SECOND CHANCES
After business success in the "oldest profession," a young nineteenth-century Grand Rapids woman metamorphosed into property owner, philanthropist, author, and actress. Not only did Georgie Young get a second chance, you get one, too! Well, two. If you missed our program during March 2010, go to Fountain Street after services on Sunday-and scroll farther down for a peek at May 8th!
Grand Rapids' Own Magdalen: Georgie Young
by Diana Barrett, Grand Rapids Historical Commission
Sunday, April 29, 12:20-1:30PM
Fountain Street Church, Room 109
The program is free and open to the public.
You can order lunch at the event from takeout menu
More information: Paul Arnold 791-4534 or e-mail: paul@paularnolddesign.com
According to Grand Rapids newspapers of the nineteenth century, Georgie Young was a notorious "courtesan." Aged thirty in 1889, Georgie Young retired from "the world's oldest profession," when she wrote and published a booktelling the story of how a girl from a respectable family could become a woman able to publish A Magdalen's Life. That she did so sent Grand Rapids historian Diana Barrett in pursuit of the rest of her story--and it is a rich one, beginning with the reason Georgie Young published the book in the first place: to fund a home to rescue "fallen women." Beginning with business success in her field, this young Grand Rapids woman metamorphosed into property owner, philanthropist, author, and actress. Her story was just beginning at thirty.
*** Want the book? Since it was used to raise funds, it is no doubt sanitized but is of interest. From Schuler's Espresso Books: http://www.schulerbooks.com/product/magdalens-life OR
http://www.amazon.com/A-Magdalens-life-Georgie-Young/dp/117682113X/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1335537448&sr=8-1
*** Want more substance? Sharon E. Wood's The Freedom of the Streets offers a look at another mid-sized Midwestern river city from the same period and will give you an idea what Grand Rapids' professional women had to fight: "Wood masterfully unearths a striking set of women on the wrong side of Davenport's line of respectability, and she situates these wayward girls and prostitutes in a shared urban space with that other group of independent women of the Gilded Age and Progressive Era, the civic-minded reformers." Patricia Cline Cohen, UC, Santa Barbara) --
http://www.amazon.com/The-Freedom-Streets-Citizenship-Sexuality/dp/0807856010/ref=sr_1_12?ie=UTF8&qid=1335537756&sr=8-12
*** MARK YOUR CALENDARS for Tuesday, May 8th, for second chance to attend Gil Davis's Touring Early Grand Rapids Opera: From the Ridiculous to the Sublime!
Women touring with nineteenth-century opera companies also lived on the edge of respectability. For details, see http://www.torchclubgr.org/rsvp.htm.
