met 
 with this ready answer : '' I think you would 
 find as many differences amongst us as you 
 would find amongst ladies." 
 
 I have been often asked the same 
 question, and I should say that our Soho club, 
 with its two hundred and thirty members, 
 covered as wide a social area amongst the 
 working classes as we should find amongst 
 the members of the House of Commons, 
 
VII DIFFERENCE IN SOCIAL POSITION 175 
 
 though to those unacquainted with working 
 people the girls seem to be all of one 
 class. How often do people say to us, ''I 
 suppose your girls are all shop girls," probably 
 meaning by that one who serves behind a 
 counter; but working people would understand 
 by a shop girl a runner, a trotter, a matcher, 
 an employment filled by young girls on first 
 leaving school. Business hands, young ladies 
 in business, counterwomen, assistants in shops 
 mean one and the same thing. Then there 
 are dressmakers, milliners, and mantlemakers, 
 who in the West End get from ten shillings 
 to thirty shillings a week ; some live in the 
 house of business, some live at home or in 
 lodgings, and many in Homes. 
 
 Next to these we would place those 
 working in workshops — tailoresses, shirt- 
 makers, needlewomen of every description, 
 also silver workers, lacquerers, cap -makers, 
 upholsterers. Next we come to factory hands, 
 who abound all over London, East and West 
 alike — jam-makers, biscuit-makers, blacklead 
 
176 CLUBS FOR. WORKING GIRLS vii 
 
 packers, matchmakers, etc. Laundry workers 
 would be a class by themselves, also girls who 
 sell flowers in the street. For all these clubs 
 have been established ; in general they have 
 been intended for each set of girls by them- 
 selves ; but in Soho we have been fortunate 
 in making ours a club for the neighbourhood, 
 which, from the varying condition of the houses 
 and of the streets, is inhabited by every shade 
 of working people. The old houses are let out 
 in separate tenements of one or of two rooms. 
 Then there are improved workmen's dwellings 
 of different sorts — the Peabody buildings, the 
 Waterlow dwellings, and other blocks of 
 houses built by private contractors. 
 
 It is a great mistake to say that any street 
 or locality in London is entirely full of bad 
 people, or that in one quarter all are destitute. 
 In the very worst neighbourhoods of Newport 
 Market and of Princes Row we have known 
 it to be otherwise. We shall find a sprinkling 
 of good amongst the worthless, as we shall also 
 find a sprinkling of the worthless and destitute 
 
VII DIFFERENCE IN SOCIAL POSITION 177 
 
 amongst the better class of houses. The 
 following account of an inquest held this 
 summer on Henry Ebers, who died in Ber- 
 wick Street, will fully carry out what I say, for 
 in this same street are most excellent shops, 
 and over them live many high class artisans. 
 
 Yesterday afternoon the deputy coroner for West- 
 minster held an inquiry into the circumstances attending 
 the death of Henry John Ebers, aged sixty years, a coach 
 painter, who was found dead in bed at 6 1 Berwick Street, 
 Oxford Street. The doctor who made a post-mortem 
 examination stated that the man died in a small back 
 kitchen, amid the filthiest surroundings he had ever seen. 
 The walls were wet, and in fact the place was utterly unfit 
 for human habitation. Just outside the window^ and 
 within a space of about half the size of the table the jury 
 were sitting round, were a water-closet, a dust hole, and 
 the water supply for drinking purposes. The room ought 
 certainly never to have been occupied. The deceased's 
 body and the apartment itself were in such a horribly 
 neglected condition that witness's clothing was affected. 
 The room, which measured about i o feet or 1 2 feet, was 
 so dark that when he entered he almost trod on the 
 corpse. The vestry had caused the contents of the 
 room to be burned. 
 
 Such places as are here described, and 
 
 indeed worse than these, have I seen inhabited 
 
 in Soho, very near to good and respectable 
 
 N 
 
178 CLUBS FOR] WORKING GIRLS vii 
 
 houses. An inquiry was made this year by 
 
 Mr. Valpy of the condition and occupatiorf 
 
 of the people in Central London, and in 
 
 this pamphlet he says — 
 
 It is a common thing when people are speaking of 
 the poverty in London to compare one district with 
 another, and to say that the neighbourhood with which 
 they are personally acquainted is quite the poorest in 
 London. But we are a long way nearer understanding 
 the truth when we have recognised the distinction 
 between poverty in extent and poverty in degree, and 
 can show with approximate correctness the number of 
 poor people and the relative depth of their poverty. 
 
 Now the facts that Mr. Valpy has got 
 about Central London may astonish many 
 who talk of the East End as the scene of the 
 greatest distress and poverty in this town, to 
 which no other parts of London can compare, 
 but it will not astonish the visitors to the 
 poor who used to live about Newport Market 
 and Princes Row, for they have seen poverty of 
 the lowest class. Staircases where the house 
 door was never shut and where outcast men 
 or women might be getting their night's rest ; 
 but who would have to take leave of even 
 
VII DIFFERENCE IN SOCIAL POSITION 179 
 
 this hard couch before the day dawned, as 
 they must then skulk away from that neigh- 
 bourhood, when daylight came, to some lower 
 haunt. These abodes, formerly the posses- 
 sions of princes, had become so low in their 
 surroundings, that we are thankful that they 
 are now swept away with the improvements of 
 Charing Cross Road and Shaftesbury Avenue. 
 
 The wild girls who used to call themselves 
 the forty thieves, and lived about those courts, 
 the lads who assumed the like designation, 
 where are they gone to ? We see them no 
 longer about Soho. Have they crowded up 
 still more Drury Lane and Clare Market ? 
 
 Mr. Valpy finds that in extent of poverty 
 Central London compares favourably with 
 any East London district, and yet its poverty 
 in degree comes next to that of St. George's 
 in the East, Stepney, and Bethnal Green. 
 
 He finds that though the poverty is less 
 in extent, it is most intense, and that a greater 
 depth of poverty exists even where the 
 measure of health is high. 
 
i8o CLUBS FOR WORKING GIRLS vii 
 
 The change that has often taken place in the 
 lives of people resident in Soho, is so great 
 that we may find some in dire distress, who 
 had formerly lived in their own houses, and 
 had even kept servants in former days, till the 
 death of the husband, or failures in trade and 
 other causes, had brought them thus low. 
 
 One woman I found who lived in a small 
 room with her one child, a girl of ten, said to 
 me : '' The Almighty has been good to me ; I 
 have never passed a day but what I have had 
 a piece of bread to give to my Katie." And 
 this woman had been a lady's maid in one 
 family for ten years, till she married a courier, 
 who had died one day quite suddenly two 
 hours after he came in from work. 
 
 The widow tried to keep herself by her 
 needle, but she could make no living out of 
 it. The family she had been with had gone 
 to Australia, and she had no friends ; so with 
 cleaning offices for six shillings a week, and 
 occasional washing - up at hotels, she had 
 struggled on a bare existence for some years. 
 
VII DIFFERENCE IN SOCIAL POSITION i8i 
 
 The principal trade carried on in Soho 
 is tailoring. The large and fashionable West 
 End shops could not afford space for the 
 work to be done on the premises, so that 
 the coat goes to and fro from the shop, to the 
 tailor s house till the fit is perfect. 
 
 How much could a coat tell its wearer of 
 the troubles, the privations, and the hard 
 life of the poor ! It used to be said that the 
 nobleman's coat had been often used to cover 
 the fevered child of the tailor ; that, we are 
 thankful to say, cannot be now the case, 
 because the fevered patient is carried away 
 from the crowded room of its parents to the 
 beautiful hospitals of the Asylums Board. 
 An ambulance fetches them away, with a 
 careful nurse, who takes them safely to the 
 nearest hospital ; but though the coat will 
 no longer tell how it has covered the infec- 
 tious child, it may tell of other sufferings and, 
 of other sorrows. 
 
 Soho is largely inhabited by foreigners, 
 and it seems, to judge by the languages you 
 
1 82 CLUBS FOR WORKING GIRLS vii 
 
 hear spoken in the streets, to be the rendez- 
 vous of French, Italians, and Germans. 
 Foreign shops also abound here, for oils, 
 for confectionery, for eatables of all sorts. 
 Also French restaurants and hotels, and 
 French laundresses in great numbers. The 
 foreigners bring with them much that is 
 injurious to our people, who are unfortunately 
 ready enough to imitate what is wrong, and 
 do not learn much that might be of use to 
 them in the thrifty housekeeping ways of the 
 French housewife. Our girls, however, have 
 but little intercourse with foreigners except 
 when they find themselves as tailoresses in 
 the same workroom as perhaps a German or 
 a Swede, who come over to England in large 
 numbers, attracted by our higher wages, 
 and who are generally of a higher class, 
 and have better manners than the English 
 journeyman tailor. 
 
 Another statement commonly made is, I 
 think, as erroneous as the one Mr. Valpy 
 speaks of, namely, that there are courts and 
 
VII DIFFERENCE IN SOCIAL POSITION 183 
 
 Streets where no lady may walk in safety. I 
 believe there is no place where, if a lady is 
 known, or seen to be on an errand of mercy, 
 she will not be as safe as if she were walking 
 in Piccadilly. 
 
 The Seven Dials has an unenviably evil 
 reputation, but to my mind a greatly exag- 
 gerated one, and no lady need be afraid of 
 walking through them. 
 
 I have heard Little St. Andrew Street, 
 one of these seven streets leading to the 
 Dials, called by a learned professor the 
 Zoological Gardens of the poor, for on a 
 Sunday morning the pavements in front of 
 the bird shops will be crowded by work- 
 ing people looking at all the curious animals 
 that are for sale there. Perhaps no one un- 
 acquainted with the insides of those houses 
 would imagine that in one of the houses on 
 the Seven Dials could be seen a most perfect 
 collection of shells, made by an enlightened 
 and enthusiastic conchologist. 
 
 Not only in the Seven Dials, but every- 
 
i84 CLUBS FOR WORKING GIRLS vii 
 
 where in town or country, we find isolated 
 cases in the midst of the most ordinary* 
 surroundings, of minds that have by them- 
 selves groped through the commonplaces of 
 life into the light of intellectual appreciation 
 and enjoyment. 
 
 A lady of rare charm, the wife of a vicar 
 of a large parish, has afternoon teas once a 
 fortnight for the tradeswomen and others in 
 her parish ; and on one occasion she found 
 that one of her visitors, who had a green- 
 grocer's shop, had read most of Carlyle's 
 works and knew many other authors ; she 
 had alone delighted in these books, for none 
 around her cared for such reading. Now 
 the long mental silence was broken, and she 
 could speak to her hostess of all the great 
 and noble thoughts that had taken root in 
 her mind from such studies. 
 
 But let us return to our work-girls. Will 
 you take a walk from Regent Street along 
 any of those back streets that lead to Soho } 
 You would there meet hundreds of tailoresses 
 
VII DIFFERENCE IN SOCIAL POSITION 185 
 
 hurrying to their shops with their own or 
 their fathers' work thrown over their arm, 
 and covered with a black cotton wrapper. 
 Some will be as neatly dressed as any young 
 lady, with plain serge gowns, tight jackets, 
 hats trimmed plainly, and with tidy boots ; or 
 you will see others with cheap vulgar finery or 
 shabby clothes ; and some even come to shop 
 with ragged garments : the work is the same, 
 but the condition of the workers is very 
 different. 
 
 In America, where there are now many 
 girls' clubs, the class distinctions in some 
 respects are much more marked. Work- 
 girls would not mix with servants, and a 
 black or coloured girl could not be admitted 
 in a New York club, as they have been in 
 the one in Soho. A lady who had a club 
 under her management at New York came 
 with me one evening to the singing class, 
 and as I walked away with her I asked her 
 what she thought of our girls. '' I would 
 give anything," she said, '*to hear our girls 
 
i86 CLUBS FOR WORKING GIRLS vii 
 
 laugh as yours did this evening." " How 
 is that?" I asked; *'why do your girls 
 not laugh?" Then she explained to me 
 that the feeling in America of equality 
 between work people and those above them 
 is so strong that they are not at their ease 
 with the ladies, with whom they think 
 themselves equal, and yet they feel there is 
 a difference, so they will not unbend for fear 
 of appearing to take a lower position. 
 
 ''With you,'' my friend said, ''the girls 
 know there is a difference, and that they are 
 not your equals socially, and so they are as 
 much at their ease with you as you are with 
 them. They are not striving to keep their 
 place as your equals ; they do not think about 
 it, and they are happy to laugh and be 
 amused if you say anything to make them 
 gay." 
 
 The great difference in the class of house 
 accommodation in Soho causes a vast dif- 
 ference in the class of inhabitants, and as 
 our club has got hold to a great extent of 
 
VII DIFFERENCE IN SOCIAL POSITION 187 
 
 the inhabitants locally, the girls in it are of 
 all classes. 
 
 The young ladies from first West End 
 shops and the girls working in factories 
 have joined there, both in classes of instruc- 
 tion and in amusement. But we must allow 
 that it is not often that the young -lady 
 element of the working class will be found 
 in the girls' clubs. The counter attractions 
 to the club for these girls will be visits to 
 the theatres, operas, cafes, music halls, and 
 balls, to which they will be taken by young 
 men, and when these are the usual pleasures 
 the club will appear dull and uninviting. 
 
