ABSTRACT
This chapter explores the varying ways in which women gained power and political expertise, but were also constrained by their work in private-sector voluntary associations. Mary Carpenter's work for the ragged and criminal children of Bristol in the 1840s and 1850s made her an international celebrity. Carpenter was well aware that the school's opening also inaugurated a new life for herself, a personal liberation from the stultifying prospects she faced as a middle-class spinster. The Ragged School was a voluntary enterprise over which Carpenter had complete control. Carpenter's journals are a powerful indictment of the inefficacy of her personal management and the difficulties of applying her techniques of Christian love and moral suasion to the all too worldly girls who were sent to Red Lodge. The exigencies or working-class life had suggested the need for a publicly assisted welfare program for crippled children.
