Abstract
This article recounts and analyzes the rise of a civilian-inspired socialization and missionary movement in the Victorian British army. Faced in 1860 with chronic alcohol abuse and resort to prostitutes by the troops, army authorities at the great camp of Aldershot posed various remedies. However, one of the most effective alternatives to illicit night life proved to be "Soldiers' Homes" founded by evangelical Christian women. By 1914 the soldiers' homes were one of the most prominent social fixtures of British military bases at home and abroad. The women who pioneered the movement relied upon social values of femininity and domesticity, and upon Christianity, to compete with army attempts to socialize the men against vice. In the process, they also defied the usual roles of the relationship of women to important national-public institutions such as the army.
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