 Besides these evening amusements for 
 business girls there are Sunday excursions — 
 days spent on the river, or rambles about 
 the neighbourhood of London, where they 
 will be accompanied and treated by a gentle- 
 man of their own class or above them. 
 Days spent in this way are of common 
 occurrence in the life of many a London 
 dressmaker and milliner. Young men are 
 
i88 CLUBS FOR WORKING GIRLS vii 
 
 ready enough to seek the society of a smart 
 work-girl, who thinks that such companion- 
 ship is quite right and proper, that it 
 is mere amusement, that whilst young and 
 nice looking they should enjoy all that can 
 be got out of life, and that no better way of 
 passing the time can be found than a lark of 
 this sort. They see no harm in it, nor do 
 they foresee any danger. ! 
 
 The very general habit amongst the 
 working class of treating one another to a 
 glass of some sort of stimulant is most danger- 
 ous. Girls will even stand one another a 
 glass for the sake of companionship in going 
 into a public -house or gin palace. This 
 may be witnessed by any who walk about in 
 London. Do we not constantly see, going 
 in, or coming out of the public-house, young 
 women so respectable looking, that we can- 
 not imagine what has taken them into, what 
 must be for them, so foul a place ? It will 
 often at first be the pleasure of companion- 
 ship ; but it will soon get to be the love of 
 
VII DIFFERENCE IN SOCIAL POSITION 189 
 
 drink that allures them to their destruction. 
 And once that love gets possession of a 
 woman, how hard it is to drive it out. 
 
 Dress, as well as pleasure, is a great 
 snare to girls whom we would designate as 
 business girls. The earning of a whole 
 week will often go to get a new ball gown 
 or a smart hat for the river. A taste will be 
 engendered for smartness, for expensiveness in 
 clothes, by their very employment. The girl 
 stands by the hour holding pins whilst the 
 first-hand is fitting on the ladies' gowns ; she 
 will be unnoticed, — she is a mere machine, 
 a piece of the showroom furniture ; but she 
 can hear the endless talk about the dresses 
 that seems so important, how a richer lace 
 is required there, and more satin here. Will 
 she not think, when she hears so much value 
 attached to clothes, that happiness must 
 consist in the beauty of the outside garment 
 alone ? And the little milliner, who sits in 
 the corner of the showroom, what will she 
 think of the lady who takes up one hat 
 
I90 CLUBS FOR WORKING GIRLS vii 
 
 4 
 
 or bonnet after another ? — none are good 
 enough for the party she is going to on the 
 morrow ; all are thrown aside, when suddenly 
 she sees a hat being packed up that takes 
 her fancy ; here are two roses she must have 
 out of that hat for the one which she has 
 in her hand. *^ Madam, I am sorry I can't 
 take these roses off; they are the only ones 
 I have of this sort from Paris, and a lady has 
 already chosen them. I cannot disappoint 
 her." The customer is now bent on having 
 these two roses ; the cost, she is told, is 
 £2 : IDS. for the flowers alone ; the high price 
 only increases her wish to have them. She 
 persists. The saleswoman, afraid of dis- 
 pleasing the customer who is present, and 
 also afraid of the anger of the owner of 
 the coveted roses if she were to change 
 them, shows flower after flower, but none 
 will satisfy. The manageress comes in, 
 she is appealed to, and says : '' Certainly, 
 if madam wishes for the roses she must 
 have them." No doubt she thinks the 
 
VII DIFFERENCE IN SOCIAL POSITION 191 
 
 absent lady will not be able to distinguish, 
 on receiving her hat, that these identical 
 roses have been replaced by others. Now 
 what effect will this little scene, and similar 
 ones enacted day by day, that show the 
 vain frivolity of the lady, have on the work- 
 girl who sits apparently unobservant close 
 by ? Will she perhaps be struck with the 
 startling contrasts in life, when £2 : los. are 
 spent on two flowers considered absolutely 
 essential to wear at a boating party to last 
 probably but one day, and then to be 
 thrown aside as either faded by the sun, or 
 spotted by the shower ? What does that 
 £2 : IDS. mean to her? It means the rent 
 of two months for her widowed mother's 
 poor rooms ; it means the spending of 
 many weeks in the country for her sick 
 sister ; it means the savings of a year, with 
 which she could help her brother to get to 
 Canada. 
 
 We are often spoken to on the subject of 
 dress ; we are told we should make this one 
 
192 CLUBS FOR WORKING GIRLS vii 
 
 of the chief matters to bring before our girlst 
 It is important, we allow, but we shall best 
 get rid of the love of dress and extrava- 
 gance by filling the mind with nobler objects, 
 and by showing the value of those things 
 which are above dress and mere pleasure. 
 
 If we have shown to our readers that the 
 great temptations in the life of a business 
 girl is excitement, pleasure, and dress, let us 
 take the life of those who will live at home, 
 but whose days are spent in workshops. 
 Pleasures will be offered to them also, but 
 not as frequently and not of the same sort. 
 Dancing will be within their reach, and music 
 halls, and the danger from frequenting these 
 places of amusement are very great. Still 
 the club, when bright and well managed, 
 will be quite as great an attraction if they 
 have not entered those places, and many 
 working girls would never consent to enter 
 them, however much the young man she is 
 keeping company with, would ask her. 
 
 But there are other classes of work-girls. 
 
VII DIFFERENCE IN SOCIAL POSITION 193 
 
 factory hands, who, after the day's work, are 
 always in the street, who are rude, vulgar, 
 boisterous. In one part of London where a 
 girls' club has been established they have 
 been seen on a Saturday night fighting one 
 with another bared to their waists, and yet 
 these, by the gentle and kindly influence of 
 a good matron in a girls' club, have been, 
 may we not say, tamed and civilised. 
 
 Many of our readers may never have 
 seen the class of girls I now refer to — girls 
 who will roll about the pavements three or 
 four together, their hair cut straight over 
 their foreheads, shawls over their heads, 
 insulting every decent woman they meet ; but 
 even these, if they can be brought into the 
 club, may become quiet and well behaved. 
 
 The following accounts of how two clubs 
 of such girls were established, and how the 
 difficulties were met with, may interest those 
 who are beginning a similar work : — 
 
 In a small town in Yorkshire, in the winter of 1882, 
 some workers met together and decided to open an 
 
 O 
 
194 CLUBS FOR WORKING GIRLS vii 
 
 Evening Home in the lowest part of the town, after the 
 manner of the good work begun in Nottingham. We 
 began in a large room lent to us for the purpose by 
 the Town Mission, and to make the first evening attrac- 
 tive we opened with a tea to all girls who would come 
 and partake of it. Our invitations were gladly accepted, 
 and at seven o'clock plenty of guests with bright faces 
 and shawls over their heads came shyly and awkwardly 
 in, and heartily enjoyed the pleasant meal provided. 
 
 After tea we explained our reason for asking them to 
 come, and enrolled members. After singing and games, 
 and a short hymn to close, the girls went away evidently 
 pleased and interested, not, however, before we found 
 that, when the first shyness did wear off, we should have 
 a rather noisy, probably rough time ofit. 
 
 We were a little dismayed at the type of girls present 
 — shawls not of the cleanest, binding down wild looking 
 fringes hanging over bright eyes set in dirty faces, hands 
 of the grimiest, soiled frocks and torn aprons, shoes 
 more or less tattered, a look of rowdiness ; and yet the 
 faces were bright and interesting, some were bonny. 
 We will not venture to describe that first winter's ex- 
 periences. We battled bravely on until the summer, 
 when with more or less relief we closed for a three 
 months' rest. Tales of horror spread wide, and many 
 wise heads were shaken in doubt as to the wisdom of 
 collecting girls together to make a " Bear Garden," and 
 terrify kindly ladies who went down late in the evening 
 to preside over the bears. 
 
 The Committee of workers had taken a cottage of 
 three rooms, one above another, thinking that if the girls 
 were divided into parties with a lady to manage each, 
 
VII DIFFERENCE IN SOCIAL POSITION 195 
 
 that the older ones could have a quiet time while the 
 younger ones played and vice versct^ and that peace would 
 prevail. But this plan did not answer at all. The 
 difficulty was how to separate them, and to control each 
 room. On evenings when the workers present had 
 strong influence and power of keeping order to aid 
 them, things went quietly and good was evidently being 
 done. They sewed, and read, and played games, talked 
 to their friends and sang ; finally listened quietly to five 
 minutes' talk — five minutes' singing and the Lord's Prayer 
 quietly if not reverently, and as they went out said a 
 friendly good-night, and begged leave to accompany one 
 or other of the teachers part way home. But never was 
 proverb, " Rome was not built m. a day," brought more 
 clearly to us. We remember one sad night when two 
 bigger girls who were sitting happily at work round a 
 little table with a bright lamp, while a story was read to 
 them, suddenly quarrelled about a thimble, and in a 
 passion one girl threw the table over, the others, mad 
 with excitement, began to act in the wildest, utterly 
 indescribable fashion. The unfortunate teacher seized 
 the dangerous lamp, which went out in her hands, and 
 came downstairs to get help. Meanwhile the girls threw 
 up the window, and hanging out of it, with loud shouts 
 and rude laughter presently had a crowd underneath, 
 with whom they exchanged chaff and abuse. Downstairs 
 the crowded kitchen was too noisy in its play for any 
 upstairs sounds to be audible. They, however, were 
 cautioned to be quiet while the ladies went upstairs with 
 a lamp to quell the disturbance and close the window. 
 Coming down with the subdued and sulky girls, found 
 hiding in corners and tolerably ashamed of themselves, 
 
196 CLUBS FOR WORKING GIRLS ^ vii 
 
 as soon as the light came the horrified workers found 
 the lower room in still worse confusion. Boys were 
 banging at the shutters and door, the girls inside shout- 
 ing and singing, and even fighting, slates, books, and 
 sewing being used as missiles ; and one or two girls were 
 reading the books at the desk, and finding out who had 
 paid the club money and who not, and other interesting 
 details. One of the ladies went to speak to the lads 
 outside, and one threw his cap in, and getting his foot 
 in the doorway prevented the door being closed. Re- 
 monstrances were of no use. They wished to come in 
 and play **with the lasses." At last the cap was thrown 
 out, and the door shut and locked, and the key removed 
 for fear any girl might open it. An attempt was then 
 made to get peace restored, but the boys had taken up 
 the cellar grate outside, had dropped into the dark 
 cellar, groped their way up the steps, and three grinning 
 lads emerged through the cellar door^ into the kitchen, 
 amid shrieks of terror from the girls. The ladies greeted 
 them with silence, and locking the door through which 
 they came, put that key too in safety. The boys struck 
 across the kitchen to the outer door and found them- 
 selves trapped. They didn't like it. *' Now," said the 
 lady, *'I suppose we must give you in charge for house- 
 breaking. You know what the law has to say to 
 burglars?" (She didn't, but the effect of her speech 
 was just as impressive.) The boys began to quail and 
 say, " We didn't mean no harm, missis ; if you'll let us 
 go out we'll never do it no more." The girls listened 
 in silence. At last they began to plead for the boys, 
 and one of them, a great awkward fqllow of about sixteen, 
 began to rub his knuckles in his eyes, and finally his 
 
VII DIFFERENCE IN SOCIAL POSITION 197 
 
 coat cuffs were needed to act as a pocket-handkerchief. 
 Then there was relenting and forgiveness, and with 
 relieved faces they shot out into the darkness. Now, 
 the girls came in for their lecture, and the club was 
 closed for the evening, after the fact that their behaviour 
 had caused the boys to be so troublesome had been 
 well brought home to their minds, and the ringleaders 
 amongst the bigger girls were kept behind for a quiet 
 talk. When the streets were cleared the weary " ladies " 
 walked home, thankful that they had not been obliged 
 to call in the aid of the police. Through scenes like 
 this we have passed into peaceful days, where, though 
 much remains to be done, we have no fear of such 
 stormy scenes recurring. We cannot now be described 
 as a Bear Garden. For one thing, we have our club 
 room under the care of the good kind matron who super- 
 intends the Home and F.R.O. of the Ladies Association 
 for the care of friendless girls, and when any help is 
 required she is on the spot to give it, and turn out any 
 girl who will not conform to the unwritten rules of 
 order. The tone of our club has gradually but per- 
 ceptibly risen. The girls value their club too much 
 to abuse its privileges, and they are too busy practising 
 for the February entertainment, and learning to cook, 
 and sew, or mend, so as to earn the prizes given for 
 these useful branches of education. Their cookery class 
 is a delight to them ; they pay a penny and come and 
 look on, and afterwards write out the recipe, then during 
 the week practise at home what they have learnt. 
 
 The girls themselves put down any noise or rudeness. 
 Should any fresh comer be growing loud in her speech 
 she will probably be told to " Shut up, you are not in 
 
198 CLUBS FOR WORKING GIRLS vii 
 
 t' street," and " Be'ave the sen, don't make her 'ead 
 ache." 
 
 We ought to say that the extreme roughness in our 
 girls comes largely from the fact of their not being 
 employed. There is very little work for women in 
 iron -works and colliery districts, and except a little 
 pottery making and fruit-picking in the summer our girls 
 have only domestic service to look to, and of course the 
 very rough and poor cannot in their untrained condition 
 get into service at all. Many of our girls are Irish, all 
 are poor and most of them idle and undisciplined. We 
 find their affection very touching, and their love for their 
 club is unmistakable, but we expect to find improvement 
 slow, as work among them is very uphill and elementary. 
 
