Josephine E. Butler

CHAPTER VII.

COLCHESTER ELECTION

Among our first and best helpers in our own town was my cousin, Charles Birrell, a Baptist minister, who had a church in Liverpool. There existed a strong friendship between him and my husband. Mr. Birrell was a gifted man, of a dignified presence, and a beautiful countenance; he was refined and cultivated, and was eloquent in speech. He was elected in 1871 to be President of the Baptist Union, in which he pleaded our cause. He had been ill, but came to our meeting at Liverpool. Early in 1870 I find in my book of scanty records – written at the time for my own use alone – the following: —

Thank God, all doubt is gone! I can never forget Charles Birrell’s prophetic words at our meeting yesterday concerning the future of this work. He rose from his sick bed to speak them, and stood there, a witness for God, pale and ill, but with a holy joy in his whole countenance, seeing God rather than the people around him, and sending us forth to our work with confidence. Then my husband’s benediction! The words of those two – their prayers, their counsels – must never be forgotten. God sent them to us to dispel all lingering doubts or hesitation – kind, pure-hearted, unworldly men, messengers of hope and assurance! And now it is revolt and rebellion, a consecrated rebellion against those in authority who have established this “accursed thing” among us. We are rebels for God’s holy laws. “What have I to do with peace” any more? It is now war to the knife. In a battle of flesh and blood mercy may intervene and life may be spared; but principles know not the name of mercy. In the broad light of day, and under a thousand eyes, we now take up our position. We declare on whose side we fight; we make no compromise; and we are ready to meet all the powers of earth and hell combined.

She addressed many meetings this year besides those mentioned in the last chapter, travelling for the purpose over 3700 miles before the middle of June; and when the North of England Council held its meetings in that month she expressed a wish to resign the Presidency of that body, in order to reserve her strength and energies for her new work (her resignation however did not take effect, as stated on a previous page, until three years later). Her wish to resign is explained in the following speech.

I proposed at our meeting yesterday to resign the office of President of this Council, as soon as it may be convenient to the Council to allow me to do so. It is not because I am not deeply interested in the cause which this Council represents. I may say I am more deeply interested in it than ever, for I see in the education of women one of the most ready and necessary means of freeing poorer women from the awful slavery of which I have seen so much lately. Nor do I undervalue the higher culture of the individual as a means towards the attainment of the highest personal happiness. The strangely providential guidance of all our schemes has lately been deeply impressed on my mind. We started our educational schemes, I believe, in an honest and humble spirit, and they appeared to us the readiest path towards aiding our fellow-women – the distressed, the needy, and the wasted; and I believe our labour has not been in vain. But in this, as in all our work on earth, we needed further enlightening and teaching. Looking back on my own experience of the past year, it appears to me as if God in His goodness had said to me, “I approve your motive and your work; but you are trying to lay on the topstone while there is an earthquake shaking your foundations. You must first descend to the lowest depths before you can safely build up.” And then He showed us a plague spot. He showed us a deadly poison working through the wholesale, systematic, and now legalised, degradation of women. He showed us the ready elements for a speedy overthrow of society, which the educated would not be able to stem. Not that our work in the cause of education has in any sense been a failure – far from it; but we need a still larger infusion into these noble schemes for educating the masses of the spirit of self-sacrifice, even of martyrdom. We need to have our hearts still more deeply penetrated with pity, and to be more resolutely bent on making all our practical efforts tend to the revival of justice, and of a pure and equal moral standard and equal laws. While therefore I continue to regard the cause of education as a most sacred cause, I come to the present meeting with a sad heart; and I only propose to relinquish the office I now hold because I feel that God has called me to a more painful one. All members have not the same office; all are not called to descend to the depths of woe, and to cast in their lot among wretched slave-gangs, in order to help the slaves to carry the weight of their chains, if not to break them away. This work, I think, is mine; but there is other work not less holy, which aims not less directly at a future emancipation. But while I feel all the greater dependence on, and deeper gratitude, to you my fellow-workers in this Council and others, for the work you are doing, and for the work you will do, in the cause of humanity, I am obliged to confess to you that, for my own part, I fear I may not in future be able to give the needful time to this work, nor to bring to it the vigour and spirit which it demands and deserves. I wish to leave this work in abler and freer hands. It has my deepest sympathy. It points perhaps to the most important of all the means by which we hope, against hope, to undo the heavy burdens, and let the oppressed go free, and inaugurate a purer and sounder national life. To keep pace however with this portion of the great work, one requires to have the head and heart tolerably free, and that cannot be the case with one who is called to deal with the most miserable, to walk side by side, hand in hand, with the outcast, the victim of our social sins, whose name one scarcely dares to name in refined society. I have great hope, I am full of hope for the education cause, and for the anti-slavery cause, in which we are engaged. Nevertheless one’s very soul grows faint before the facts of 1870, and though that faintness of soul may complete one’s fitness to be a fellow-sufferer with the slave, it does not increase one’s fitness for a work which requires intellectual energy.

