She campaigned for women's suffrage , the right of women to better education, the end of coverture in British law, the abolition of child prostitution , and an end to human trafficking of young women and children into European prostitution. Grey grew up in a well-to-do and politically connected progressive family which helped develop in her a strong social conscience and firmly held religious ideals.
She married George Butler , an Anglican divine and schoolmaster, and the couple had four children, the last of whom, Eva, died falling from a banister. The death was a turning point for Butler, and she focused her feelings on helping others, starting with the inhabitants of a local workhouse. She began to campaign for women's rights in British law. In she became involved in the campaign to repeal the Contagious Diseases Acts , legislation that attempted to control the spread of venereal diseasesβparticularly in the British Army and Royal Navy βthrough the forced medical examination of alleged prostitutes, a process she described as surgical or steel rape.
The campaign achieved its final success in with the repeal of the Acts. Butler also formed the International Abolitionist Federation , a Europe-wide organisation to combat similar systems on the continent.
While investigating the effect of the Acts, Butler had been appalled that some of the prostitutes were as young as 12, and that there was a slave trade of young women and children from England to the continent for the purpose of prostitution. The subsequent outcry led to the Criminal Law Amendment Act which raised the age of consent from 13 to 16 and brought in measures to stop children becoming prostitutes.
Her final campaign was in the lates, against the Contagious Diseases Acts which continued to be implemented in the British Raj.
