Preventing prostitution: the ladies' association for the care and protection of young girls in Birmingham, 1887-1914

Ladies' Associations for the Care and Protection of Young Girls were set up in the late nineteenth century to prevent prostitution. There are occasional references to the Ladies' Associations in the literature of prostitution and social purity but historians tend to perceive them as either a prudish or a radical force. Previously undiscovered evidence sheds more conceptual and empirical light on these Associations. This article focuses in depth on a regional centre of the Ladies' Associations using published records as evidence. It examines three main branches of the Ladies' Association, namely the Moral Educational Branch, the Workhouse Magdalen Branch and a Training Home for Domestic Servants. It analyses the complexities within preventative work and argues that the motivations of those involved were mixed.