The Institute For Homeless and Outcast Women, circa 1861

I have been steering clear of this large and largely-untouched topic, because it opens so many avenues for speculation that it's off-putting.

But, it's time...

EHB, as readers will know, moved in the late 1850s into the philanthropy business, promoting an institution for the rehabilitation of homeless and outcast women -- by which we should understand women who had been seduced and abandoned by their male lovers. The purpose of the institution was to house and feed these women, teach them a useful profession (horticultural and agricultural in nature), and prepare them to re-enter the (useful) population.

Emma derived this idea, almost certainly, from Charles Dickens and his involvement with/shephering of Urania Cottage, Burdett Coutts' philanthropic venture in this area.

Emma shopped the idea in Portland (Maine), New York City, Philadelphia and Boston (at least); and like so many of her bids to exit the spiritualist community, this venture failed.

The failure of her attempt to kick-start the institution in Boston prompted a letter from Emma to the Boston Journal, which was reprinted in William Lloyd Garrison's paper The Liberator in June of 1861. Emma was angry, to the point of losing control (as she sometimes did) at her treatment at the hands of Boston philanthropists, and perhaps here is the reason why, from The Boston Daily Advertiser for March of 1861, some three months earlier:

I am going to take this document at face value -- that is, as an invitation rather than an advertisement -- which is of course dangerous and probably false, and document the entire social network the signatures of which are attached. Some of these names require no glosses whatsoever, and are I think impressive. Others not so. Until I get around to untangling the skein, here is a small taste of the circle Emma was fund-raising within.

• Albert Fearing (1798-1975): millionaire philanthropist and abolitionist, president of the American Colonization Society. Liberal donor to reformist causes.
• James Freeman Clarke (1810-1888): theologian and editor, founder of the Church of the Disciples, intimate of Margaret Fuller, Channing, and Emerson.
• Mrs. Ellis Grey (Louisa Gilman) Loring (1797-1868): abolitionist, intimate of Lydia Maria Child (on whose work TAOAM depends so heavily), wife of Ellis Grey Loring, who started the first US abolitionist society in 1833, and who defended Abner Kneeland, the notorious "atheist".
• Margaret Storer (1845-1922): intimate friend of Alice James (sister of Henry and William James), daughter of Robert Boyd Storer (trustee of the Massachusetts School for the Feeble-minded), and wife of Joseph Banks Warner (lawyer, historian and philanthropist)

I wonder what the girl from Bethnal Green thought, as she moved amongst these people.