As director of Denison House in Boston from 1893 to 1912, she was an influential leader in the early settlement movement, and aided thousands of poor and working-class immigrants at a time when government relief programs were lacking.
Appalled by the working conditions in local sweatshops, which she learned of through her settlement house neighbors, she became increasingly active in the labor movement.
Arriving during the Panic of 1893, she immediately set to work organizing the house as a relief agency that could distribute such basic necessities as milk and coal.
In her written account of the project, Dudley was careful to note that the women were not competing with local businesses; for example, hospital gowns were usually made by nurses in their spare time at work.
[4] Under her direction, Denison House became an important neighborhood center, offering classes in nursing, English literature, crafts, cooking, and carpentry, as well as sports and a summer camp for children, and clubs for adults.
[1] Along with Woods and other movement leaders such as Jane Addams and Mary Simkhovitch, she helped organize the National Federation of Settlements in 1908.
[7] In a speech at Wesleyan Hall in 1895, Dudley said that the college women had learned, through their work at the settlement house, "of the conditions which press upon the wage earners.
Dudley and O'Sullivan were mentioned in the Boston Globe when they paid the bail of $500 each for Joseph Ettor and Arturo Giovannitti, strike leaders who had been arrested on trumped-up charges.
She joined the board of the Massachusetts branch of the Women's International League for Peace and Freedom and remained involved with that organization for the rest of her life.
A devout Episcopalian, Dudley was also a member of the Companionship of the Holy Cross, and volunteered at Adelynrood, the society's retreat center in Byfield, Massachusetts.