We have more newsletters. A charity tackling prostitution delivered only mixed results, reports Chris Upton. In the city of a thousand trades there was one profession which Birmingham preferred not to boast about. By there were up to 2, prostitutes working the town. The women concerned only came to public attention when they were arrested for disorderly behaviour or theft. Most of the time the authorities preferred to turn a blind eye.
If society does not accept that there is a social problem, then little is done to address it, and that was undoubtedly the case in the early 19th Century. What was initially known as the Female Penitentiary had premises in Islington at the lower end of Broad Street. The object of the institution, as set out in November , was:.
By the Penitientiary had been re-named the Magdalen Asylum, a title equally euphemistic, but a little less censorious. It was run, of course, by the Established Church, though later especially in Ireland the idea was taken up by the Catholics too. The Birmingham branch — there were others in Liverpool, Bristol and Worcester — was run by a matron and assistant. This was all the staff they could afford. Inevitably, perhaps, such a charity found it considerably harder to raise funds and support from the middle classes than appeals on behalf of folk they would consider more deserving and innocent.
Not only was security porous and the degree of recividity high, medical care too was often poor. The annual report for refers to a number unspecified of deaths in the institution, though it draws ironic comfort from the fact that some of those who died did so with a changed heart.
That is, the women probably returned to their old habits. Some attempt was made, both to give the women training, and, at the same time, to raise much-needed funds for the place. There was more than a touch of naivety in this practice. Needlework, at least in Birmingham, was a domestic, not an industrial skill. Knowledge of needlework alone would not give any woman financial independence, though it was one of the portfolio of domestic skills — along with cleaning and cooking — which the middle class believed essential to any female.
