9. William Gladstone might have been Prime Minister, but the responsibilities of office didn’t bring his obsession with prostitutes to an end
In 1868, William Ewart Gladstone became Prime Minister of the United Kingdom for the first time. Despite taking on the top job in British politics, however, he insisted on carrying on with his ‘second job’. Much to the frustration – and confusion – of his fellow politicians, Gladstone would continue to stroll through the streets of London in search of prostitutes. It was something he had been doing since the year 1840 and the idea of finding and ‘rescuing’ fallen women had long become something of an obsession for the Liberal politician.
Gladstone had only been married a year when he started trying to save prostitutes. He would walk the less-salubrious parts of London and speak to working ladies. Driven by his Christian faith, he hoped to convince them to give up sex work. For some, he arranged marriages, for others, he helped them emigrate from England and build a new life in Australia or the United States. Gladstone maintained that he only had the ‘fallen women’s’ interests at heart. However, it may well be that Gladstone loved testing his self-discipline, walking the line of temptation but resisting.