For both married and single women, charity and reform work will become popular, after the first half of the nineteen century when women were finding their "Angel in the House" role too confining and narrow. Women now sought to expand their moral influence outside the home. Public service by volunteering turned these women into an active force for change and improvement. In the past, women had done charity work through their religious affiliations, but now it was outside the churches. In England, women established the following clubs, schools, and societies to help those less fortunate like: "poor youth," "poor young women," "fallen women," "handicapped children and
adults," and "prisoners."
In Catholic countries new nursing and charity organizations were established in great numbers: Sisters of Mercy, Franciscan Sisters of the Poor, Sisters of St. Charles, and Daughters of Divine Providence, to name a few. In both Protestant and Catholic countries, women became missionaries,travelling to Asia, Africa and other places. Most of the charities aided other women and children.


Here are some specific examples of these women, who in many instances became famous for
their endeavors.
Henriette Schrader-Breymann, a German woman, became the founder of the Kindergarten movement, that will be exported to other countries, including America. A Frenchwoman founded the Creche society, a nursery for infants and preschool for children of working mothers, serving as the role model for thousands of future ones. Women invented new ways to raise money for their charities. This was the advent of the thrift shop, charity bazaar, fundraising dinner or dance, and collection and distribution drives of clothing and other useful items.
Hannah More, (1745-1833,) was instrumental in the establishment of Sunday schools in England to improve the religious education of the poor, which included teaching them to read. Major reforms were instituted for women prisoners with the work of Elizabeth Fry 1780-1845. Overly crowded conditions, no bedding, no adequate cloth or disposal systems, led Elizabeth to improve the lot of women at Newgate Prison in London. No only improving these harsh conditions, she set up a way for them to learn a trade while in prison. These prisoners were given part of the profits from the garments they made and sold upon their release. Fry founded the British Society of Ladies for
Promoting the Reformation of Female Prisoners, and her ideas spread abroad. So impressed were the
authorities, that Elizabeth Fry became the first woman called to testify before a British Parliamentary
Committee.
With the exception of Queen Victoria, Florence Nightingale was the most famous woman of her century. Legendary for her nursing work at the front lines during the Crimean War, she later made nursing the real profession it is today with a set of prerequisite qualifications and ethical standards. Before her reforms, hospitals were where only the poor went to, and then only leaving in a coffin.

Since the Reformation in England in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries, and the advent of university-trained professional physicians who systemically ousted the midwives and other women from health care, nursing had a bad reputation. Depicted as drunks and fallen women, respectful women did not take up such work. In France, a different scenario was present. The Sisters of Charity was a distinct nursing order that served those hospitalized. Florence Nightingale, after returning to England from the war, spent half a century furthering the revamping of hospital care and the English nursing profession. Her family was not supportive of her efforts, and wanted Florence to take care of only her own family's needs. Hateful of this "lady bountiful" role, it nevertheless took many years for Florence to persevere in her endeavors. In her essay published in 1852 entitled Cassandra, she lamented society's obstacles to middle class women developing skills to support themselves. She also detailed her thoughts that she had to act as a man to achieve her life's ambitions. Florence was not alone in this idea. Exceptional women throughout history have tended to identify with like-minded men, rather than other women. Women did not support unusual or exceptional women, unless they
acted within traditional roles.
As the only daughter of an upper class Anglo-Irish family, Frances Power Cobbe, 1822-1904, worked to eliminate the constant problem of husbands beating their wives. In an 1878 article entitled "Wife-Torture in England," Frances documented the horrors working class wives especially were subjected to. Observing that wife-beating was exacerbated by alcohol, prostitution, and appalling living conditions, she clearly recognized that the fundamental cause of wife abuse was the conventional attitudes towards females. Beating one's wife or wives was acceptable and legal throughout recorded history until the late nineteenth and twentieth centuries in Europe and America. As a result of Cobbe's endeavors, Parliament amended the Matrimonial Causes Act, giving wives the opportunity to separate from their husbands for aggravated assault, the first law of its kind.
Catherine Booth, (1829-1890) co-founded with her husband William, the Salvation Army, the English organization that expanded world-wide, and is still going strong today. The Salvation Army was not only an organized and official church, but a refuge for the hungry and homeless. Catherine became a powerful public speaker and feminist after years of silence, and these characteristics were used to further the Christian doctrines of the church. Their formula of feeding the hungry and then preaching to them, ensured the Salvation Army's success. In a 1882 survey of London, on one weeknight there were almost 17,000 worshipping with the Salvation Army, compared to only 11,000 in the ordinary churches. Catherine along with other reforming women, led the charge against poor working conditions for women, especially those that made matches. Proving that most other European countries did not use the toxic yellow phosphorus, but harmless red phosphorus. Eventually William Booth would intone: "The best men in my army are the women."

