Magdalen Society (Philadelphia, Pa.)

This society was a private charitable organization founded in 1800 by a group of Philadelphia men under the presidency of Bishop William White of the Protestant Episcopal Church and continuously governed by men until 1916. Its original purpose was to rescue women "fallen from a condition of innocence and virtue," but in 1849, the Managers, at the urging of George Williams, began to consider ways to expand the role of the Society to include educating the girls and women for jobs. Not until after the passage of the Pennsylvania Child Labor Law, 1916, was the Society able to redirect its energies: it sold the Magdalen Home, its asylum; elected women to its Board; and appointed a woman director. The following year it embarked upon a program of visiting working children to urge them to return to school. In 1918 it changed its name to the White-Williams Foundation for Girls and, two years later, to the White-Williams Foundation.