Late-Victorian London was host to a dizzying array of overlapping philanthropic endeavors. A new study by Andrea Geddes Poole, Philanthropy and the Construction of Victorian Women's Citizenship: Lady Frederick Cavendish and Miss Emma Cons, demonstrates that these activities had the potential to facilitate cross-class female collaboration. Geddes Poole foregrounds one nexus in particular: the shared work of Lady Lucy Frederick Cavendish and Emma Cons. Cavendish (1841–1925) was the daughter of a baronet; her maternal aunt was married to William E. Gladstone, and her husband served in Gladstone's administrations. However, from the 1880s she often acted alongside Emma Cons (1838–1912), the daughter of a piano maker. Cons had been employed on protofeminist projects such as the Ladies' Guild, was involved with Christian socialist activism, and had worked closely with the likes of Octavia Hill and John Ruskin. Despite these divergent backgrounds, in February 1880 Cons and Cavendish met at a drawing-room meeting convened to reclaim the Old Vic theatre as a cultural space for the local working-class community. The resultant project, the Royal Victoria Coffee Hall, opened ten months later.

Both women achieved prominence in the male-dominated arenas of education reform and local government. Cavendish was an active member of the 1894 Bryce Commission into secondary education; Cons was appointed to the Lushington inquiry into industrial schools the following year. Cavendish was a firm supporter of female participation in local government, and Cons was the first woman to sit on the London County Council created in 1889. However, Geddes Poole's broader argument rests on the significance of what she believes to be a distinct sphere of female public activism. Women such as Cons and Cavendish entertained huge differences on key issues (not least Cavendish's resolute opposition to female parliamentary suffrage), but Geddes Poole emphasizes the bipartisan nature of female associational activities and stresses common concerns, such as temperance, which united many women. According to Poole, this was a female world of charity that operated on its own terms and beyond the control of men. Apparent male dominance in the organizational structure of charities was often a device to allow men to rubber stamp decisions actually taken by women-only committees.

Geddes Poole suggests that female participation in public policy debates may have been more significant than the campaign for female suffrage in shaping women's sense of citizenship. This argument may construct a false dichotomy between the two phenomena, and it is a provocative claim. Nonetheless, Poole does acknowledge the complexity of these patterns. In two of the Anglican charities with which Cavendish was involved, the Ladies Diocesan Association and the Parochial Mission Women Society, women were successful in constructing independent authority (one is left wondering how working-class women felt about this “woman-to-woman work,” often rooted in unsympathetic views of their lifestyles). In contrast, the high public profile of the Anglican Women's Temperance Society was poorly tolerated by the male hierarchy, and the organization lost its autonomy after only a few years' existence. A clearer trajectory is apparent in Lambeth. Here Cons and Cavendish attempted a new philanthropic vision to provide a “liberal arts” education for laboring people. In the process, according to Poole, a “bastion of women” was established. Morley College (which Cons founded in 1889) was, it should be said, named after its male benefactor, but it was open to both sexes, and it drew upon male and female teachers. The predominance of women on the school's committee and the fact that successive principals and vice-principals were female were certainly significant achievements. This was a pattern replicated at the other Lambeth organizations with which Cons was associated: Surrey Buildings (a housing project) and the Royal Victoria Coffee Hall.

Geddes Poole appears to have particular sympathy for Emma Cons. She writes with praise of what she claims are Cons's sensitivities to social difference and the success of her interclass initiatives. However, Cons's accomplishments might come into better focus if grounded more thoroughly in context. For instance, it would be good to learn how Cons's activities interlaced with other philanthropic initiatives in Lambeth, as detailed in the work of Jeffrey Cox. Geddes Poole's analytical edge is sharper in her assessment of Lucy Cavendish, and her account helpfully frames Cavendish as a public personality. The murder of Cavendish's husband on his first day as chief secretary for Ireland in 1882 cast Cavendish as the country's “second public widow” (after Queen Victoria), she claims. She further observes that this tragedy, in addition to the prominence of Cavendish's own kinship networks, meant that the public sphere intruded into her subject's life (rather than simply vice versa). Beneath the assurance of upper-class status, Cavendish was insecure over her comparatively limited education. These are interesting insights into the complicated interplay of personal and public in the constitution of elite authority.

In the course of the narrative, some errors creep in. For example, the 1870 Education Act is repeatedly hailed as introducing “compulsory” education, though national compulsion was not introduced until 1880. A more significant quibble is the labeling of Cons as “working class.” Cons's mother came from a family of rich Lancashire mill owners. Her father may have been “working with his hands,” but he was employed as a specialist piano maker at the top end of elite instrument production. Cons's parents chose to have her educated by one of the most progressive educationalists of the day, Caroline Southwood Hill. Cons went to art school in Gower Street and later earned a living as an artist specializing in illuminated manuscripts and stained glass windows. She may be categorized as a “working woman” (and certainly her family experienced financial difficulties), but this does not equate neatly to “working class.” Such distinctions matter in a study of cross-class relations. Perhaps Cons might better be understood as one of a growing number of middle- and lower-middle-class women who were seeking professional training as artists and musicians within bohemian and reforming circles in Victorian London. This remains a highly enjoyable and absorbing account, however, and its accessible style should lend its appeal to a wide constituency.