Upbringing

The change from country to town could be difficult. The shining and throbbing life in the big town, which many of the young women longed to be part of, did not always turn out to be pure happiness.

Loneliness, low wages, hard work and poor standards of living forced some of the young women out into the streets to beg for food and drink or to earn money as prostitutes.

There was no public help to be had for the poor, the old, the sick and the outcast. They completely depended on organisations and foundations, which through charity and private institutions tried to remedy society’s social problems. In these, the middle classes led the way. They had the means and the energy to do so.

These middle classes were the mainstay behind the founding of a number of institutions all over the country, which - often from a Christian angle - worked to help the ‘fallen’ women and the prostitutes.

The photos and artefacts in the exhibition are from two of these institutions, Udby’s Girls’ Community School at Funen and The Women’s Aid Institutions in Århus and Environs.

Pastor’s wife Ellen Schepelern walked around the Århus harbour and addressed the young women who were struggling to survive in a more or less indecent manner. In 1905 she took the initiative to found the Women’s Aid Society, aiming to help young women who had gone astray.

A circle of middle class Århus women joined the rescue operation and in a few years' time they had established institutions several places in Århus, where the maladjusted young women could live and work, while being kept under supervision.

The largest initiative for the group was the opening of Katrinebjerg Girls’ Community School in 1914, a state recognised school for ‘particularly difficult girls’ with room for 48 girls.

In the community schools, the main goal of the work was to train the young women to become good servants, who after training and proper spiritual guidance could be placed in private homes. All day the girls were busy with housekeeping chores such as washing, ironing, cleaning, cooking, sewing and weaving, but gardening was also included in the work schedule. Every day they had 2.5 hours of school. Evenings were spent with needlework, songs and uplifting reading aloud until nine o’clock. Then it was time for bed.

Ellen Schepelern remained the leader of the Women’s Aid till her death in 1937. It was hard work. Many girls did not like being ‘rescued’, nor did they care much for the Christian guidance so remote from their own real life.

The Women’s Aid institutions later became Jutland Children’s Care.