ken, and her hands left free
for service, her interest was engaged in behalf of the women convicts
who were discharged from prison. She enlisted the support of other
ladies of like views, able to assist her, and in 1866 the Prison Gate
Mission began, which has continued to the present day. Every morning, as
the gate of Millbank prison swings back to allow those who have been
released from penal bondage to come forth, a sister stands waiting to
invite those who will go with her to a room near by, where breakfast
awaits them; there are ladies to inquire about their plans and to offer
them work. A great laundry was opened in 1867 to provide employment for
these women. Here washing is done for two classes: for the poor and
sick, to whom the service is given as a charity, and to those who pay
for the work and whose money enables the mission to be partly
self-supporting. Then the ladies extended their plans to take in the
children of the prisoners. A law was passed by Parliament which enabled
Mrs. Meredith and her associates to have the care of those children at
the Princess Mary Village Home until they are sixteen years of age. This
home was founded at Addlestone in 1870, and was named after the Princess
Mary, Duchess of Teck, who aided in obtaining funds to build it. The
institution takes not only the female children of criminal mothers, but
also little girls who are likely to drift into a career of crime. It is
conducted on the cottage plan, each little house having ten inmates and
a house mother to superintend it, and being complete in its own
arrangements. There are eighteen cottages, a large, generous
school-room, a small infirmary for the sick, and a little church. About
two hundred children of criminals and the unfortunate class are here
cared for. Instead of allowing them to drift away and to perpetuate
vice, crime, and immorality, they are taken entirely from their old
surroundings, and new influences of knowledge and purity are thrown
about them. There is no part of Mrs. Meredith's mission which has such
hope for the future and is so valuable in results as this preventive
work among the children.

There are also a woman's medical mission (1882), a Christian woman's
union, a girls' school, and a deaconess house in Jerusalem under the
control of the same association. How it arose is well intimated by the
following extract from a letter from Mrs. Meredith to the author, dated
March 9, 1889: "You will know that my cour