Handwritten ‘Copy Minutes of Council Thursday Dec 8 1859’. Sir Charles Hastings in the chair: the meeting was held to establish a ‘Society for the [promotion of the] Industrial employment of women, on the same terms as the Workhouse Visiting Society, in connection with the National Association for the Promotion of Social Science'. Followed by Minutes of Council Thursday Dec 22 1859, R Monckton Milnes MP in the chair; with printed rules and a list of committee members and officers pasted onto the sheet. The sheet is endorsed 'Minutes of Council 1859-1862’.
The committee members comprise 11 women (including Jessie Boucherett, Isa Craig, Matilda M Hays, Bessie Rayner Parkes, and Adelaide Procter) and 11 men, together with the Earl of Shaftesbury as President and 4 Vice-Presidents, namely the Bishop of London, the Bishop of Oxford, William Gladstone and Sir William Page Wood.
[Note: the Workhouse Visiting Society was set up by Louisa Twining as a sub-committee of the NAPSS. It existed from 1858-65 ‘to improve moral and spiritual improvement of workhouse inmates’.]