Wikipedia:Today's featured list/September 1, 2023
The English feminist and social reformer Josephine Butler wrote more than 90 books and pamphlets over a period of at least 40 years, mostly in support of her campaigning work. She was especially concerned with the welfare of prostitutes, although she campaigned on a broad range of women's rights. In 1864, her daughter Eva fell 40 feet (12 m) from the top-floor banister onto the stone floor of the hallway in her home; she died three hours later. The death led Butler to begin a career of campaigning that ran until the end of her life. Her targets included women's suffrage in the United Kingdom, the right to better education and the end of coverture in British law, although she achieved her greatest success in leading the movement to repeal the Contagious Diseases Acts, legislation that attempted to control the spread of venereal diseases. Butler's first full-length publication was Memoir of John Grey of Dilston, detailing the life of her father, John Grey, which she wrote in 1869 following his death. In 1878, she published a biography of Catharine of Siena, which Glen Petrie, Butler's biographer, wrote was probably her best work. Butler wrote a monograph of her husband George in 1892, two years after his death. (Full list...)