The National Association, which was daily increasing in vitality and in boldness of operation, effectually prevented the further extension of the system we opposed, and by means of successful contests at by-elections – pre-eminently that of Colchester in October-November, 1870, where the Government candidate, Sir Henry Storks, was defeated on this one question by over 400 votes – forced the Government to look seriously into the matter. I give some prominence to this hotly-contested election at Colchester, as it proved to be somewhat of a turning-point in the history of our crusade. A public meeting had been arranged for in the theatre. I was with our friends previous to this meeting in a room in a hotel. Already we heard signs of the mob gathering to oppose us. The dangerous portion of this mob was headed and led on by a band of keepers of houses of prostitution in Colchester, who had sworn that we should be defeated and driven from the town. On this occasion the gentlemen who were preparing to go to the meeting left with me all their valuables, watches, &c. I remained alone during the evening. The mob were by this time collected in force in the streets. Their deep-throated yells and oaths, and the horrible words spoken by them, sounded sadly in my ears. I felt more than anything pity for these misguided people. It must be observed that these were not of the class of honest working people, but chiefly a number of hired roughs and persons directly interested in the maintenance of the vilest of human institutions. The master of the hotel came in, and said in a whisper, “I must turn down the lights; and will you, madam, consent to go to an attic which I have, a little apart from the house, and remain there until the mob is quieter, in order that I may tell them truly that you are not in the house?” I consented to this for his sake. His words were emphasised at the moment by the crashing in of the window near which I sat, and the noise of heavy stones hurled along the floor, the blows from which I managed to evade. Our friends returned in about an hour, very pitiful objects, covered with mud, flour, and other more unpleasant things, their clothes torn, but their courage not in the least diminished. Mr. James Stuart, who had come purposely during the intervals of his duties at Cambridge to lend his aid in the conflict, had been roughly handled. Chairs and benches had been flung at him and Dr. Baxter Langley; and a good deal of lint and bandages was quickly in requisition; but the wounds were not severe.

I should have prefaced my recollections of this election conflict by saying that on our first arrival in Colchester we went, as was our wont, straight to the house of a Quaker family. Mrs. Marriage, a well-known member of the Society of Friends, received us with the utmost cordiality and self-possession. At her suggestion we began our campaign with a series of devotional meetings, gathering together chiefly women in groups, to ask of God that the approaching events might be over-ruled for good, and might open the eyes of our Government to the vital nature of the cause for which we were incurring so much obloquy. Among the women who helped us most bravely were Mrs. King and Mrs. Hampson; there were also many others.

I may be excused, perhaps, for mentioning an amusing incident of the election. I was walking down a by-street one evening after we had held several meetings with wives of electors, when I met an immense workman, a stalwart man, trudging along to his home after work hours. By his side trotted his wife, a fragile woman, but with a fierce determination on her small thin face; and I heard her say, “Now you know all about it; if you vote for that man Storks, Tom, I’ll kill ye!” Tom seemed to think that there was some danger of her threat being put in execution. This incident did not represent exactly the kind of influence which we had entreated the working women to use with their husbands who had votes, but I confess it cheered me not a little.

