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 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 62