 Here is the account of a club opened one 
 night a week in a country town. 
 
 There are now forty-two names on the books and an 
 average attendance of about twenty-six to thirty girls, 
 quite as many as our rooms will hold. They meet at 
 seven o'clock once a week, and from seven to eight they 
 sew and are read to ; they used to write, but this has 
 been given up, and instead they now have glee singing 
 for half an hour, till half-past eight, when one of the 
 clergy usually comes in to give a short address, and 
 they close with a hymn and prayer. We have a clothing 
 club, to which they contribute, having made the garments 
 during the hour of work. They are allowed to buy them 
 very cheaply, and the difference is covered by the sub- 
 scription. This class was first started by two ladies 
 about fourteen or sixteen years ago, and I cannot tell 
 
VII DIFFERENCE IN SOCIAL POSITION 199 
 
 you how rough and vulgar they were then, and how 
 quiet and refined they are now. Indeed, the class is 
 in such good repute that only respectable girls are 
 admitted, and there are some very nice ones ; three 
 are wishing shortly to be confirmed. A club properly 
 so called has, not long since, been opened every night 
 for the same class of girls, and this is successful, but it 
 has not been long enough in existence to produce the 
 same humanising effects which are so strikingly visible 
 in those we have ourselves had to do with. 
 
 A year of patient and continuous work will 
 do wonders, but if the club only meets two 
 or three times a week, or if it is closed in the 
 summer, the good work is partially undone, 
 and the reconstructive work is more difficult. 
 Is not this exemplified in the two accounts 
 we give? In the Yorkshire club, by the 
 untiring work of a year, the girls were 
 civilised in that short space of time, whilst 
 in the one which was opened but once a week, 
 though the same object was attained, many 
 years were needed to accomplish the same 
 end. We know it is not always possible 
 to have a club open every evening, but 
 once the foundations of good behaviour are 
 
200 CLUBS FOR WORKING GIRLS vii 
 
 laid every effort should be strained to pro- 
 vide for its being always open. 
 
 A club we know of was started first as 
 recreative evening classes ; the girls earned 
 at a tobacco factory three shillings and six- 
 pence, five shillings, and six shillings a week ; 
 they paid nothing for the classes ; they had 
 tea and cake given to them at nominal prices, 
 as they were very poor. After three years 
 these girls asked if they might form a club 
 out of those who attended the classes, offer- 
 ing to pay a weekly fee — and the work has 
 prospered. 
 
 It is, I think, a great advantage to have 
 girls in a club of different classes, as the 
 better mannered girls will set the tone and 
 gradually draw up the others to their standard. 
 
 At any rate the ladies have some evidence 
 to show the rougher girls that good be- 
 haviour is possible, and that good manners 
 are pleasanter than rough ones. 
 
 In one town it was proposed by a lady to 
 draw off from all the clubs the best girls from 
 
VII DIFFERENCE IN SOCIAL POSITION 201 
 
 each, and so make a model club. This would, 
 I think, be a great mistake. The difficulty 
 in most cases is to get the rough and wild 
 girls to come, and once they have come and 
 been improved, they get attached to the 
 place and to the ladies who have been 
 instrumental in changing their ideas and 
 habits of life, and the girls will themselves 
 be the best civilisers of the unruly ones who 
 continue to join. 
 
 Let us show the differences that exist in 
 the social condition of our own Soho club 
 members by taking our readers to a few of the 
 homes of the girls. We will go to the poorest 
 home first, so let us visit the third floor of a 
 house near to our Club. As we come in 
 Agnes is just off to her place of housework, 
 where she gets five shillings a week and her 
 tea. She is sixteen years old, and though a 
 good steady girl is not very sharp. Perhaps 
 much poverty, almost starvation, in early 
 days has made her less bright. In the 
 summer we got her a place as a matcher. 
 
202 CLUBS FOR WORKING GIRLS vii 
 
 and we had to clothe her to make her even 
 fit for that small place. What is her home ? 
 I have not seen many like it. Outwardly 
 it is dirty and poverty-stricken, but on the 
 faces of father and mother there is a radiant 
 look of love, a refinement, a gentleness not 
 often seen. The home consists of two attics. 
 In the front or living room sleep three boys ; 
 in the back room sleep the father and mother 
 and the four girls, of sixteen, thirteen, seven, 
 and one years old. Potato peelings are 
 about the floor, a cord is across the low 
 room to hang the clothes to dry, the ceiling 
 and walls are grimy, the floor is almost black, 
 the bedclothes are ragged, the chairs — there 
 are but three — are broken, two tables almost 
 fill the room, there are no drawers, there is 
 no washstand, but one mattress, no palliases, 
 the children lie on the boards. Outside in 
 the narrow landing hang the best gown and 
 the jacket of the mother, and a few rags of 
 the children. There is soup for dinner ; there 
 have been days when they have had nothing 
 
VII DIFFERENCE IN SOCIAL POSITION 203 
 
 but bread for breakfast, dinner, and tea, and 
 not enough of that. Worst of all, at times 
 the brokers have been threatened, and the 
 workhouse has been offered. What is the 
 cause of this poverty ? The blindness of the 
 father from brain fever after four years of 
 marriage. They were very comfortable before 
 that terrible illness. Mrs. Wate had been five 
 years in one place as servant, and did not 
 know what trouble was. She had a good 
 mistress, a comfortable home, and saved 
 much of her wages. Her mother had been 
 sister of a ward at King's College Hospital 
 for twenty years ; she might have been trained 
 as nurse herself Her mother was known as 
 a valued nurse by the physician, and he would 
 have taken in the daughter, but she said, *^ I 
 refused, as my young man was in the way, and 
 a good man he has been to me ; never in my 
 life a cross word, never anything but love for 
 me." On which he joins in : "I think every 
 one must know she might have been a nurse, 
 for go where we may the neighbours find her 
 
204 CLUBS FOR WORKING GIRLS vii 
 
 out when they or their children are sick, and 
 get her to come to them, and she seems to 
 know as much as the doctor almost." I asked 
 her, *' Have you had no visits from the church 
 or the chapel or the mission hall ? " '' No," is 
 the answer, '' none visit us here ; but w^e have 
 help from blind societies, and my husband 
 gets chair -caning now and again, and this 
 morning I got a room and a passage to scrub 
 out, and got sixpence ; and my boy, he 
 is good, he gets nine shillings a week, one 
 shilling he puts by in the bank for clothes, 
 one shilling I give him as pocket money, and 
 he gives me seven shillings. Agnes, she brings 
 in five, but she was in bed two weeks before 
 you sent her away to the sea, and that kind 
 young lady at the club (another of our club 
 members) gave her a frock and paid her 
 journey, and what a pretty chemise she had 
 also from the club ! (another club girls gift), 
 and will you let Mary join the club ? she talks 
 of nothing else, and would like to go to the 
 night school. She is thirteen, and has left 
 
VII DIFFERENCE IN SOCIAL POSITION 205 
 
 school, and must try and earn a bit." I said, 
 *' I wonder how you ever can get on with 
 all these children." And the answer was : 
 *' I have such a good sister, who does so 
 much for me. Her husband has but six- 
 teen shillings a week, but she has only one 
 daughter, who is out in service, and when 
 my children want boots or clothes she just 
 gets them for me by going out cleaning 
 herself. She is younger than I am, but she 
 has been as a mother to me for goodness." 
 
 I am shown the way down the dark and 
 narrow stairs, and when alone the good 
 mother says to me, '* How I did wish I could 
 have asked you last Christmas for the bag 
 that kind lady lends ; I have heard so much 
 of her, and how good she is." *'Why did 
 you not ask?" I said; ** Agnes could have 
 brought me word." " I was afraid," said the 
 poor woman, "that you might say what 
 the other ladies say, that I have too many 
 children ; that pains me so, for they are good 
 children, and we love them so much." 
 
2o6 CLUBS FOR WORKING GIRLS vii 
 
 Now let US visit Ruth Lane. Her father 
 owns the whole house, and has a shop in 
 another street, she is a dressmaker, but we 
 find the mother at home in a comfortable 
 well furnished parlour, the two rooms thrown 
 into one with portieres between, a piano, 
 pictures, ornaments, a good carpet, china, 
 arm-chairs, and a large mahogany square 
 table, fit to seat the twelve at dinner on 
 Sundays, when the father likes all the 
 children to be at home, and a friend or 
 two besides, for the important meal of the 
 week, which will last from three to five 
 o'clock. 
 
 Next let us go up to the fifth floor of the 
 model dwellings. We find here the artisan's 
 home ; a piano is here also, and many 
 children, all so clean and tidy ; the days of 
 struggle are over, for the four elder children 
 are earning, and contributing their share to 
 the family expenses, the rooms are convenient, 
 the father is sober and has a good trade, the 
 girls belong to our club, and the boy belongs 
 
VII DIFFERENCE IN SOCIAL POSITION 207 
 
 to the Polytechnic. But let us visit another 
 apartment in the same building. The 
 appearance is very different, — dirt every- 
 where, broken chairs, dirty children, rabbits 
 running about on the filthy floor, the bed is 
 unmade, the mother seems indifferent to the 
 general discomfort. We ask, '' Why has Nelly 
 not been to the club ; for the last three weeks 
 we had missed her at the night school ? " 
 *' To tell you the truth,'' is the answer, 
 ** Nelly said she must be earning something, 
 so she has got a little place, and she thinks 
 the missis will spare her after a bit." May 
 not Nelly have learned what order or cleanli- 
 ness meant at the club, and may "she not 
 have wished to get out of the drunken home 
 she could not improve 'i 
 
 Look at that poor girl in the club who is 
 enjoying the picture papers. Where does she 
 come from ? Not very far off is a small back 
 room in a court, where she lives with her 
 brother in such poverty that we gave her 
 the ulster she always wears, to cover her 
 
2o8 CLUBS FOR WORKING GIRLS vii 
 
 rags and to look tidy amongst her club 
 companions ; she is a tailoress, but her 
 work is of the poorest and badly paid. 
 Her poverty is known, and many little 
 kindnesses are shown to her. 
 
 I could take my reader to many a home, 
 but they may have had enough. I could 
 show them the poor little room of the orphan 
 sisters, who have kept house alone so respect- 
 ably since their mother died and left them at 
 sixteen and fourteen to care for themselves, 
 the only inheritance being the house, the bed, 
 the chairs, the table, the pictures. The club 
 has been to them a second home, and seldom 
 have they missed coming there. 
 
 I could show you the upper room in the 
 narrow street, w^here the widowed mother is 
 dying of consumption in a room so clean and 
 tidy we should think there were many to do 
 the work that is done by Annie, who, after 
 her long day of work, which brings in thirteen 
 shillings a week, will often go to the baths to 
 wash all her mother s bed linen to keep her 
 
VII DIFFERENCE IN SOCIAL POSITION 209 
 
 clean and fresh. The elder brother brings 
 his earnings, and the two younger ones, still 
 at school, help to keep the one room tidy for 
 the dear mother and the good sister. She 
 cannot come to the club now, mother is so ill, 
 but she has friends there who will care for 
 her when she is left alone. The homes are 
 very different of our club members, their 
 earnings are not the same, their dress shows 
 poverty in some, comfort in many, taste and 
 refinement in others. The following incident 
 will perhaps show to many the contrast of 
 the education of the club and the education 
 of the streets on the girls of the same social 
 position, with the same surroundings and 
 employed in the same labour. 
 
 One evening four girls came up into our 
 club-room ; they said they came to see what 
 it was like, and before many minutes had 
 passed they made so much noise and behaved 
 in so unseemly a way that the matron had 
 to tell them to leave the club ; this they did ; 
 but not without much swearing and foul 
 
 P 
 
2IO CLUBS FOR WORKING GIRLS vii 
 
 words used towards those they left in the 
 club. When I was told of this I regretted 
 that I had not been present to try my hand 
 on these rough diamonds, but I had my 
 chance. 
 
 The next evening I was there and was 
 told that two girls were waiting at the door. 
 I went to them and found one of the visitors 
 of the previous evening and another bold- 
 looking girl. I asked them if they wished 
 to join the club. "No, I don't," says one, 
 **they would laugh at us up there.'' The 
 fact of their coming the second time showed 
 me they wished very much to have some- 
 thing to do with our club, so I said, '' Come 
 up with me ; I will take you in." '' No," they 
 answered, ''they are stuck-up things, they 
 would not like such as us." Most true, we 
 feared, for the girls who knew them had said 
 the night before, *' Oh, those terrible girls, I 
 hope they are not coming here." One of the 
 girls kept repeating my name perpetually 
 whenever she spoke, so I said, ''You seem to 
 
VII DIFFERENCE IN SOCIAL POSITION 211 
 
 know me; where have we met ?'' '* Why, at St. 
 Mary's School; I always saw you there." *'To 
 be sure/' was my answer, '' and what standard 
 were you in when you left ?" '* In the sixth," 
 was the reply. '' Then come with me ; I shall 
 introduce you as one of my girls from the 
 school, and you will find many you know." So 
 the two came up with me, very reluctantly, 
 to the first flight, but when they came in 
 sight of the bright club, full of girls all so 
 orderly and happy looking, they drew back 
 and said, '' No, we can't go in, I am sure 
 they will mock at us." 
 
 A little more encouragement and persua- 
 sion brought them into the club -room, but 
 they seemed so shamefaced that we were 
 glad to show them the girls' photographs, 
 and pictures on the wall, to give them some 
 self-confidence. 
 
