Charity bazaar

Philanthropic organizations of all types, including hospitals, orphanages, schools, and religious congregations, frequently used charity bazaars to raise funds.

[1] Literary scholar Leslee Thorne-Murphy wrote that the charity bazaar was "perhaps the most quintessentially Victorian of all fundraising efforts.

[3] Critics of the charity bazaar argued that selling "sham goods" like tea cozies and pen wipers took business away from legitimate merchants.

[1] In addition to providing a unique shopping experience, charity bazaars also entertained attendees with puppet shows, plays, and fortune-telling.

This disapproval persisted; in 1861 Cornhill Magazine stated that women working in charity bazaars used feminine "coaxing" and "insinuating" to persuade buyers.

In George Augustus Sala's 1894 novel Up to Date, buyers could pay a shilling for a "woman of fashion" to lick and affix a penny stamp to an envelope.

According to Catherine Hindson, this kind of activity upended the distinct separation between the public and private spheres defining Victorian social order.

[1] The casual fraternization of the sexes at these events alarmed some observers, particularly that between the women who worked in stalls, hard-selling wares,[4]: 86  and their male customers.

[1] Victorian author Charlotte Mary Yonge wrote that bazaars led to more women being gainfully employed.

[2]: 881  In Yonge's novel The Daisy Chain, the main character, Ethel, successfully raises money for and helps teach at a school for the children of Cocksmoor.