Josephine Butler to Mrs Ford

Written from Winchester. To say she will be rejoiced to have the gift 'which a kind friend has it in her heart to send me'. She had 'a great deal in hand just now' including 'a little Hospital we have opened here for poor unhappy women'. [See Note] She finds 'God is very good in sending the supplies we need.'

8 May [1884] 'I shall be rejoiced to have the gift you speak of ... We have a great deal on hand just now. Mrs Walker of Leeds has a letter of mine describing a little hospital we have opened here for poor unhappy women. She would send you the letter to read.' JB herself gives a short account of it in her autobiography: Writing of 1885 she says: 'Two years previously we had opened at Winchester, as we had done at Liverpool, a little House of Rest, which served as a shelter for poor girls and giving women who were recognised failures, morally and physically ... We also took into the House of Rest, however, a few persons of more mature year age, not invalids, who had fallen into trouble and misfortune and who sometimes became excellent helpers in our work. (Josephine Butler, an autobiographical memoir, 1913 p.186) (See also letter JB to Mrs Tanner 9 Jun [1884] Date. 'I am at home suffering from a severe attack of bronchitis from a cold I caught in Scotland.' A letter from JB to her friends Mrs Tanner and the Miss Priestmans with postmark 18 Apr 1884 Edinburgh gives us the year for this letter. Biog: Mrs Ford.