 Around them were girls who had been at 
 the same school, who lived in the same 
 street, who had worked at the same factories. 
 The one quiet, gentle, refined ; the other 
 
212 CLUBS FOR WORKING GIRLS vii 
 
 coarse, loud, blasphemous and rude. Up to 
 thirteen the same teaching, the same training, 
 but since that for the one the education of 
 the streets and of bad companions, and for 
 the others their club, their friends in the 
 club, and the ladies of the club. Here was 
 the same material, in one case become a 
 fragrant flower, in the other become the rank 
 weed. No instance has ever so forcibly 
 shown to me the marvellous good that a 
 girls' club could accomplish as the sight of 
 these girls thus brought together. As 
 children they had seemed alike in every 
 respect, and now how far apart they were ! 
 Not too late though, for they have become 
 members of our club, and may we not hope 
 that they also will grow up as flowers fit for 
 the heavenly garden where no tares shall be 
 seen ? 
 
VIII 
 
 HOMES FOR WORKING GIRLS 
 
 These institutions are of much older date 
 than clubs, and the necessity for them has 
 perhaps been more apparent to the public 
 than that of clubs, which have only been 
 thought of for the last ten years. 
 
 Benevolent persons have readily seen 
 the necessity for establishing homes for work- 
 girls who come up to London alone, away 
 from families and homes where they have 
 been shielded from dangers, to a great city 
 where pleasures abound and where tempta- 
 tions surround them. Girls are attracted 
 to London by the higher wages offered in 
 most trades, and the advantage of a London 
 experience in the dressmaking, millinery, 
 
214 CLUBS FOR WORKING GIRLS viii 
 
 and mantle-making business is very great. 
 Those also who live in the suburbs of London 
 will come to get a West End experience, and 
 so not only do the pleasures and sights of 
 London attract vast numbers year by year, 
 but the fact of having worked in London is 
 of money value to the wage-earning girl. 
 
 The girl comes up to town with many 
 warnings from home of what she is to avoid, 
 what she is to seek ; but if not in a home 
 she is either sadly desolate or she leads a 
 life of distracting pleasures, for which her 
 earnings may or may not suffice. In the 
 latter case, should she be bent on pleasure, 
 she will have it easily enough through com- 
 panions, whom she will find ever ready to 
 take her to the theatre, to the dancing 
 rooms, or to Sunday excursions. She will on 
 arriving in London be thrown at once in 
 the workroom amongst girls who will be 
 more or less accustomed to town life, and 
 who will soon initiate her into the ways 
 of, alas ! too many business girls. 
 
VIII HOMES FOR WORKING GIRLS 215 
 
 A great number of homes have been 
 established in London ; those under the 
 management of Mr. Shrimpton are in 
 many different parts of London ; the Young 
 Woman's Christian Association have several 
 homes, and the Girls' Friendly Society have 
 also many to which their own members 
 can come. 
 
 The management is probably much the 
 same in every one, and the experience that 
 the managers have of the girls who lodge in 
 these homes will no doubt be very similar. 
 There will be some lodgers who will remain 
 on from year to year ; but there will also be 
 many changes. Those who come from the 
 country to get a season s experience of work 
 will stay but a few months ; others, who 
 are dismissed when the season is over, will 
 then seek fresh employment, often in service; 
 and some will be taken into the houses of 
 business as they become better workers. 
 
 The important question in a home is to 
 have a good matron, who will be able to have 
 
2i6 CLUBS FOR WORKING GIRLS viii 
 
 command over the lodgers, and will observe 
 with firm attention the rules, ahd who, whilst 
 showing kindness to all, will be impartial 
 and will side with none. The matron must 
 also be a good housekeeper and accountant. 
 Sometimes we get a quarrelsome or an 
 hysterical girl, who upsets the whole com- 
 munity, and the only course to pursue in 
 such case is to get rid of the trouble- 
 some lodger. Reference should always be 
 obtained of the girl's character before 
 admitting her into the home, though 
 occasionally an exception should be made ; 
 but to do so we need some experience, which 
 will make us capable of judging of character. 
 In one instance we were able to help a very 
 pitiable case of destitution. A girl of about 
 twenty had lodged in the home for one 
 night, she had seemed dazed and yet had a 
 refined look ; she had on a curious garment, 
 originally some cotton wrapper, which gave 
 her the appearance of a Chinese lady. She 
 stayed but the one night. The matron was 
 
VIII HOMES FOR WORKING GIRLS 217 
 
 SO much struck by her look of sadness that 
 on my coming to the home she spoke to me 
 of the girl, and said she wished I had seen 
 her before she had left, as she felt sure she 
 was in some great distress. I managed to 
 trace the girl, and when I saw her, heard 
 her story, which was indeed a sorrowful one. 
 In consequence of her brother, with whom 
 she lived, not receiving his rents from a 
 small and mortgaged property, the interest 
 due was not paid, and the property was lost. 
 The brother, who had taken a university 
 degree, had not yet entered on his pro- 
 fession, was earning nothing, and was left 
 penniless. The brokers having been put 
 into their house, they had left it with all 
 they possessed. They had come to a lodg- 
 ing in London, which they soon had to 
 leave, as the sale of clothes and other small 
 matters had not sufficed for more than 
 a few days' rent, and for three days and 
 nights the brother and sister had wandered 
 homeless, spending the^^night on some 
 
 EESITY 
 
2i8 CLUBS FOR WORKING GIRLS viii 
 
 seat in the park, or on the embankment, 
 with no hope or prospect of help. The 
 advertisement of the Soho bazaar for situa- 
 tions had caught their eye, and so they had 
 turned there in hopes of employment, and 
 by that means they had got a knowledge of 
 our home. 
 
 It is a great pity that the word home, as 
 applied to institutions, has got so associated 
 in the minds of people with a reformatory 
 nature, that it causes many to doubt the 
 character of the inmates of homes which are 
 used as lodgings only for the respectable. It 
 will sometimes happen that we get into our 
 homes as lodgers girls of bad character ; for, 
 unfortunately, every one has not that regard 
 for truth which will prevent them from 
 recommending a girl to better surroundings 
 for the sake of lifting her up. From other 
 homes, and from ladies, we have had untrue 
 characters, and the place the girl may fill in 
 a shop of even known respectability will not 
 ensure her fitness to enter these homes. 
 
VIII HOMES FOR WORKING GIRLS 219 
 
 With a well-managed house and with over 
 twenty lodgers the payments for the food, 
 though at the low price of twopence halfpenny 
 for breakfast and tea, sixpence for dinner, 
 should cover the expense of housekeeping. 
 I think it is essential that the matron should 
 have her meals with the lodgers, and I would 
 engage no one in such a capacity who required 
 a different table or separate luxuries. It is 
 at meal times especially that the matron can 
 be of use to the girls, can direct the conver- 
 sation, and make her own observations on the 
 character and habits of her lodgers. 
 
 When a home is established it will always 
 take some time for it to fill, as it is so difficult 
 in London to reach all those who may be 
 wanting the help we are only too ready to 
 proffer. Advertising may bring one or two ; 
 but we must not rely on that, and it will not 
 be for a year or more that the home will be 
 known even in its own neighbourhood. We 
 have had girls with many different occupa- 
 tions in our home ; some few actresses have 
 
220 CLUBS FOR WORKING GIRLS viii 
 
 Stayed there between their engagments ; girls 
 have come from country towns to take lessons 
 in dancing, to enable them to teach this art 
 from their own homes ; but they have 
 generally been dressmakers, milliners, and 
 tailoresses. We have had governesses, 
 foreigners, emigrants on their way to 
 Australia ; we have had romances without 
 end, both real and imaginary ; and if we 
 were to tell of the variety in temperament 
 and character the stories would be endless. 
 A rnatron has to study character to be able 
 to judge what is real or feigned, to see when 
 extravagance of conduct is from temper or 
 from insanity ; for the latter is often the cause 
 of strange behaviour in girls, and we have 
 had instances amongst our girls which, with 
 careful treatment and removal, has restored 
 the patient in time to health and sanity. If 
 girls are subject to fits they must not be kept 
 in homes of this kind, for sympathy with the 
 sufferer should not make us forget how essen- 
 tial is quiet and the night's rest for the worker. 
 
VIII HOMES FOR WORKING GIRLS 221 
 
 But in all these cases the doctor's advice should 
 be had at once. Lodgers have often left to be 
 married, and we must say that the sad picture 
 of " Katherine Regina's " life in a boarding- 
 house should not apply to the homes for our 
 working girls. It is true they cannot bring 
 their young men into the home, but they can 
 often see them ; they can have walks together, 
 and amongst the girls in the home they 
 have amusements, music, singing, and danc- 
 ing. The life for them is either happy or 
 sad as the matron and the ladies who manage 
 the home will make it. We have sometimes 
 found that one or two disagreeable or 
 quarrelsome girls were making the home 
 miserable ; we have then asked them to 
 leave, for there is no possibility of peace 
 with those who are determined to be contrary. 
 Often the girls will become jealous one of 
 another, form violent attachments, and then 
 disagree. For all these causes let us seek 
 out as matron, a wise as well as a kindly 
 woman. We have had very poor girls in 
 
222 CLUBS FOR WORKING GIRLS viii 
 
 our home, as well as those who had money 
 to spare ; and the poverty has never made a 
 girl less liked — indeed many acts of kindness 
 have been done by one to another. We 
 have found it a good plan to say that those 
 who did not like a sixpenny dinner might 
 have a pennyworth of soup and bread or 
 pudding for the same sum, so that none need 
 be suffering from hunger whilst in the home. 
 We have room for forty lodgers in Greek 
 Street, and since we opened our home in 1884 
 we have had 768 inmates. We had about 
 a hundred in the home during the first year. 
 It takes time for a new place to be known. 
 
 In several instances we have had girls 
 brought to us as lodgers by their brothers, 
 who were helping to keep them whilst they 
 were learning a trade, generally the tailoring, 
 in which work men and women can work 
 together. Sometimes fathers have come up 
 with their daughters to see the home 
 they were placing them in ; most often 
 the girls come themselves, and give their 
 
VIII HOMES FOR WORKING GIRLS 223 
 
 references, who are either called upon or 
 written to. 
 
 During last year a girl who was working 
 close by, came in great distress to say she 
 lived at Whitechapel, and was in such terror, 
 owing to the murders there, that she begged 
 to be taken in. On inquiring, her character 
 proved to be excellent, and she came to us, 
 and when her work ceased we got her into 
 service, where she is doing well. This girl 
 had been without father and mother since she 
 was sixteen, and had lived alone and without 
 friends in Whitechapel. Another girl, a 
 buttonhole maker, whose home was at 
 Camberwell, and who used to go to and fro 
 to work, came to lodge in our home. She 
 had good references ; but her poverty we 
 found was very great ; in many ways she 
 has been helped out of it, and has got better 
 work. 
 
 But in general our lodgers are in comfort- 
 able circumstances, well-dressed, and having 
 had good educations and good homes ; it is 
 
224 CLUBS FOR WORKING GIRLS viii 
 
 only now and again that we get those to 
 whom the entrance into the home will have 
 been an entrance into a new life of pleasant 
 surroundings before unknown. 
 
 As we have many evening classes in the 
 club, those in the home can join with the 
 club members in the singing, the gymnastics, 
 the lectures, the art needlework, or the Bible 
 class, as also in the parties and entertain- 
 ments. 
 
 Many girls we know have been preserved 
 from much danger whilst in London by living 
 in the home, a great many have had excellent 
 places found for them, either in business or 
 in service. Some have married, one has gone 
 as a missionary to Burmah, others have emi- 
 grated, the lonely girl without a friend has 
 become the valued and trusted servant, and 
 some have become nurses in hospitals. But 
 there must be, we grieve to say, the other 
 side to the picture. Some have chosen and 
 followed pleasure alone, and have yielded to 
 temptation, and we know not where they are. 
 
VIII HOMES FOR WORKING GIRLS 225 
 
 The work of a home in which the lodgers 
 will often change is not as satisfactory in 
 some ways as the work of a club, for often 
 when we get to know of the girl's difficulties, 
 and are able to help her, it will only be to 
 send her away from us to earn her living 
 under more promising conditions. But some 
 lodgers will again and again turn up, telling us 
 that they keep always the pleasantest remem- 
 brances of the months spent in our home. 
 
 In many of our country towns a few beds 
 for lodgers are available in the same house 
 as the club, and we should recommend that 
 in all instances in the country this should 
 be done. The additional expense for mak- 
 ing sleeping accommodation is small, and 
 the advantage is very great for girls who 
 may be unexpectedly homeless. The rent 
 also from the lodgers will diminish the 
 rent of the house, so that the club will be 
 the gainer. I should recommend that the 
 rooms used for the club should be well 
 separated from the rooms used by the lodgers, 
 
 Q 
 
226 CLUBS FOR WORKING GIRLS viii 
 
 SO that no inconvenience should be felt by 
 either one or the other. 
 
 The payment asked for rent, must be 
 suited to the earnings of the neighbourhood, 
 and in the home itself we should modify the 
 rent, if necessary, according to the circum- 
 stances and earnings of the girls. The home 
 IS intended by its supporters, to be a help to 
 the working girl, so we may, after we have 
 tested her desire to pay her way, reduce the 
 rent, if we think it well to do so, in individual 
 cases. 
 
