User:LizzieB2327/Prostitution in the United States

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While official acts of regulation were being struck down, there were those who took this act of reforming prostitution into their own hands. The Magdalen Society was an organization in the 1800s that had sought to take prostitutes of the streets and turn them into respectable women. Their goal was to turn these women from vice into virtue. Motivated by the concern that Philadelphia was falling into social disorder, the society founded an asylum to take women off of the streets. 138 women sought refuge here in the years between 1807 and 1820, and were placed with religious families who taught them how to read convert them into a respectable woman. Most of the women who entered the asylum only stayed for two and a half months, using the open doors as a temporary place to live off the street. The biggest success story of the society was that of Elizabeth Ogden, a lost women who was deemed reformed and opened a school for children. In fear of Philadelphia falling into social disarray from prostitution, and Magdalen society was an organization aimed at reforming these women and giving them skills to operate as respectable women.