History
It was founded in 1857 to reclaim women guilty of sexual transgression
It rapidly expanded into a series of homes for both friendless and fallen women, and night refuges; in ten months 1869 it took in 178 friendless and vulnerable women, 279 prostitutes, and 890 women at its night refuges (Thomas Archer, The Terrible Sights of London and Labours of Love in the Midst of Them, 1870)
Its Secretary was Edward W. Thomas (Thomas Archer, The Terrible Sights of London and Labours of Love in the Midst of Them, 1870)
He was still its Secretary in 1893 (Whitaker’s Almanack, 1893)
It worked closely with the Midnight Meeting Movement; women found by the Movement who were willing to be rescued were sent to live in the Female Preventive and Reformatory Institution, and the Secretary of the latter apparently received £5 for each one sent (The Times, 24 February 1880)
The two were listed as one institution at 4 Liverpool Street in the 1934 Post Office Directory
It no longer exists
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What was reforming about it?
It was one of the only such institutions of its time to adopt an avowedly Christian, redemptive approach instead of a punitive one
Where in Bloomsbury
By 1870 its main office was at 200 Euston Road, which also housed one of its several Reformatories for the Fallen; all its other homes were administered from there (Thomas Archer, The Terrible Sights of London and Labours of Love in the Midst of Them, 1870)
One of these homes seems to have been the Open All Night Refuge at 37 Manchester Street (The Times, 30 December 1875)
It was still at 200 Euston Road in 1874 (The Times, 7 October 1874)
It was listed with its partner organisation the Midnight Meeting Movement at 4 Liverpool Street in the 1934 Post Office Directory
Website of current institution
It no longer exists
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Books about it
E. W. Thomas, Twenty-Five Years’ Labour Among the Friendless and Fallen (1897)
W. J. Taylor, The Story of the Homes (1907)
Homeless by Night: Being the History of the the history of the Open-All-Night Refuge Work of the London Female Preventive and Reformatory Institution, with a Description of the New Refuge at King’s Cross (1908)
See also generally Paula Bartley, Prostitution: Prevention and Reform in England, 1860–1914 (2000)
Archives
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