 The rent in different homes varies from 
 one shilling to five shillings a week ; this 
 covers all expense of washing bed -linen, 
 lights, and fire, extras that are always charged 
 for in ordinary lodgings. 
 
 It is almost impossible for us to realise the 
 loneliness of a girl in a large town who has 
 no relations, no belongings of any sort or 
 kind ; and yet we have met with many such 
 girls, without father or mother, who have from 
 fourteen years or older, been their own 
 
VIII HOMES FOR WORKING GIRLS 227 
 
 guardians, themselves the bread - winners, 
 with no one over them whom they could turn 
 to for help or advice. Do we not, when we 
 meet such girls, who have walked unscathed 
 through this furnace of trial and temptation — 
 do we not silently lift up our hearts in praise 
 to God, who has kept His children safe 
 through so many dangers ? Self-reliance and 
 fortitude are often the result of this loneliness, 
 and yet they will turn with grateful love to 
 the friend, whom they get to know through 
 the kindly shelter of the home which they 
 may have accidentally found. 
 
 Overwork, and want of proper nourishment 
 and care, will often produce delicacy or ill 
 health ; then the pleasant country home will 
 be found for the tired girl, or she will be 
 placed under the tender care of nurses in 
 the convalescent home. 
 
 There is another excellent work that can 
 be done in a home for business women, and 
 that is the training of servants. We have 
 always, in Greek Street, taken in girls to train 
 
228 CLUBS FOR WORKING GIRLS viii 
 
 them for service. This was our idea when 
 we first opened the home, and in the last 
 year, some of the children we have trained 
 have become our head servants, and the 
 trainers of other young girls, and many good 
 servants have been sent out from our 
 home in Greek Street. 
 
 There is always a great demand for good 
 servants in small families where not many 
 are kept. Those who can afford to give 
 high wages, can of course easily get the 
 best servants ; but a well trained servant, 
 where two or three are kept, is difficult to 
 find, and so a double work is done in a 
 home, which is made use of as a training 
 school. 
 
 If every mistress of a household, who 
 could afford this extra expense, would 
 undertake the training of a girl, not in the 
 place, but besides her other servants, she 
 would be doing the best work possible, as 
 she might every year be turning out a well- 
 trained young girl fit for service. 
 
VIII HOMES FOR WORKING GIRLS 229 
 
 In a country house we know of this used 
 to be the practice every winter ; the best 
 school -girl was engaged for a couple of 
 months at Christmas time, to wait upon 
 the housemaids, who were then extra busy. 
 During these few weeks, the girls got an 
 insight into household work, which enabled 
 them afterwards to get small places at villas 
 in the neighbourhood, and a great number 
 became in this way excellent servants. 
 
 I know a lady who has carried on this 
 training of girls for a great many years in 
 a more extensive way in Ireland, and has 
 always had girls in the laundry, the still- 
 room, the dairy, and the kitchen, each for 
 one or two years' training, and then places 
 have been got for them. A list was kept 
 of the girls who wished to come to the 
 great house, and much good was thus done 
 to the girls of the country round. There 
 are homes for the purpose of training young 
 servants, but it seems to me, as if teaching 
 them in a family, under a good upper servant. 
 
230 CLUBS FOR WORKING GIRLS viii 
 
 were a more natural way as well as a less 
 costly one of making thorough servants, and if 
 every mistress of a house would undertake 
 such work, both servants and mistresses 
 would be benefited. 
 
IX 
 
 CONCLUSION 
 
 We have now considered both the amuse- 
 ments and the conditions of life of working 
 girls. We have tried to show how clubs 
 should be started and how they should be 
 carried on. Have we also shown why it is 
 so important that working girls' clubs should 
 exist ? and why every effort should be made 
 to make them succeed, and to multiply them 
 indefinitely ? 
 
 Year by year the social problems, become 
 more startling, more difficult to solve ; none 
 can shut their eyes to the evils that are 
 in our midst. The strikes, the crimes of 
 Whitechapel, the reports of the Sweating 
 Committee, have in this last year brought 
 
232 CLUBS FOR WORKING GIRLS ix 
 
 the sufferings of the working people more 
 prominently than ever before us. We start 
 back, we are aghast, when we know how in 
 some neighbourhoods the poor live — how^ foul 
 are their surroundings, how ugly and love- 
 less are their lives. We are eager to raise 
 them out of this condition ; we pass laws to 
 improve their dwellings, we put our money 
 into building schemes, we have sanitary 
 organisations, paid and unpaid workers, we 
 legislate to give parks to our townspeople, 
 we preserve open spaces and commons for 
 them, we give them holidays by Acts of 
 Parliament, and by the work of thousands 
 of men and women we make these holidays 
 days of happiness, and healthy amusements 
 to those, who perhaps, if left to themselves, 
 would turn that beneficial Act to their own 
 hurt, by making them days of riot and dis- 
 sipation. 
 
 We provide country holidays for children, 
 we arrange foreign holiday tours for work- 
 men ; by the Kyrle Society and many other 
 
CONCLUSION 233 
 
 individual efforts, we bring beauty into the 
 homes of the working class, we teach 
 them thrift by establishing saving banks, 
 which we organise even in our elementary 
 schools. 
 
 We are always aiming at improving the 
 education of the masses, we make it possible 
 for the lowest to pass through the primary 
 to the secondary education, we teach the 
 adults by means of lectures within the reach 
 of all. We enable all parishes at their own 
 will to levy a rate, in order to establish free 
 libraries, we look after the health of our 
 population, and we establish by means of 
 poor rates excellent hospitals for fevers, 
 smallpox, and diphtheria, where the work- 
 man gets as perfect treatment, and nursing, 
 as could be given to any in the land. 
 
 Countless other schemes are afloat, and a 
 vast army of unpaid workers are gallantly 
 doing their utmost to improve our over- 
 grown population ; and yet we are never 
 even abreast of the flood, that seems to be 
 
234 CLUBS FOR WORKING GIRLS ix 
 
 always surging around us, of destitution and 
 of suffering poverty. 
 
 And will not all unite in saying that the 
 chief cause of this perplexing difficulty is 
 that of over -population ? And is not this 
 evil mostly the result of early marriages ? 
 That early marriages are habitual amongst 
 the poorest class of workpeople, can easily 
 be shown by statistics, and by registers. 
 When we examine into cases of poverty 
 and distress, and inquire into the date of 
 marriage, do we not generally find that this 
 life -long engagement was entered into on 
 both sides, before either could in truth be 
 called men or women ? What have these 
 early marriages brought but poverty, and 
 sickness, a multitude of children who grow 
 up in conditions of disease and misery that 
 must lower them in the social scale, and 
 take from them all power of improvement ? 
 
 Now if the root of the whole matter lies 
 in over-population, and if we can show one 
 way in which to stop this, shall we not have 
 
IX CONCLUSION 235 
 
 begun at the right end, and helped a Httle 
 in this great work of ameliorating the condi- 
 tion of our town populations ? 
 
 And towards stopping these early 
 marriages I am certain that no better way, 
 nor any such effectual one can be found, as 
 that of clubs for working girls and boys. 
 Then is the time when the acquaintances 
 are formed that slide into marriage, — the lad 
 because it seems a smart thing to have his 
 lass, the girl because she thinks she will 
 have more freedom and have her own home. 
 Love does not always enter into such 
 marriages ; they are often only the result of 
 the imperfect social conditions of the poor. 
 When I started the club first this idea was 
 not prominently before me, but experience 
 has shown me what a complete work is this 
 one of a girls' club, for not only does it, as 
 we have found, raise the girl herself and give 
 her happiness, but it affects the future genera- 
 tion. The girl who has her club will not 
 need the idle companionship of lads. She 
 
236 CLUBS FOR WORKING GIRLS ix 
 
 will not want them, for she will have her girl 
 friends, her interests, her occupations for 
 leisure hours in her club, and marriage when 
 it comes will find her, we cannot doubt, better 
 prepared for its duties in experience, in health, 
 and in capacity at twenty-six than at sixteen. 
 We should not generalise unless we have 
 sufficient data to go upon ; but will not the ex- 
 perience of an acquaintance during ten years 
 in our club of over a thousand girls, teach us 
 something ? If we find that girls who con- 
 tinue in the club get wiser as they get older, 
 that they become more responsible, more 
 capable, more thoughtful, and less eager for 
 marriage, without some proper provision for 
 the future, we may feel that this end at least 
 has been accomplished, and that the lesson 
 of provident forethought has been learned. 
 At a very early age — at fourteen — the girl 
 and the boy will generally contribute to 
 the funds of the family. They cease to be 
 children in one sense ; they become wage- 
 earning people, and are important elements 
 
CONCLUSION 237 
 
 in the family life. The mother thinks that 
 the food of the girl does not count for much 
 in the weekly expenditure ; but she feels 
 that the five shillings, seven shillings, or 
 ten shillings a week is a large addition 
 towards the rent and the next week's 
 expenses. I have been much struck during 
 my twenty years' acquaintance with working 
 people in Soho, at the strong hold that the 
 mothers generally have over their daughters, 
 who hardly ever leave the home till they 
 marry. But in some cases, the mothers pay 
 no heed to the girls once they go out to 
 work, afraid of driving them from home, 
 and as we have shown, where no clubs are 
 established, girls will too often saunter about 
 the streets when work is over, with a saucy 
 word, or a sharp retort, or a rude laugh at 
 this boy and the next ; or a walk round, a 
 look into the shop windows, a visit to the 
 music hall, to the cheap theatres, sometimes 
 loose ways, idle and foul talk, slow or rapid 
 descent to . that sorrowful class of fallen 
 
238 CLUBS FOR WORKING GIRLS ix 
 
 women. This will often be the lot of the 
 lowest class. Now take girls of better bring- 
 ing up. There will be the meeting with 
 boys or young men when they are fifteen or 
 sixteen ; when they are thinking only of 
 amusement. No love has entered into their 
 minds ; it is only the idle fancy of vacant 
 moments. The casual meetings become daily 
 ones, often they are wearied with one another, 
 and yet they have drifted into a life of care 
 and responsibility before they have even 
 finished growing. The years since they left 
 school have seen no growth, intellectually or 
 morally. They are unfit to become wives, 
 they are still more unfit to become mothers. 
 
 This question of early marriage is re- 
 marked upon by Judge Chalmers, who from 
 the Bench has had this social question forced 
 upon him : — 
 
 Turning to the economical aspects of imprisonment 
 for debt, I find the almost universal cause of the 
 indebtedness and destitution of the poor is early and 
 improvident marriage. About 90 per cent of the 
 judgment summonses are against persons in the receipt 
 
CONCLUSION 239 
 
 of weekly wages ; and when a poor man gets into money 
 troubles there is no need to say, Cheixhez la femme. If 
 the town artisan would, like the majority of the more 
 educated classes, refrain from " going into housekeeping " 
 till he was thirty, his lot would be an exceedingly 
 comfortable one. For ten years he would have been in 
 receipt of his full wages, and he could have put by a 
 good round sum to provide against a rainy day. When 
 the defendant appears on a judgment summons I 
 always inquire if he is married, and how many children 
 he has to support. I find that more than 98 per cent 
 of the judgment debtors are married. I have not kept 
 the statistics of the number of their children, but one 
 day I put down the figures in fifty consecutive cases. I 
 found the fifty debtors had two hundred and fourteen 
 children between them, that is to say, an average of four 
 and a quarter a piece. What is a poor wretch with five 
 children and twenty-two shillings a week to do ? Day 
 after day I preach the same sermon to deaf ears. The 
 defendant urges the number of his children as his reason 
 for not paying his debts. Is it the plaintiff's fault, I 
 ask him, that you have got seven children? Because 
 you have seven children, is it any reason that the 
 plaintiff should supply you with goods for nothing? 
 Practically, however, I have to admit the validity of his 
 excuse in the order I make. Not long ago a wretched- 
 looking lad of twenty was summoned for a debt of two 
 pounds. I asked him why he had not paid, and he 
 replied that " All the children had been ill." It appeared 
 that he had married at sixteen, and had three children. 
 When I asked him what made him marry at that age his 
 answer was : " Because I was out of work." He meant of 
 
240 CLUBS FOR WORKING GIRLS ix 
 
 course that the girl was doing something, and he wanted 
 to share her wages, not thinking of the consequences. 
 Many and bitter, too, are the complaints which men 
 make to me about their wives' extravagance. Day after 
 day I hear the same story. The wife orders goods for 
 the family ; when she has them she goes and pawns 
 them or sells them to other women, and spends the 
 money in drink or finery. The root of the evil lies 
 in the reckless way in which the working classes 
 marry. 
 
 The experience of these disastrously early 
 marriages amongst working people is not 
 only that of Judge Chalmers, but of many of 
 those who work in great towns and also in 
 poor villages. It seems that where poverty 
 is greatest there will be found the conditions 
 of life that will increase and perpetuate that 
 poverty, by bringing more and more children 
 into the world, for whom the parents cannot 
 possibly provide, because the wages they 
 receive are insufficient to bring up large 
 families decently. 
 
 Will these wages ever be raised } We 
 cannot tell, but it will be by raising our 
 young men, and young women, that we shall 
 
CONCLUSION 241 
 
 make them see not only the folly but the 
 sin of such improvidence. 
 
 In Essex, where the wages throughout the 
 whole year, except at harvest time, are never 
 more than nine shillings a week, marriages 
 are made as early as in the cases that Judge 
 Chalmers writes about. The very poorest 
 are those who are increasing and intensifying 
 this evil of over-population. 
 
