After moving to Liverpool in 1866 following the death of her daughter Eva, Josephine became involved in ‘rescue’ work with prostitutes and other ‘fallen women’ to help her overcome her grief. She began by visiting women in the local workhouse, becoming appalled at the conditions that the 5000 women and girls living there were housed in. She brought some of those in most dire need to be hosted in the spare rooms in the Butler family home. Using donations she managed to persuade from Liverpool merchants, she went on to purchase a house to help provide shelter, training, and employment opportunities for women.

Around the same time, Josephine  began campaigning for improved education for women, and was a signatory on the first Women’s Suffrage petition presented to parliament in June 1866. In 1868, her first pamphlet, The Education and Employment of Women, was published. A digital copy of the pamphlet can be viewed online on the Wellcome Collection website.

In a bid to control the spread of venereal diseases within the armed forces, the government introduced the Contagious Diseases Act in 1864. The Act forced women suspected of prostitution to undergo compulsory invasive examinations for venereal diseases by the police, leading to police officers routinely harassing and arresting working class women.

If signs of diseases were found, women were sent to ‘lock hospitals’. This applied to garrison towns and naval ports – Chatham, Colchester, Cork, Curragh, Portsmouth, Plymouth, Shorncliffe, and Woolwich. The male clients of the sex workers were not examined. Contagious Diseases Act was extended in 1866 to include Canterbury, Devonport, Dover, Gravesend, Maidstone, Southampton and Winchester. Further additions were made in 1869.

The Acts were contentious for many, with Josephine Butler amongst those leading the campaign to repeal them. In 1869, when women were barred from joining the newly formed National Association for the Repeal of the Contagious Diseases Act, Josephine, along with Elizabeth Wolstenholme, responded by forming the Ladies National Association for the Repeal of the Contagious Diseases Act. The manifesto of the Ladies National Association for the Repeal of the Contagious Diseases Act stated that “not only deprived poor women of their constitutional rights and forced them to submit to a degrading internal examination, but they officially sanctioned a double standard of sexual morality, which justified male sexual access to a class of ‘fallen’ women and penalised women for engaging in the same vice as men.”

In 1870, Josephine first published The Shield. The publication was a key campaigning tool of the Ladies National Association for the Repeal of the Contagious Diseases Act.

Josephine’s opposition of the Acts provoked personal attacks from MP’s, newspapers, and journalists alike. The London Daily News claimed that “women like Mrs. Butler ‘are so discontented in their own homes that they have to find an outlet somewhere, they have to be noticed at all costs, and take pleasure in a hobby too nasty to mention.” One MP stated that she was “worse than the prostitutes”.

Despite pushbacks and criticisms, those opposing the Acts eventually succeeding with forced examinations being suspended in 1883, and the Acts formally repealed in 1886. The efficacy of the Acts were questionable, with doctors stating that they had little to no impact on controlling the spread of venereal diseases, rather the improvements came in the ability to treat them.

Josephine, alongside Elizabeth Wolstenholme, set up the Married Women’s Property Committee in 1868. Under legal convention of the time, married women had no legal rights to hold their own property, all of their property, including that which was inherited, became their husband’s. The successful campaigning of the committee eventually resulted in the Married Women’s Property Act 1882, which recognised married couples as separate legal entities, allowing married women to own and control property in their own right.

Established in 1875, the International Abolitionist Federation was founded by Josephine to campaign for the legal rights if female sex workers, to abolish the trafficking of female sex workers, and to prevent young girls from entering into the sex trade. This resulted in the passing of the Criminal Law Amendment Act in 1885. The Act raised the age of consent from 13 to 16, and made it illegal to use drugs, fraud, intimidation, or abduction to ‘procure’ girls under 18 for sex.

Although the Contagious Diseases Acts had been repealed in Great Britain, the equivalent legislation was still active in the Special Cantonments Act in India. Josephine began a new campaign to repeal the legislation, comparing the girls affected by it to slaves. Although she felt herself too old to travel to India, two of her supporters visited on her behalf to compile dossiers showing the conditions of lock hospitals, compulsory examinations, and the use of underage prostitutes as young as 11.

 Following the ill-health and subsequent death of her husband, George, in 1890, Josephine briefly stopped public duties and moved to live with her eldest son. She continued to write, producing the Storm Bell between 1898-1900. The publication carried Josephine’s views on prostitution in India. During the Second Boer War (1899-1902), she published Native Races and the War in which she supported action against imperial policy, and condemned the casual racism inherent within Britain’s dealings with foreign countries. She also fiercely condemned the massacre of Jewish people in Czarist Russia, and sent money to assist with the resettlement of Jewish refugees in London.