I have tried several hotels; each one rejects me after another. At last I came to a respectable Tory hotel, not giving my name. I had gone to bed very tired, and was dropping asleep, when I heard some excitement in the street, and a rap at my door. It was the master of the hotel. He said, “I am sorry, madam, I have a very unpleasant announcement to make.”“Say on,” I replied. He said, “I find you are Mrs. Josephine Butler, and the mob outside have found out that you are here, and have threatened to set fire to the house unless I send you out at once.” I said, “I will go immediately. But how is it that you get rid of me when you know that though I am a Liberal I am practically working into the hands of Colonel Learmont, the Conservative candidate?” He replied, “I would most gladly keep you, madam; undoubtedly your cause is a good one, but there is a party so much incensed against you that my house is not safe while you are in it.” He saw that I was very tired, and I think his heart was touched. He said, “I will get you quietly out under another name, and will find some little lodging for you.” I packed up my things, and he sent a servant with me down a little by-street to a small private house of a working-man and his wife. Next day I went to the C – Inn, the head-quarters of our party. It was filled with gentlemen, in an atmosphere of stormy canvassing. The master of the inn whispered to me, “Do not let your friends call you by your name in the streets.” A hurried consultation was held as to whether our party should attempt to hold other public meetings or not. It seemed uncertain whether we should get a hearing, and it was doubtful, if I personally would be allowed by the mob to reach the hall where we had planned to hold a women’s meeting. Some of the older men said, “Do not attempt it, Mrs. Butler; it is a grave risk.” For a moment a cowardly feeling came over me as I thought of you all at home; then it suddenly came to me that now was just the time to trust in God, and claim His loving care; and I want to tell you, my darlings, how He helped me, and what the message was which He sent to me at that moment. I should like you never to forget it, for it is in such times of trial that we feel Him to be in the midst of us – a living Presence – and that we prove the truth of His promises. As I prayed to Him in my heart, these words came pouring into my soul as if spoken by some heavenly voice: “I will say of the Lord, He is my refuge and my fortress: my God; in Him will I trust. Surely He shall deliver thee from the snare of the fowler, and from the noisome pestilence. He shall cover thee with His feathers, and under His wings shalt thou trust: His truth shall be thy shield and buckler. Thou shalt not be afraid for the terror by night; nor for the arrow that flieth by day; nor for the pestilence that walketh in darkness; nor for the destruction that wasteth at noonday. A thousand shall fall at thy side, and ten thousand at thy right hand; but it shall not come nigh thee. Because thou hast made the Lord, which is my refuge, thy habitation; there shall no evil befall thee, neither shall any plague come nigh thy dwelling. For He shall give His angels charge over thee, to keep thee in all thy ways.” (Psalm xci.) Are they not beautiful words? I felt no more fear, and strong in the strength of these words I went out into the dark street with our friends.

The London Committee had commissioned the two Mr. Mallesons to come down to help us. I like them much, they are so quiet and firm. Someone had also sent us from London twenty-four strong men of the sandwich class as a body-guard. I did not care much about this “arm of flesh.” It was thought better that these men should not keep together or be seen, so they were posted about in the crowd near the door of the hall. Apparently they were yelling with the regulationist party, but ready to come forward for us at a given signal. The two Mr. Mallesons managed cleverly, just as we arrived, to mislead the crowd into fancying that one of themselves was Dr. Langley, thus directing all their violence of language and gestures against themselves. Meanwhile Mrs. Hampson and I slipped into the hall in the guise of some of the humbler women going to the meeting. I had no bonnet or gloves, only an old shawl over my head, and looked quite a poor woman. We passed safely through crowded lines of scoundrel faces and clenched fists, and were unrecognised. It was a solemn meeting. The women listened most attentively while we spoke to them. Every now and then a movement of horror went through the room when the threats and groans outside became very bad. At the close of the meeting some friend said to me in a low voice, “Your best plan is to go quietly out by a back window which is not high from the ground, while the mob is waiting for you at the front.” The Mallesons and two friendly constables managed admirably. They made the mob believe I was always coming, though I never came. Mrs. Hampson and I then walked off at a deliberate pace from the back of the hall, down a narrow, quiet, star-lit street. About thirty or forty kind, sympathising women followed us, but had the tact to disperse quickly, leaving us alone. Neither of us knew the town, and we emerged again upon a main street, where the angry cries of the mob seemed again very near. I could not walk any further, being very tired, and asked Mrs. Hampson to leave me, and try to find a cab. She pushed me into a dark, unused warehouse, filled with empty soda-water bottles and broken glass, and closed the gates of it. I stood there in the darkness and alone, hearing some of the violent men tramping past, never guessing that I was so near. Presently one of the gates opened slightly, and I could just see in the dim light the poorly-clad, slight figure of a forlorn woman of the city. She pushed her way in, and said in a low voice, “Are you the lady the mob are after? Oh, what a shame to treat a lady so! I was not at the meeting, but I heard of you, and have been watching you.” The kindness of this poor miserable woman cheered me, and was a striking contrast to the conduct of the roughs. Mrs. Hampson returned saying, “There is not a cab to be seen in the streets.” So we walked on again. We took refuge at last in a cheerfully lighted grocer’s shop, where a very kind, stout grocer, whose name we knew – a Methodist – welcomed us, and seemed ready to give his life for me. He installed me amongst his bacon, soap and candles, having sent for a cab; and rubbing his hands, he said, “Well, this is a capital thing; here you are, safe and sound!” We overheard women going past in groups, who had been at the meeting, and their conversation was mostly of the following description: “Ah, she’s right; depend upon it, she’s right. Well, what a thing! Well, to be sure! I’m sure I ’ll vote for her whenever I have a vote!” I have now got to my lodgings in the working-man’s house, which are very small, but clean. I hope to be with you on Saturday. What a blessed Sunday it will be in my quiet home.