Women's philanthropical work was harshly criticized by some middle class people during the nineteenth century. Mrs. Sarah Ellis, a major writer for women and the cult of domesticity, remarked that charity began at home and should stay there. The famous English writer Charles Dickens and the French writers Balzac and Flaubert depicted female hypocrites, women who did philanthropic work because it tended to put them in the right circles as well as an excuse for leaving the home. Scholars of women's history today criticize these last mentioned writers as wrong in their beliefs that these women were not sincere. They say charity work took real courage and devotion, and cannot be categorized as
either fashionable or frivolous.
Women were a powerful force to help others. Perhaps the best summation of women's charity work can be surmised by the obituary of Madame Emile Delesalle, printed in a nineteenth century Catholic paper in France:
"the poor were the object of her affectionate interest, especially the shameful poor, the fallen people. She sought them out and helped them with perfect discretion which doubled the value of her benevolent interest. To those whom she could approach without fear of bruising their dignity, she brought, along with alms to assure their existence, consolation of the most serious sort - she raised their courage and their hopes. To others each Sunday, she opened all the doors of her home, above all when her children were still young. In making them distribute these alms with her, she hoped to initiate them early into practices of charity."

Lady Taimi Felix wrote:

No babies? Of course there are babies! Urchins don't just tunble from the cavern roof like glimfall.

Are you sure? Urchins are very good at stealing and like heights, so perhaps they are born like glim! I've never seen a human baby in the Neath.

And wouldn't that lead to serious overpopulation problems eventually?

I ended up choosing the Parthaneum. There are assorted ways to grind wine and reputation, but the Suspicion removal on an opportunity card was more valuable to me than the occasional quick buck.

Owen Wulf wrote:

Rather odd that the devs never got around to setting up a more feminine clique for an option. I'm not saying that women shouldn't join the Parthenaeum or the Young Stags Club, but those two are clearly based on real-world gentlemen clubs and undergraduate senior secret societies such as the Skull and Bones (respectively). Boys will be boys...

Agreed. The clubs simply seem less welcoming to the ladies and more male-centered.

It would be a bit anachronistic, but a club that's the equivalent of the Bloomsbury Group would be my choice. Or at least something with a political bent more suited for the bohemian or revolutionary types.

The exceptional story focused on the Stags sealed my choice. I chose the Parthenaeum.

[spoiler]Something about ritual murder and cannibalism just harshes my buzz, man. I dunno, maybe I'm just weird that way.[/spoiler]

I chose the Parntheneum, as the Stags seemed too cruel for my tastes, even before the Exceptional Story. Their victims are often among the downtrodden.

However, I would love it if there were more clubs to choose from and if one could be a member of more clubs than one, as in real-life London, even if some were mutually exclusive. Obviously, you cannot be both a Stag and a Parthenian, but what if there were exploration societies, Orient-appreciation societies, friends of the fine Arts etcc? Each with their own stats and cards, of course, and many with their rivalries.

Meanwhile, the Parthanaeum suspicion cure have its own niche as it is not affected by Criminal Record. 2 CP isn't much, but it is free.