BUTLER, JOSEPHINE ELIZABETH (1828-19a6), English social reformer, was born on April 13, 1828, at Glen dale, Northumberland, the daughter of John Grey, and died at Wooler, Northumberland, on Dec. 3o, 1906. She married (1852) George Butler, and spent the first five years of her mar ried life at Oxford, where her husband was a tutor. The Butlers settled in Liverpool in 1866, and Mrs. Butler helped to establish homes for prostitutes. Three years later she began to take a prominent part in the agitation for the repeal of the contagious diseases acts and became hon. sec. of the ladies' national asso ciation for their repeal. For 16 years she worked indefatigably on this question, and the incidents of this campaign, which in cluded interventions at by-elections and visits to the continent to secure international action on the suppression of the "white slave traffic," are related in her Personal Reminiscences of a Great Crusade (1896). Mrs. Butler's agitation undoubtedly influenced the reforms in the state regulation of prostitution by many European governments. Of her other writing may be noticed Rebecca Jarrett (1886), which was a defence of a witness at the trial of W. T. Stead; and Native Races and the jf'ar (19oo), a defence of the British Government in South Africa.
See W. T. Stead, Josephine Butler (1888) ; G. W. and L. A. Johnson, Josephine E. Butler (19o9) ; Millicent G. Fawcett and E. M. Turner, Josephine Butler (1928) .