This commencement of the great future institution of woman's club life was made just prior to the close of the nineteenth century, and arose in London out of a great public meeting at the Mansion House, convened by the then philanthropic Lord Mayor. His lordship had remarked that, although overwhelmed with other work, he must find a spare hour for so excellent an object, even at the cost of making twenty-five hours to the day. The intention was that the domestic servants themselves should be summoned, to take up and carry out independently their own cause. More than a thousand attended, and the result was a complete success. Ere the sun of the twentieth century broke over us, this section of club life was already a distinctive and beneficial feature of the social life of the time.
Other classes and vocations of the sex afterwards fully established their respective clubs. There were, for example, dramatic clubs, in which the amateur and the professional freely mingled, and which not only met the convenience, but powerfully helped to guard and maintain the respectability of the dramatic corps. The legion of postal telegraph and telephone employées had also their clubs. Further, there were clubs in connection with female medical practice—a sphere of woman's work which the twentieth century saw fully taken up, and which was generally acknowledged to be as entirely becoming, as it was entirely indispensable, to sexual delicacy and proprieties. Lastly, were the political clubs; for in this twentieth century the franchise had passed to both sexes alike; and not without a distinct political advantage, as the tendency of the female vote had been rather towards general