My husband had personal friends in the Government, and on most questions he sympathised with their policy; it was the more painful therefore to have to maintain a prominent position personally in the perpetual attack and protest on this question. He was often reminded by cautious friends of the very distant prospect of any possible retirement from school work which he must now contemplate, so far as that retirement (or promotion of any kind) depended on the goodwill of those then in power. He perfectly understood this from the first, and his experience for many years from this time was that of an ever receding prospect in that direction. He continued to speak and write for the just cause whenever opportunity presented itself, patiently wearing his harness as a laborious schoolmaster for twelve long years after this date. Though it was a trial to him to be at variance in any way with personal friends or public men whom he regarded with esteem, yet it was not possible for him to set motives of policy or his own private interests above fidelity to a cause and a principle which he considered vital.

In March, 1871, I was called to give evidence before the Royal Commission which had been appointed. I was not fully aware until recently, when looking over his letters, how his tender solicitude for me had followed me in all my endeavours, in every varying circumstance. His duties at the Liverpool College forbade him accompanying me to London on this occasion; and even if this had not been the case, he would not have been allowed to remain with me during the examination in the House of Lords. He had, unknown to me, written to the Chairman of the Commission, Mr. Massey, commending me to his kindly consideration. For it was a formidable ordeal, being, as I was, the only woman present before a large and august assembly of peers, bishops, members of Parliament, representatives of the military and naval services, doctors, and others; my questioners being in a large majority hostile, and the subject serious and difficult. On the morning before I was called I received a number of letters, addresses of sympathy, and notices of united prayer for my support from associations of working-men in Edinburgh, Glasgow, Newcastle, Leeds, Birmingham, and many other towns.

Several of these letters from working-men were published under the title of Vox Populi.

It is over. It was even a severer ordeal than I expected. It was distressing to me, owing to the hard, harsh view which some of these men take of poor women, and of the lives of the poor generally. They had in their hands and on the table everything I have ever written on the subject, and reports of all my addresses, marked and turned down; and some of the Commissioners had carefully selected bits which they thought would damage me in examination. Frederick Maurice was not present, I am sorry to say; but Mr. Rylands, Mr. Mundella, and above all Sir Walter James, I felt, were my friends. The rest were certainly not so. To compare a very small person with a great one, I felt rather like Paul before Nero, very weak and lonely. But there was One who stood by me. I almost felt as if I heard Christ’s voice bidding me not to fear. I handed to the Chairman a large packet of the letters and resolutions from working-men. He said, “We may as well see them; for no doubt that class takes some little interest in the question.” I should think so! Let them wait till election times, and they will see! One of the Commissioners asked, “Are these bonâ-fide working-men?” I replied, “Yes, and well-known men. There is more virtue in the country than you gentlemen in high life imagine.” He then asked, “If these laws were put in operation in the north, do you believe they would be forcibly resisted?” I replied, “I do.”