 This cannot be cured by emigration, for 
 our colonies do not want the half-fed under- 
 sized labourers, that are the results of these 
 poor and early marriages ; they can find no 
 work, but that which will give them the 
 miserable wages, on which their parents 
 have brought them up. 
 
 Now marriage is looked on very differently 
 by various nations. An Irish labourer who 
 had taken to himself a bride with no apparent 
 means of keeping her, was asked by his em- 
 ployer, '' Mike, why have you married when 
 you had not enough to keep yourself, let 
 alone a wife?" ''Well, sure," was the ready 
 
 R 
 
242 CLUBS FOR WORKING GIRLS ix 
 
 answer, ''for the bite and the sup the crater 
 ates it's no' worth being without her." 
 
 In Scotland, when visiting an old couple 
 who had a middle-aged unmarried daughter 
 and son living with them, we said, '' How is it 
 that you are neither of you married?" *' Weel, 
 sure, one had to stay and bide with father 
 and mother, and as sister married I stayed 
 here, and my brother could not have brought 
 a wife in, there would be no room for bairns 
 with the old folk ; he must wait awhile.'' 
 
 What we have to do is to change the 
 public opinion of girls and lads. It may seem 
 a colossal work to change ideas with regard 
 to marriage, but it is not impossible. 
 
 Have we not seen a change in the views 
 of marriage amongst girls of the educated and 
 professional classes ? When they had no 
 other employment but fancy work, tea parties, 
 or walks on the parade, or in the park, what 
 could they think of but flirtations and possible 
 marriages ? Now the girl who has not the 
 certainty of a permanent income, who knows 
 
CONCLUSION 243 
 
 she cannot expect to have the same home 
 after her father's death, will set her mind 
 to gain her own independence. It need no 
 longer be by that one often monotonous 
 work of teaching, for other employments are 
 open to her: medicine at home or in India, 
 clerkships in the Post-office, or in merchant 
 houses, cashiers in houses of business, 
 nursing which leads to matronships. All 
 these occupations, and many more that are 
 now opened to women, have given to those 
 who must earn their living a different feeling 
 with regard to marriage. Happier marriages 
 will be made when the contract is not entered 
 into by the girl merely to secure a home or a 
 large establishment, and the work undertaken 
 by those girls will make them, when marriage 
 comes, far better wives than if they had had 
 no training or experience of work. 
 
 We have now to consider how we can 
 create this feeling amongst the working girls 
 and lads of our great towns. 
 
 We can do so by giving them clubs, by 
 
244 CLUBS FOR WORKING GIRLS ix 
 
 letting them see what life has in it besides 
 mere larking folly. We should wish them 
 to look on marriage as an ultimate object ; 
 but we would wish them to be in no hurry, 
 and to enjoy the unmarried life whilst it lasts, 
 laying up stores of education and experience 
 for that better state which we hope will be 
 theirs some day. 
 
 Some of our club members have been 
 with us seven, eight, and nine years, and 
 we can say with confidence that clubs will 
 keep girls from reckless and improvident 
 marriages. Most women would tell you that 
 they look on these questions very differently 
 at seventeen and at twenty -four, so if a girl 
 will remain single till twenty-four she will be 
 more likely to make a good choice, and not 
 to take up with the first lad who strikes her 
 fancy because he has asked her to walk out 
 with him. Our girls have themselves told 
 me that they consider this postponement of 
 marriage as one of the best results of their 
 club. 
 
CONCLUSION 245 
 
 I have for some years spoken to our girls 
 about the young men with whom they kept 
 company. This was suggested to me by a 
 lady, who asked if I knew of the love affairs of 
 the girls. At that time I had not often spoken 
 to them of those matters, but I thought the 
 observation a useful one to consider, and 
 have since found that by talking of the 
 young men, it puts the whole question on a 
 natural and sympathetic footing. Foolish 
 and vulgar jokes about young men are not 
 made when they are considered and re- 
 cognised as an important part in the girl's 
 life. Many have been the stories I have 
 been told, and in the lives of our girls are 
 romances both joyful and sad. 
 
 The following remarks on the use of our 
 club from some of the members will . show 
 their appreciation of our work : — 
 
 I think it is a good thing to have a place which 
 seems like home. I am speaking only of the club, for I 
 know by experience that girls as a rule desire something 
 besides going home every evening, and will not be 
 satisfied or contented to stay there, as they ought to be. 
 
246 CLUBS FOR WORKING GIRLS ix 
 
 All sorts of amusements are sought after, and many 
 dangers are run by this search ; some seem to find 
 amusement only in the company of young men, some in 
 walking about the streets, others in dance rooms and 
 theatres, some find amusement by singing at concert 
 rooms, which I do not hold with at all, as I have known 
 girls whom such practices have made rather bold. Often, 
 too, it is rather dull when the parents are out to be at 
 home, and, even if not dull, there is much more pleasure 
 gained by going to a club of the right kind for a few 
 hours every week. The mind is improved by the 
 different classes, and by the use of a good library; and also 
 it is good for the health to be jolly at times, for in a 
 club with plenty of your own sex and of the same age, 
 and with the help of ladies, there is a good chance of 
 obtaining plenty of that sort of thing. For another 
 reason I do think clubs are good things. Many girls 
 are allowed after their day's work to be out until ten 
 o'clock P.M. I have known some who would stay about 
 in all sorts of weather rather than go in before their 
 time. I think when we have a club to go to it teaches 
 us to put away many foolish things, and to appreciate 
 home more. For improving the mind I think no place 
 can equal a club, for you only have to get enough girls to 
 form a small class, and any subject desired will be taught. 
 Most girls know how to read and write, but there are 
 many interesting subjects to learn, besides those which 
 are taught at the ordinary schools, and girls often do 
 not care so much about learning in school days, but 
 take a liking for it afterwards. 
 
CONCLUSION 247 
 
 I have now been a member of this club over seven 
 years, and during that time I have not been going about 
 with my eyes shut. I consider the different classes that 
 are held here are of great benefit to us, taking, for 
 instance, the night-school, which is such a capital chance 
 for those young members who are obliged to leave 
 school at thirteen to go to work ; here they may continue 
 their studies, for one cannot learn too much in these 
 days, and some girls who are the eldest of the family 
 often have to stay at home to keep house, and mind the 
 children, while their mothers go to work to help to 
 support the increasing flock. What chance have they 
 for learning when, as you may say, they have been 
 little mothers from their infancy? To go to public 
 night-schools they do not care about, so let them join 
 the club and make acquaintance there with girls who, 
 like themselves, have not had the advantage of learning, 
 and who attend the classes. Depend upon it, they will 
 find it a real pleasure. And the singing class — who 
 amongst us does not like to learn pretty songs, to read the 
 music correctly from notes ? What a pleasure it is to 
 sing of nature, and of all those beautiful things which we 
 find in her alone. Music and books lift us up out of our 
 everyday life to that which is pure and sweet. Surely 
 these must be called benefits, which every working girl 
 of the present day may enjoy. I must not forget the 
 gymnastic class, of which I am a member. This is a 
 splendid exercise for girls and children. Most doctors 
 recommend it as a boon to women. Then there is the 
 art needlework class, which is such a pretty employment, 
 besides being very useful, as it brings in money. Let a 
 girl join such a club, and quite a little world is opened 
 
248 CLUBS FOR WORKING GIRLS ix 
 
 to her. She leaves off running the streets, which so 
 often bring disgrace and shame on her friends ; she 
 mixes with girls who are superior to herself; they help 
 to tone down her wild ways, and soon she will look 
 back with disgust on her old bad habits, if ever she has 
 fallen into any. I think it is one of the greatest boons 
 that has been given to the working girl, to have such a 
 pleasant, instructive, and recreative place to attend after 
 her labour is finished for the day ; not that I think for 
 one moment that work is labour, when hands and hearts 
 are willing. Work is one of the greatest blessings we 
 have when we are able to do it. I say to my friends 
 that I should not know what to do with myself if there 
 was not any club for me; you cannot always expect 
 'to keep a girl at home ; she gets dull, gloomy, and 
 selfish, thinking of her own ills and hard life ; she wants 
 change of scene and a little pleasure. At a club she 
 learns to sympathise with her fellow-creatures, to think 
 more of her friends, to look forward with pleasure of 
 what she will do at the club in the evening, for there 
 is always some class on. There are some stay-at-home 
 girls of course, but the greater part care for pleasure. 
 Many ladies and gentlemen play and sing for the girls 
 in the evenings, give entertainments, invite us to their 
 houses, where we mix with superior society ; they lift us 
 up to their station, and treat us as their equals ; we go 
 to their country houses, have holidays of three or four 
 weeks in different parts of England ; and the only 
 expense is the fare, although some ladies pay that for 
 the girls. Could a girl not belonging to such an insti- 
 tute get such advantages ? — No, many could not afford 
 it. The club is managed by a committee, and do they 
 
CONCLUSION 249 
 
 help at all in promoting the work of the club ? or are 
 they committee in name only? — I know that they do 
 not hold much power, but it teaches them to help 
 themselves, and not to depend entirely upon the council 
 in providing amusement for the members. Another 
 thing I must mention before concluding my rambling 
 ideas on this subject. Girls belonging to such a place 
 as this learn to help each other, to promote kindness all 
 round. Mothers should feel very grateful that their 
 daughters belong to a club ; it gives them less time to 
 think of young men, and thus helps to save them from 
 early marriages, that drag them so quickly into poverty, 
 and into sorrow at the mistake which cannot then 
 be altered. I am glad to say that each girl who has 
 married from our club has been of an age to understand 
 what she was about to undertake. I must come now to 
 a full stop, or else this little paper will not get finished, 
 and I have tried your patience too long, I fear. Volumes 
 could be written of the same subject, of how a working 
 girl is benefited by belonging to a club like the one in 
 Soho. In years to come when the girls are married 
 and they are worried with household cares and sick- 
 ness, then will they look back with softened thoughts 
 to the days when they were happy girls at the Soho 
 club. 
 
 It is more than three years since I first joined the 
 club for working girls, and during that time I have spent 
 many happy evenings there, and I have always found the 
 club to be full of pleasant varieties. I suppose all who 
 go to work know what it is to feel tired and fatigued 
 
2 so CLUBS FOR WORKING GIRLS ix 
 
 when the day is over, and it is very pleasant after such a 
 day to be able to spend a few hours somewhere that has 
 nothing to do with our workroom or shop. We find 
 one great advantage in our club, that each night there is 
 something different to be seen and heard. 
 
 On Monday and Thursday nights there is the night- 
 school for those who are eager to advance their education, 
 and after the night-school is over there are many games of 
 various descriptions for the girls' amusement, and these 
 games have been sent to us by different ladies who take 
 an interest in the club. On Tuesdays there is the 
 singing class, taught by Miss Stanley, which has proved 
 a great pleasure to those who are fond of singing. On 
 Wednesday there is a class for needlework, and on 
 Friday members may bring a friend to visit the club 
 between nine and ten. No one is compelled to attend these 
 classes unless they wish to do so. If they are inclined 
 for reading, there are a number of books to suit all ages, 
 and any night we may occupy ourselves with our needle 
 or fancy work. We have had many very nice entertain- 
 ments, consisting of songs, recitations, and theatrical 
 pieces, given by the members of the club ; each member 
 has been allowed to bring a friend, and we have always 
 had the pleasure of seeing the room quite full. On 
 several occasions ladies and gentlemen have been kind 
 enough to come and entertain us with songs and lectures, 
 and violin and pianoforte solos. And I could not tell 
 to how many parties we have been invited, and what 
 great pleasure and enjoyment they have always given 
 to us. 
 
 As well as these advantages there are others. 
 Consider how many young girls the club must keep 
 
CONCLUSION 251 
 
 from the run of the streets, for many of our members 
 attend regularly every night. Therefore it is a clear proof 
 if there was no club they would most likely be walking 
 about the streets, where there is no good whatever to be 
 learned. 
 
 One of the rules is that no girl can belong to the 
 club unless recommended by a member, and then her 
 home is visited by Miss Stanley or a lady of the council, 
 so that we are sure to have all our members quite 
 respectable, which makes it much more agreeable. But 
 we cannot talk over the pleasures and enjoyments of our 
 club without one thought as to how it is we have got 
 this home-like place to go to, and we need only go as 
 far as the door of the room to prove what it really is ; we 
 can look round and see so many smiling faces, all intent 
 on something, either their work, lessons, or games, and 
 looking as if nothing troubled them. Can we compare 
 it to anything better than to our own home ? And 
 surely for all this, one and all owe great gratitude. . . . 
 Many thanks are also due to all the ladies and gentle- 
 men who have taken an interest in our club, not for- 
 getting Mrs. Brewster, our kind superintendent. 
 
 Clubs are, I think, for the improvement and refinement 
 of girls in everyway, such as good manners, education; but 
 above all for teaching girls to live good and pure lives. 
 Girls can always find a true and sympathising friend at their 
 clubs who will gladly help them out of any difficulty, and 
 will give them good advice to help them on in the world. 
 If a girl has a talent for singing or music it can be 
 cultivated at the club. 
 
