The JAPGW led an international struggle against trafficking in women for their exploitation in prostitution, provided aid to the victims and saw to their vocational rehabilitation.
Many of them didn't reach their initially intended destination, stopping instead in countries in South America or Western Europe, due to the opportunities and expectations for success there.
To this category primarily belong Jewish women, among them adults and adolescents, some of them newly married, who were enticed by various means to engage in the sex trade that emerged alongside the migration.
[4] It is difficult to estimate the number of women who were traded in this manner, but it was an international activity whose presence was manifest and sowed fear among world Jewry: they suspected that the impoverished Eastern European emigrants associated with crime would identify with them and spark antisemitism.
Lady Battersea approached Claude Montefiore and Arthur Moro[note 1] (both her cousins), and Baroness Emma Louisa von Rothschild,[7] as well as their friend Rabbi Simeon Singer.
[8] As with other women's welfare associations of that period in Great Britain, the founders were from the upper class and performed their duties on a voluntary basis.
Their objective was to rescue women who had strayed from their path, to rehabilitate them for reintegration into mainstream society, and effectively to break them out of the cycle of prostitution.
The organizers discovered that a large proportion of the recruitment activity took place at the ports of entry when unaccompanied women and girls disembarked alone, confused and helpless, unaware of possible dangers awaiting them.