She may have been a servant seduced by a co-worker or her employer; or she may have been brought up in a poor area, surrounded by thieves and prostitutes, and so was at risk of becoming a sex worker herself. She was possibly in her mid-to-late teens, and from a humble background. When she was ‘seduced’ (a term applied whether or not she was coerced) and had sex, she was a fallen woman. However, the fallen woman might also include other kinds of societal outcasts, including thieves, those suffering from alcohol addiction and the homeless. In the latter part of the 19th century, many individuals were involved with the ‘rescuing’ of these women, and homes established by different charities and religious groups, including the Salvation Army and Ladies’ Associations. However, in some places, including the city of Oxford, similar efforts were being made even prior to Victoria becoming Queen – the first London penitentiary had been established just after the dawning of the 19th century.

In the 1830s, a campaign started in Oxford to finance a female penitentiary, where some of these women would be able to find refuge, and eventually leave to start a new, more innocent, life. As with other British penitentiaries, the aim was to achieve a spiritual and moral transformation – enabling women to become respectable members of society, who could undertake acceptable forms of work and maintain themselves without resorting to crime. In Oxford, cholera had hit the city in the summer of 1832, bringing destitution to some women, whose plight was brought to the attention of the Oxford Board of Health. It was recognised that these ‘unfortunate and pitiable females’ wanted to abandon their lifestyles, and to reform, and that it would be ‘beneficial and charitable work’ by Oxford society if something could be done to improve these women’s lives and to find them ‘a virtuous and industrious mode of life’. The impact of poverty on women’s lives was recognised; the city knew that if a woman was poverty-stricken, she would have to do anything to survive, including prostitution.

Until this new penitentiary opened in 1833, many ‘problem’ women were incarcerated in the city gaol. This was recognised as being an inadequate solution, as young girls were housed with older women who might be hardened criminals, and the latter’s influence was not a good one. The original location of the Oxford penitentiary, on Brewer Street in the city centre, had issues, however – it was too near temptation. There were pubs and taverns, alleys where prostitutes plied their trade. Therefore, in 1857, it moved location, this time to the Holywell Manor House, in a quieter, old part of the city.

Although some penitentiaries, such as the original Oxford one, had been established in the early part of the 19th century, most Houses of Mercy were Anglican establishments that grew up in the mid 19th century, when concern about fallen women started to increase. This coincided with the establishment of the Church Penitentiary Association, which aimed to rehabilitate former servants. The Oxford penitentiary was run by sisters from the Community of St John the Baptist, a religious order founded in 1852, which had a convent at Clewer, near Windsor in Berkshire. The main aim of the community’s Sisters of Mercy was to help rescue women who were marginalised in Victorian society – explicitly described as being unmarried mothers, prostitutes, and also homeless or destitute women. They would be given a roof over their heads, food and company and also be taught skills that would help them gain respectable jobs.

Houses of Mercy established in the 1850s included the Horbury House of Mercy, near Wakefield In West Yorkshire, which was established in 1859 and expanded in the following decade as a result of its initial ‘success’ in the ‘reclamation of fallen women’. In Gloucestershire, the village of Bussage, near Stroud, also had a House of Mercy, which opened in 1851. The latter’s attraction lay partly in its location – one newspaper described it as being ‘situated in a lovely spot on the hill immediately above Brimscombe’. Bussage House of Mercy was one of the first to try and apply a ‘church character’ to its inmates’ training. Here, there was a small, private chapel, two dormitories and land where the inmates grew their own vegetables. The girls here, supervised by a Sister Superior and other sisters, spent their time doing needlework, washing and other ‘household duties’ as well as exercising in a dedicated piece of ground, and praying.

Sisters might not seem an obvious choice to work in these female penitentiaries because of their perceived unworldliness, but they believed in redemption, and that women could be taught morality and learn how to live a respectable life, without the need to control them through punishment, unlike in penal institutions. Those sisters who entered orders like the Community of St John the Baptist were women who wanted to help others less fortunate; in helping others, they themselves gained more interesting employment than might otherwise have been open to them in the 19th century. They also had the companionship of the other sisters, and security, as well as a sense of a spiritual community.

However, although the day-to-day running of places such as Clewer, Oxford and Bussage was left to women, it was a different matter when it came to governing bodies. The governors of the Oxford Penitentiary were all men: the institution’s regulations stated that they should be clergymen or gentlemen. The main qualification for acting as a governor, though, was money: to be eligible, you had to have set up an annual subscription to the penitentiary, or donated a certain sum.

As with the inmates of Magdalen Homes later in the century, girls at Houses of Mercy such as Oxford were made to do both the institution’s washing, and washing from other households, too, whilst the ‘absolutely necessary’ buildings of the Horbury House of Mercy were seen to be the laundry and the kitchens. Such domestic work trained them to do a job, but it also had a religious significance – in cleaning clothes, the inmates were also cleaning themselves of sin. Not everything was to do with ‘cleansing’ the women, though, and they tended to rely on making women feel part of a close-knit community, learning skills together, rather than trying to shame them for their perceived immorality. The ultimate goal was to send these women back out into the world, armed with practical skills that would help them earn money through legitimate means, but also, hopefully – to the sisters – with a sense of God being with them on their journey.

As the 19th century progressed, the Oxford Female Penitentiary was joined by the House of Refuge, minutes away on St Aldates. This opened in 1875, providing temporary accommodation for fallen women (the Female Penitentiary was able to house more women, for longer, than the House of Refuge). In 1899, Hope Cottage, run by the Oxford Ladies’ Association, opened, providing a home for women with their babies; and a second home run by the same organisation opened nearby in 1902. The growth in Oxford establishments was reflected across the UK – within a few years of the 20th century’s start, there were over 200 penitentiaries run by Anglican organisations or communities, whereas only 60 years earlier, there had only been around ten. They may have seemed, in some ways, to be old-fashioned, moralistic institutions, but they continued to offer an alternative to prison or street life for many women until relatively recently. In Oxford, for example, the Female Penitentiary continued to run until 1929, when it relocated to St Mary’s Home in Littlemore, outside the city; it continued to run until after World War 2. However, times were moving on. Some Houses of Mercy began to struggle for funds; in the 1920s, the Bussage girls regularly held fetes to raise money, and by the mid 1930s, it was being reported that there was a desperate need for ‘more funds’. However, more significantly, by the time war started, penitentiaries were becoming mother and child homes, and, finally, women became a more integrated part of society, regardless of their backgrounds or lifestyles.