ABSTRACT
This chapter examines the political history of one of the many foot-soldiers of the repeal movement, the radical-liberal Mary Smith, who, like Butler, conceived the rights of women primarily in relation to 'the People'. If the government were serious about army reform and the prevention of disease, it should redress the relationship between the army and 'the people'. Josephine Butler emphasised that the mob consisted not of 'honest working people', but of gentlemen, hired roughs, and brothel-keepers. In coming to the rescue of the poor and the outcast, electors would 'assuredly make more secure their own dearly-bought freedom'. The repeal movement found a new parliamentary leader in Sir Harcourt Johnstone, the Whig MP for Scarborough, who moved a repeal bill in 1875 accompanied by a massive petitioning campaign. Gladstonian liberalism had a fraught relationship with feminism. Repealers may have expanded the platform of radical liberalism but they also erected firm boundaries around it.
