Josephine Butler - Legacy

Legacy

Josephine Butler was not only a vehement feminist but a passionate Christian; she once said "God and one woman make a majority". In the Church of England she is celebrated with a Lesser Festival on 30 May and 30 December. She is also represented in windows in Liverpool's Anglican Cathedral, and St Olave's Church in the City of London.

The Women's Library at London Metropolitan University, holds a number of collections related to Josephine Butler. These include the Records of the Association for Moral and Social Hygiene (3AMS)renamed the Josephine Butler Society in honour of its founder; Over 2,500 letters in the Josephine Butler Letter Collection (3JBL); and the Josephine Butler Society Library consisting of books and pamphlets collected by the Society.

In 2005, the University of Durham honoured her by naming Josephine Butler College for her. This reflects the fact that she was married to a Durham University lecturer, and was a local of the North-East.

Her connections to the UK city of Liverpool were also once memorialised. One of the "Faculty of Business and Law" buildings of Liverpool John Moores University was named "Josephine Butler House". The building, at the centre of the Cultural Quarter, Hope Street, Liverpool, and which dated back to 1867, was controversially due to be demolished (as at early 2009) and replaced with a six-storey block of flats. That plan was then changed and the City of Liverpool has (April 2009) given developers permission to raze Josephine Butler House (previously the first Radium Institute in the UK) for the site to become a car park.

Josephine Butler's house in Cheltenham, The Priory in London Road, was demolished in the 1970s. However, there remains a blue plaque on the apartment building which now occupies the site.

The Josephine Butler Museum, located on the Royal Artillery Way in Southend-On-Sea, is home to her many writings. In 1987, these were stolen from the museum, but were retrieved in a police raid 4 years later.