ACTRESSES AS WORKING WOMEN 79

ACTRESSES AS WORKING WOMEN

do.43 In so many ways, these actresses had at last made certain stories
thinkable and the realities of performers’ lives utterable. This in no
way adversely affected membership. In 1893–4, the Theatrical Ladies
Guild had a similar proportion of eligible professionals to the Actors’
Benevolent Fund (11 per cent compared with 10 per cent), but the
growth of the Theatrical Ladies Guild is remarkable considering that
time rather than money was the principal commitment. By 1896,
membership had grown to 700; they assisted 57 maternity cases;
clothed 35 men, 78 women, and 115 children (25 of the adults secured
engagements thanks to the revitalization of wardrobe); sent 4 women
to convalescent homes; and gave away 20 coal tickets, 54 bread
tickets, 96 dinners, and 198 Christmas dinners. 44 The Stage
Needlework Guild was formed as a subsidiary in 1897, and the
Needle and Thimble Guild in Edinburgh worked along similar lines
for women in its region.
Carson’s charitable work with and for women continued
unobtrusively throughout the 1890s. In 1892, it was disclosed that
she aided a chorister named Mabel Harrison, who was detained in
Holloway Prison for three months following a suicide attempt. The
case attracted attention when it became known that the DeputyChaplain of the gaol neglected (or refused) to see Harrison ‘because
she had been an actress’. Carson visited her, arranged for the care of
her child, secured a stipend from the Adelaide Neilson Fund, and
found her an engagement upon release.45 In July 1894, Carson’s name
also turns up as the organizer of a country excursion for mothers
and children connected with London theatres. Food, gifts, and toys
were all donated to the picnic and ramble, seemingly a regular event
and comparable to the field-days sponsored by religious women
for children in urban parishes.46
Carson’s second great cause, taken up in 1896, was to establish

an actors’ orphanage. As early as 1887, the Stage took up cries of
‘Why Not an Actors’ Institute?’, printing a host of correspondence
debating the pros and cons of an orphanage and residential school
for actors’ children. An informal nationwide poll of actors concluded
that an orphanage was ‘essential to, and justified by, the present
state of the theatrical profession’.47 One touring actor pleaded:
I have seen the hardships attendant upon dragging little ones
round the country—the poor mothers unable to find rooms
because the stern landlady ‘will not take in children’; and I
was once in a well-known provincial company where one of
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