252 CLUBS FOR WORKING GIRLS ix 
 
 We can see by these extracts, and we 
 could give many more, what our work-girls 
 think of the benefits they receive from 
 belonging to a girls' club. A public feeling 
 is created, a new sense of responsibility is 
 aroused, they become members of a society, 
 and they value the esteem and respect of 
 those that surround them. They are no 
 longer units, atoms without cohesion. Some 
 objections are raised to girls' clubs, such as 
 that it takes the girls away from home, and 
 that home -life is destroyed. This is well 
 answered by one of our girls, who talks of 
 the girls never coming home till bedtime at 
 ten. No ! unfortunately there is often no 
 home-life in the crowded tenements of work- 
 ing people. There is a home for them, and 
 that a very precious one, where it exists, in 
 the love for the father and mother, for the 
 little ones. The pictures, the ornaments, 
 the furniture, however poor, make up what 
 is called the home of the London poor. But 
 to expect that the tired work-girl will find 
 
CONCLUSION 253 
 
 refreshment and rest after her long day's 
 work in the small and crowded room of the 
 whole family is a mistake, a misconception 
 of the way in which London girls are living. 
 
 Another objection made is that it takes 
 girls out of a night into the street. It will 
 not take them out, for they are out already. 
 Drive through Whitechapel, through that 
 long Mile End road, and what do you see 
 but countless numbers of girls walking of an 
 evening on the broad pavement, for where 
 else have they to go to rest themselves or 
 to get fresh life for the next day's work ? 
 
 But we see some clubs that do not appear to 
 take root, or to succeed. What is the reason } 
 Many things will cause failure ; the locality 
 may be unsuitable, the ladies who work it 
 may not be of the right sort, the rules may 
 have done for another club, but may not suit 
 this one, the discipline may be too lax, it 
 may be too severe. Mixed clubs for lads and 
 girls have been tried, and, as we might sup- 
 pose, have been failures. No need to find 
 
254 CLUBS FOR WORKING GIRLS 
 
 occasions for them to meet ! There is no lack 
 of occasions, and the parents look with no 
 favour on efforts made to bring them together. 
 We want different occupations for boys and 
 girls, different amusements, and the young 
 man who may be keeping company with a 
 young woman will be better pleased that she 
 should have her club whilst he has his. 
 He is glad to know that her leisure time 
 when away from him is so well spent, and 
 that she has the advantage of the kind com- 
 panionship of ladies. 
 
 The recreative evening classes that have 
 been started are admirable in their idea, but 
 the work should not rest there ; out of them 
 should grow clubs, for the feeling of pos- 
 session which the girl has in her club, of its 
 *' belonging to her," is a powerful attraction. 
 The club also is permanent ; it is for the girls 
 alone, it is open every evening, for, as I have 
 said before, any intermission is calamitous to 
 the success. If for only three evenings a 
 week the club is open, what is to be done 
 
CONCLUSION 255 
 
 the other evenings ? I do not say that when 
 the club is open every night the girls will 
 all be there perpetually, but they may wish 
 to go the nights it is closed, and we know 
 how difficult it is to suit ourselves to attend 
 any place on any definite day or evening. 
 
 Have we shown that by keeping working 
 
 girls from early marriages we have conferred 
 
 one of the greatest benefits on the class itself ? 
 
 I hope we may have convinced some that 
 
 this work is of great importance, and that it is 
 
 one of a very far-spreading use, and that by 
 
 its universal adoption we may do more for our 
 
 generation than by any other scheme that has 
 
 been thought of. Are we not striking at the 
 
 root of the evil ? The acorn is sown, then 
 
 the strong young tree is planted ; but unless 
 
 it is sheltered and surrounded in its early 
 
 days by the hardy firs, will not the sharp 
 
 winds and the merciless storms wither up 
 
 the tender shoots ? will not the growth be 
 
 stopped and the young life killed ? If we 
 
 feel keenly the inequalities of life, if we 
 
256 CLUBS FOR WORKING GIRLS ix 
 
 sorrow for the sufferings, the privations, of 
 the poor, we can be the protecting trees, we 
 can shelter the young in our clubs from the 
 cruel winds of temptation, when they have 
 not yet learned how to be strong, and to 
 resist evil. The growth of intellect, of 
 morals, and of religion that we hope begins 
 at school will not then be checked, for we 
 shall have watered them and warmed them 
 in the kindly sympathy of our love. If we 
 are convinced that the work has to be done, 
 is there any reason for delay ? Shall we put 
 off to another time what we should begin 
 to-day ? Every year a fresh statement 
 is brought out, for the London School 
 Board, of the places that will be wanted to 
 meet the ever - increasing population. A 
 thousand more places are wanted every 
 year, and that means that each year a 
 thousand additional boys and girls are enter- 
 ing into manhood and womanhood, and are 
 taking their place on this great theatre of life, 
 either for good or for evil. And every well 
 
CONCLUSION 257 
 
 managed club that is established, will not 
 only be of use in its own neighbourhood, but 
 it will show others what can be done, it will 
 give heart to others to do the same. Every 
 club girl will be an influence in her own 
 home. The words we have spoken to her 
 will be carried on to others, and many 
 homes will be made lovely, by the refine- 
 ment and culture brought there by the club 
 members. 
 
 These pages were written to help those 
 who wish to start clubs, but may we hope 
 that the account we have given of working 
 girls, most imperfect as it is, will yet put into 
 the hearts of those who had not yet thought 
 of what work they should take up, the desire 
 * to help in some way in this national under- 
 taking ? 
 
 There are small things to be done as 
 well as great ones in philanthropy, and the 
 danger often is that the successful work alone 
 takes hold of the imagination. It is expected 
 that enthusiasm can overcome all difficulties ; 
 
 s 
 
258 CLUBS FOR WORKING GIRLS ix 
 
 the end is expected to be reached before the 
 foundations are laid. 
 
 The very young cannot accomplish what 
 the more experienced are equal to, and 
 the need for training is often lost sight 
 of in philanthropic work. It is thought 
 that any one can visit the poor, that any 
 one can teach a Sunday class, or in a 
 girls' club, and then it is too often found that 
 teaching is not so easy, and disappoint- 
 ment ensues. So let us advise those who 
 are still young and wish to be of use to 
 prepare themselves intellectually and men- 
 tally for the work they wish to undertake. 
 
 The reason that Sunday School teachers, 
 as well as other voluntary teachers, sometimes 
 fail in their attempts, may be that they have 
 not prepared their lesson ; they think the 
 teaching so elementary, that it has not been 
 even worth looking over. No good teacher 
 will do this, though he may have gone over the 
 subject again and again, he will think it over 
 before he comes to his class. At the Mild- 
 
CONCLUSION 259 
 
 may Deaconess Institution much preparation 
 is made before any class is undertaken ; and 
 we may conclude that their great success 
 in getting together on a Sunday, classes of 
 over sixty working men, is somewhat the 
 result of this careful preparation. 
 
 Women are often dissatisfied to find that 
 the education they have received has not 
 been such as enables them to work as well as 
 men ; and that they cannot work with system 
 or with method. They will often take up a 
 project, but will find no interest in following it 
 out. Let them not undertake more than can 
 be fulfilled, and whatever outside work may 
 be engaged in, it should not be done at the 
 expense of home duties. A little arrange- 
 ment, some system, much order, will double 
 or treble the time we have at our command. 
 
 From magazine articles, from the news- 
 papers, the need for workers is being per- 
 petually pointed out. Who can remain idle ! 
 
 What strong words were addressed last 
 year to society at large, by S. G. O., who has 
 
26o CLUBS FOR WORKING GIRLS ix 
 
 now passed to his rest after a long life of 
 work. They were written in reference to 
 the Whitechapel murders ; are they not 
 worth recording ? — 
 
 You of society, its upper classes, you the dwellers 
 in all attainable luxury, the fortunate of the earth, let 
 your rank be what it may, your wealth a tale of millions, 
 the Godward life of many of you ever in evidence, or the 
 Godless life not less so ; the established church of your 
 nation proclaims in that solemn hour in which your own 
 grave will open that these — the society labelled un- 
 fortunates — are before the God to whom you have been 
 taken, your sisters. 
 
 Is the arm of the Lord shortened, or are the hands 
 which assume to be those by whom He would have His 
 deeds of mercy done, are they paralysed ? 
 
 Have not the sociaHsts done some good 
 to their generation, by repeating so often 
 that work of one kind or another is expected 
 from every one ? I should think there can be 
 none in our country, who, though they may 
 not agree with this dictum, have not heard 
 it, and few can have helped asking them- 
 selves, *'What am I doing for the good of 
 the commonwealth ? " Some may say it is 
 not easy to find work to do, ''I am so 
 
CONCLUSION 261 
 
 incapable, I have no talent, my work could 
 be of use to none." Do not think this. The 
 smallest work done in a single-minded spirit 
 for another is of value ; there must be small 
 beginnings, but above all things begin, and 
 do let me enlist your sympathy, your energy, 
 for girls' clubs. There are, we are thankful to 
 say, so many established, that you can choose 
 work in any part of London, and in many 
 country towns. If you know no one con- 
 nected with a girls' club write to any of the 
 managers, even without knowing them. Many 
 have written to me, and I have thus had valu- 
 able help. Offer what service you can give, 
 great or small, almost any can be made of 
 use. Visits to the club, if you will spare one 
 evening a week regularly, is the best way to 
 help, but if that is not possible, occasional 
 visits, either to talk or sing or play to the 
 girls, or letters can be written to those whom 
 you have learned to know. A few can be 
 invited to tea, or to pay a visit in the country, 
 and a dinner can be given occasionally to those 
 
262 CLUBS FOR WORKING GIRLS ix 
 
 who are delicate. All may not have homes to 
 which working girls can be asked, but many, 
 like the poor dressmaker, or like the York- 
 shire factory girls, might save up enough 
 during the year to give a week or fort- 
 nights country air. Flowers can be sent 
 from the country, but no doubt my readers 
 will imagine for themselves many works of 
 kindness that they will offer to their poor 
 and struggling sisters. 
 
 And when these kind services are under- 
 taken, when promises are made to visit the 
 club, to teach, or to help in any way, do not 
 let it be, as we might say, by an amateur, 
 fitfully and uncertainly. One of the greatest 
 difficulties in carrying out the work of clubs 
 or classes, is that too often, those who under- 
 take these duties voluntarily, will give up 
 these engagements, perhaps without any 
 notice, thus putting the one who is in charge 
 of the club to great inconvenience, and cer- 
 tainly not setting a good example to those 
 they had intended to help. 
 
CONCLUSION 263 
 
 The disparity in the lot of human beings 
 is so great, that it is appalling sometimes to 
 think of our luxuries, of what is so essential 
 to our comfort, what the poor cannot have, 
 and what they must forego of the absolute 
 necessaries of life. 
 
 I do not say that they feel the need of 
 many things which are to us all -important, 
 and much would be intolerable to us that they 
 do not mind. I was lately passing through a 
 country town on a market day, and amongst 
 other wares exposed for sale on the pavement 
 were second-hand clothes ; these were looked 
 at and handled approvingly by tidy-looking, 
 but poor folk. Suddenly the thought came, 
 what would it be to be doomed to be dressed 
 in these cast-off garments ? and then came to 
 me profound gratitude for possessions which 
 had been before unheeded. 
 
 Besides the help we can give to the girls 
 themselves, can we not help the devoted 
 workers in these clubs ? Think that the 
 work is sometimes very uphill, the club does 
 
264 CLUBS FOR WORKING GIRLS ix 
 
 not increase in numbers as they would wish, 
 the girls who come are troublesome, are un- 
 grateful, no stranger comes to give a look of 
 approval or a word of encouragement. The 
 heart fails the tired district visitor, who has 
 devotedly added this* work of the club to her 
 other generous labours. But the lady at 
 the villa, the hall, the castle, asks the tired 
 worker to visit her ; she hears of Mary's 
 improvement, of Jane s misfortune, of Sally's 
 new situation, and her kindly interest makes 
 the wearied visitor bright again, and rekindles 
 the enthusiasm that had waned only through 
 lack of sympathy. 
 
 Those who may read my small attempt to 
 plead for girls' clubs, and for workers in them, 
 may, by the circumstances of their lives, be 
 quite unable to give any personal help them- 
 selves, though I think we have pointed out a 
 variety of ways of helping. They may have 
 wealth, or without wealth they may have 
 the means and power of giving some dona- 
 tion, or subscription to girls' clubs. In 
 
CONCLUSION 265 
 
 November of this year a club has been 
 opened at Liverpool, given entirely by one 
 gentleman ; it has been built by him for a 
 club that has worked on quietly for some 
 years with few external helps in a poor part 
 of the town. This new building, with its 
 large club and class rooms, its baths and 
 cooking, and washing rooms, will be a 
 model to all England. 
 
 In another case the splendid gift of ;^500 
 was given most generously by a gentleman to 
 help to clear off a building debt on a girls' club. 
 
 These are magnificent gifts, but even a 
 few pounds, or indeed a few shillings, will 
 often help the managers of a club, who are 
 themselves not rich, to carry on their work 
 more efficiently. 
 
