Nancy Boyd

A depiction of the lives of three nineteenth-century women activists examines the relationship between their religious faith and their efforts at social reform

Josephine Butler, Octavia Hill, Florence Nightingale

Three Victorian Women who Changed Their World

Edna St. Vincent Millay

"The three women who had the greatest effect on social policy in Britain in the nineteenth century were Josephine Butler, Octavia Hill and Florence Nightingale. In an era when most women were confined to the kitchen and the salon, these three moved confidently into positions of world leadership. Josephine Butler raised opposition to the state regulation of prostitution and confronted the root issues of poverty and of civil rights for women. Octavia Hill - artist, teacher, and great conservationist- enabled thousands of families to meet the dislocations of the industrial revolution and created a new profession, that of the social worker. Florence Nightingale not only shattered precedent by establishing a training-school for nurses, she also pioneered work in the use of statistical analysis, and her practicality and passionate urgency effected radical reforms in medical practice and public health. These women attributed their social view and the impetus for their vocation to their religious faith. Rejecting the constraints on women's work imposed by conventional religion, they found in the gospels ground for radical action. As daughters and prophetesses of God they felt called to build the New Jerusalem. This book analyses their world view, both as a source of social policies and as a driving force. In addition it presents the factors of family, class, time, and place that nurtured their vocation and those that impeded it. But the purpose of this study is wider than that. In incorporating the material of spiritual biography, Nancy Boyd works out the relation between the inner and the outer self, between vision and programme, between contemplation and action"--Back cover.

Nancy Boyd

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