Showing the determination and hard work that her daughter would later demonstrate, Octavia’s mother took charge of the family, moving them to Finchley on the edge of London, and then to the capital itself. She took a job and encouraged her daughters to do likewise.
Octavia started her first job at the age of 14, taking charge of a workroom at the Ladies Guild, a Christian socialist co-operative in London managed by her mother, where the Ragged School girls made toys and dolls'-house furniture. Seeing the poverty of the girls at the school had a profound effect on the young Octavia.
Practical by nature, she organised midday meals for her workers, visited them when they were sick and also took them on nature-study walks around the London commons. It was the first of many initiatives that Octavia pioneered to improve the lives of those less fortunate than herself.
Social reform in 19th-century London
Through her mother’s connections, Octavia came to know the pioneering Christian Socialist minister Frederick Denison Maurice, radical thinker John Ruskin and the anti-capitalist critic and author Charles Kingsley. Inspired by their ideas, Octavia set out to improve working-class living conditions.
She began with a series of properties in London’s Paradise Place, which Ruskin purchased for her. Instead of the overcrowding and 12 per cent return on the investment that many landlords expected, Octavia settled for a more modest 5 per cent return, ensuring some of the money was used to keep the buildings in good repair and to improve the community.