A Flourishing Society

5GFS/11/3 Photograph of Central Council, 1926. Three of the six Central Presidents and more than a quarter of the Diocesan Presidents during the Society's first fifty years were titled.

Within five years the Society had nearly 40,000 Members and over 13,500 Associates. In 1880 Queen Victoria became the Society's Patron, having first sought 'assurance...that the reports of G.F.S. interference with mistresses of households were unfounded'! Also in 1880 the GFS Constitution was finalized. The Society was to be governed by a Central Council of Associates headed by an elected President, a post filled by Mrs Townsend until 1892. It was an almost exclusively female organisation, being run by and for women with the exception of male Treasurers, Trustees and some senior clergy who held ex officio positions.