Butler continued to mourn for Eva but focused her feelings on helping others; she later wrote that she "became possessed with an irresistible urge to go forth and find some pain keener than my own, to meet with people more unhappy than myself. ... It was not difficult to find misery in Liverpool." She made regular visits to the workhouse at Brownlow Hill, an institution that could hold 5,000 individuals. She would sit with the women in the cellars—many of whom were prisoners—and pick oakum with them, while discussing the Bible or praying with them. Just as they had done in Cheltenham, the Butlers began providing shelter in their own home for some of the women, often prostitutes in the terminal stages of venereal disease. It soon became clear that there were more women in need than they could provide for, so Butler set up a hostel, with funds from local men of means. By Easter 1867 she had established a second, larger home, in which more appropriate work was provided, such as sewing and the manufacture of envelopes; the "Industrial Home", as she called it, was funded by the workhouse committee and local merchants. Butler campaigned for women's rights, including the right to the vote and to have a better education. In 1866 she was a signatory on a petition to amend the Reform Bill to widen the franchise to include women. The petition, which was supported by the MP and philosopher John Stuart Mill, was ignored and the bill became law. Butler considered the Liverpool hostels a stop-gap; women would continue to struggle to find employment until they had been better educated. In 1867, with the suffragist Anne Clough, she established the North of England Council for Promoting the Higher Education of Women, which aimed to raise the status of governesses and female teachers to that of a profession; She served as its president until 1873. A series of lectures, initially in towns in the north of England, began under James Stuart, a Fellow of Trinity College, Cambridge. Although it was thought thirty students would sign up, three hundred joined. In 1868 Butler published "The Education and Employment of Women", her first pamphlet, in which she argued for access to higher education for women, and more equal access to a wider range of jobs. It was the first of 90 books and pamphlets she wrote. That May she