 It is interesting to watch how out of a 
 small beginning work will extend. Some 
 years ago a lady in a high position, who had 
 all that this world could give her — a happy 
 home and a devoted husband — felt that she 
 would like to do something herself for the 
 
266 CLUBS FOR WORKING GIRLS ix 
 
 women who toiled, whilst all things were 
 smoothed to her, and life was made so easy. 
 So she settled to make a bag of clothes and 
 baby linen to lend to the poor women in their 
 confinement, and a district visitor was asked 
 to send any woman she knew, with a note, to 
 this lady's house some time before the bag 
 was wanted. When the baby is born the 
 husband fetches the bag, and the housekeeper 
 visits the mother and child, taking with her 
 tea and sugar and such like gifts. Soon two 
 bags were needed. Then the lady wished 
 to give her women and children, as she 
 calls them, a pleasure at Christmas, so a 
 tea-party and Christmas tree were arranged 
 for them. Next, days in the country in the 
 summer time were planned, and all went off 
 in vans to Hampstead or to Epping. Still 
 the work seemed incomplete, and so a cottage 
 close to the country house has been fitted up 
 to receive the delicate children or the tired 
 mothers of this large family. 
 
 Does not the growth of this individual 
 
IX CONCLUSION 267 
 
 work show how the heart expands in love for 
 the poor, and how ever fresh ways of helping 
 wisely will be found by those who have set 
 their hand to the plough ? 
 
 There is now, we may call it, a feverish 
 excitement to put the world right ; there is 
 an impatience in the minds of many at 
 sufferings continuing to exist, at the con- 
 sciousness that, work as we may, fresh 
 horrors of overcrowding, of miserable lives, 
 and of incredible poverty, are for ever 
 starting up, and making us feel that this 
 world is, to some, but one long drawn- 
 out wretchedness. This is true, but is it 
 not also true that crime has diminished, 
 that the pleasures of the working people 
 have become more refined ? no longer is 
 there only the brutalised sports of former 
 days ; but institutes, polytechnics, and clubs 
 attract those who formerly would only have 
 found pleasure in the public-house or in the 
 prize-fight. 
 
 There is a remarkable diminution in 
 
268 CLUBS FOR WORKING GIRLS ix 
 
 juvenile crime, may we not say that is the 
 result of the improved education, of the im- 
 proved dwellings, and of the care we take 
 of lads and girls ? Those who would better 
 the poor- — the suffering poor, know now that 
 mere almsgiving will not cure the evil; for 
 if not done with judgment it will only be 
 increased. We must know the facts of these 
 social questions if we would remedy the 
 distress of mankind ; and we must have a 
 knowledge of where the evil is. 
 
 Taking this view of the present need of 
 the poor, that facts are wanted before the 
 remedy can be propounded, does not this 
 enhance the work of every humble district 
 visitor, who by their quiet and unostentatious 
 work help the politicians, the legislators, the 
 philanthropists to devise remedies for this 
 social condition of suffering and poverty that 
 should not exist ? 
 
 Those who are continuously working 
 amongst the poor may be disappointed 
 over and over again ; but they will go on 
 
CONCLUSION 269 
 
 in faith, believing that if they fail in their 
 attempt to remedy much that is wrong, they 
 have yet done something to lighten many a 
 burden if they have been able to give kindly 
 and helpful sympathy to the suffering. 
 
 Sympathy is indeed the lever with which 
 to make life's wheels run smoothly, and 
 when we feel for the sorrows of others, we 
 cannot rest till we have done something to 
 lessen the load of trouble. By our well- 
 directed efforts we can bring joy and happi- 
 ness to the young, and in no way can we 
 succeed so well in making happy girls, loving 
 wives, and devoted and careful mothers, as 
 by carrying on girls' clubs, through whose 
 means we bring to them the highest educa- 
 tion, morally, physically, and spiritually, that 
 can be desired for working girls. 
 
2.7/ 
 
 APPENDIX - 
 
 SOHO CLUB AND HOME 
 
 59 GREEK STREET, SOHO SQUARE 
 
 LONDON, W. 
 
 RULES AND NOTICES 
 
 Lodgings for Young Women engaged in business, and 
 students. Rent of Bedroom, including use of Sitting-rooms, 
 is, with Gas, Fire, washing of Bed-linen and Towels, 3s. 
 and 4s. a week, paid in advance. 
 
 Teachers or Students coming to London to pass 
 Examinations can be lodged at is. per night. 
 
 Some Rooms at 5s., 6s. and 7s. each. 
 
 Breakfast or Tea, 2 id. Dinner 6d. Supper 3d. 
 
 Any one desiring Lodgings must obtain from the Matron 
 the rules and a paper to be filled up with references. 
 
 Dressmakers and Needlewomen can be recommended 
 from the Home to go out to work in ladies' houses. 
 
 Entrance Fee to the Club, is. Subscription, 2s. per 
 quarter, payable in advance by all members over seventeen 
 years after one quarter's membership. A fine of 2d. must 
 be paid by members two weeks in arrears. 
 
 Members under seventeen years may pay their Club 
 fees sixpence at a time. 
 
272 APPENDIX 
 
 No Member more than two weeks in arrears can be 
 allowed the use of the Club. 
 
 The Card of Membership will not be given until a visit 
 has been paid to the Candidate's home by one of the 
 Council. The badge is given after one year's membership. 
 
 On Wednesday and Friday evenings, members may 
 bring in a friend or their mothers to see the Club, on 
 mentioning it first to the Superintendent. 
 
 A new member may be introduced to the Club by an 
 existing member, by a member of the Council, or by the 
 Superintendent ; but as some may wish to join our Club who 
 do not know any of the members, we shall be glad if they 
 will come in any evening and the rules will be given to them. 
 
 No girl who has been a member of the Club and has 
 left the Club, can be admitted by a friend at a Soiree, or 
 on any evening meeting of the Club, except with the object 
 of rejoining the Club. 
 
 Each Lady of the Council will undertake the supervision of 
 the Club for one month at a time, and will during that month 
 visit new members and give them their cards of membership. 
 
 CLUBS BELONGING TO THE GIRLS' CLUB 
 UNION 
 
 1880 — Soho Club and Home for Working Girls, 59 Greek 
 Street, Soho Square, London. Badge, Snowdrop. 
 Secy., Hon. Maude Stanley, 40 Dover Street, W. 
 
 1865 — Arch Guild of St. Michael's and All Angels, St. 
 Saviour's Priory, Great Cambridge Street, Hack- 
 ney Road, London. Secretary, Sister Helen. 
 
 1880— Club and Working Girls' Home, All Hallows, 
 Southwark, Surrey Row, Victoria Place. Sec- 
 retary, Sister Superior, All Hallows' Mission, 
 127 Union Street, Borough, London, S.E. 
 
APPENDIX 273 
 
 1880 — St. Giles's Evening Club for Working Girls, 26 Great 
 Russell Street (originally started in St. Ann's, 
 Soho). Secretary^ Mrs. Edward Drummond. 
 
 1882 — Lily Club, 244 Harrow Road, London. Badge, 
 Lilies of the Valley. Abstainers, Water Lilies. 
 Secretary, Mrs. T. Gillilan. 
 
 1883 — St. Catherine's Rooms, Catholic Night-school, and 
 Place of Recreation, 154 Brompton Road, S.W. 
 Secretary, Miss Capes. 
 
 1883 — Girls' Club, 28 Commercial Street, Whitechapel, 
 London. Secretary, Miss Agnes Gardiner. 
 
 1884 — Club for Working Girls, Cedars, Battersea, London. 
 Badge, Star. Motto, "Hearts Upward." Secre- 
 tary, Hon. Mrs. Adamson Parker, 60 Elm Park 
 Gardens. 
 
 1884 — Arlington Girls' Club, 97 Arlington Road, Camden 
 Town. Secretary, Miss M. B. Harrison. Badge, 
 Daffodil. 
 
 1885— St. Luke's Girls' Club, 38 Newnham Street, 
 Edgware Road. Secretary, Miss A. Gurney. 
 
 1885 — Girls' Guild of Good Life, Hoxton Hall, Hoxton, 
 Secretary, Mrs. Rae, 7 Westop Villas, Canon- 
 bury Street, N. 
 
 1886 — Chelsea Girls' Club, 5 Christchurch Street, Chelsea. 
 Secretary, Mrs. Philip Daniell, 45 Beaufort 
 Gardens, S.W. 
 
 1888 — Trinity Club and Home for Girls, 137 Camber well 
 Road. President, Mrs. Arthur James. Super- 
 intendent, Mrs. Bastoble. 
 
 1884 — Clerkenwell Girls' Club, 55 Compton Street, Clerken- 
 well. Badge, Daisy. Secretary, Mrs. Moodey. 
 
 1888— St. Clements' Girls' Club, City Road. Secretary, 
 Rev. Fr. Downman, Eagle Dwellings, City 
 Road. 
 
 T 
 
274 APPENDIX 
 
 1889 — Holy Innocents' Girls' Club, 202 Goldhawk Road, 
 Hammersmith. Secretary^ Sister in Charge. 
 
 1889 — Tottenham Girls' Club, Coleraine Hall, Poynton 
 Road, N. Secretary^ Miss Alice Lewis. 
 
 1882 — St. James's Girls' Evening Home, St. James's Street, 
 Nottingham. Secy.^ Miss Lynam, The Park, Notts. 
 
 1885 — Victoria Club, Heathcote Street, Nottingham. 
 Secretaries^ Mrs. Brownswood and Mrs. Cowen. 
 
 1882 — York Street Girls' Club, Manchester. Secretary^ 
 Miss Lakin, Barlow Moor Road, Didsbury, 
 Manchester. 
 
 1887 — Girls' Evening Home, 32 Broughton Road, Green- 
 gate, Salford. Secretaries^ Miss Farmer, Hope 
 House, Eccles, and Miss Hewitt, 2 1 Leaf Square, 
 Pendleton, Manchester. 
 
 1882 — Girls' Club, White Abbey, Bradford. Secretary^ 
 Miss M. Wade, Oak Bank, Manningham, Brad- 
 ford. 
 
 1885 — Girls' Club, 20 Chapel Street, Bradford. Secretaries^ 
 Mrs. Hy. Muff and Miss Bottomley. 
 
 1886 — Springfield House Home and Club for Working 
 Girls, White Abbey Road, Bradford. Secretary^ 
 Mrs. Bentham, Springfield House, Bradford. 
 
 1885 — Sherborne Working Girls' Club. Secretary^ Mrs. 
 E. M. Young, School-house, Sherborne, Dorset. 
 
 1886 — The Bedford Girls' Club. President^ Mrs. Ransom, 
 60 Tavistock Street, Bedford. 
 
 1886 — Bromley Working Girls' Club, 26 Simpson's Road, 
 Bromley, Kent. Secretary^ Miss E. Benham, 
 Amberley House, Bromley. 
 
 1887 — The James's Court Girls' Club, Edinburgh. Secretary^ 
 Miss Jane Hay, Merchiston Avenue, Edinburgh. 
 
APPENDIX 
 
 275 
 
 OCCUPATIONS OF THE MEMBERS OF THE 
 SOHO CLUB FOR WORKING GIRLS, AND 
 LODGERS IN THE HOME. 
 
 ■^Clerks. 
 
 ■^Governesses. 
 
 ■^Assistants in shops. 
 
 ■^Dressmakers. 
 
 ^Milliners. 
 
 ■^Mantlemakers. 
 
 "^Embroiderers. 
 
 ■^Tailoresses. 
 
 *Waistcoat makers. 
 
 ■^Machinists. 
 
 "^Shirt makers. 
 
 ■^Cap makers. 
 
 ■^Book-folders. 
 
 ■^Book-keepers. 
 
 ■^Ladies'-maids. 
 
 Church Decorators. 
 
 Hat makers. 
 
 Lamp-shade makers. 
 
 Upholstresses. 
 
 Leather workers. 
 
 Boot machinists. 
 
 Bottle Cap makers. 
 
 Ladies' Bag makers. 
 
 Chair Caners. 
 
 Packers. 
 
 Shoe makers. 
 
 Infant Boot makers. 
 
 Stationers. 
 
 Feather makers. 
 
 Jewel polishers. 
 
 Wig makers. 
 
 Silk winders. 
 
 Silver burnishers. 
 
 Perfumers. 
 
 Portmanteau makers. 
 
 Card makers. 
 
 Cigarette makers. 
 
 Crosse and Blackwell's Jam 
 
 factory. 
 Blacklead works (Nixey's). 
 In Service. 
 Helping at Home. 
 
 ■^ These are lodging in the Home and helong to the Club. 
 
276 
 
 APPENDIX 
 
 AGES OF THE MEMBERS IN THE SOHO 
 CLUB, DECEMBER 1889 
 
 4 Members of 1 3 years of age 
 
 18 
 
 14 
 
 20 , 
 
 15 
 
 18 
 
 16 
 
 29 
 
 17 
 
 26 
 
 18 
 
 20 , 
 
 , 19 
 
 24 
 
 , 20 
 
 9 
 
 , 21 
 
 62 
 
 , over „ 
 
 230 
 
 
 A badge in the form of a white metal brooch, with a 
 snowdrop on it, and the words Soho Club, is given to 
 members who have been one year in the Club ; after five 
 years' membership, a pendant with a ball is added, and 
 ten years' members have two balls. The brooches are 
 made by Messrs. Lander and Rowe, 63 Newhall Street, 
 Birmingham. 
 
 The Girls' Club Union Magazine is published once a 
 month, price one penny, sent post free for the year for two 
 shillings. It has in it contributions from many of the 
 members of the different Clubs, and records of work done 
 in the Clubs. The Magazine is now in its seventh year. 
 It can be had from the Matron, 59 Greek Street, Soho 
 Square, W. _ 
 
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