To an old pupil trying to help her unhappy sisters in Africa she wrote: ‘I must tell you how glad I was to see your name on the Ladies’ National List, and to hear from yourself on the subject. I am so rejoiced when my old girls take up this trying question. Only refined and educated women can handle it successfully.’ She also begged her not to be discouraged by failure, ‘but remember the real thing to aim at is the Suffrage. Without the vote you may cut off one evil to find it coming up again in a worse form, and often, but for the personal discipline, might as well be knocking your head against a stone wall.’ As time went on this question of the vote for women seemed more and more important to Miss Beale. She became a Vice-President of the Central Society for Women’s Suffrage, besides being a regular subscriber. Naturally, Miss Beale hoped for reform by means of the cultivation of the mind. Much evil she considered came from want of proper interests and from deficient knowledge of life, such as even good reading could to some extent supply. ‘Give them literature lessons,’ she said to an old pupil who had a large class of intelligent Yorkshire factory girls. A letter to another worker shows in what way she hoped women school managers might help to hinder the spread of corruption. It has the additional interest of suggesting a measure akin to one lately adopted by the educational authorities in some counties:— ‘_(circa) 1889._ ‘Perhaps I ought not to say much; my own vineyard I must keep. It does seem to me that both men and women who are wanting to mend things ought to take municipal offices and all sorts of legal and government work. ‘Schools ought to be able to keep children longer and gradually reduce school time, and could not one get a law that children without employment should be at school? They must have in clerical language a “title” to leave school control by showing their parents are able to look after them or that they have an employer. This wholesale feeding does seem a serious matter, as weakening the sense of parental responsibility. I do hope we shall not go in for pauperising in Bethnal Green. I feel sure we shall not under Miss Newman.... ‘The monstrous evil is, however, hydra-headed, and one’s courage sometimes sinks; but there is, no doubt, a much higher public opinion than there was.’ Miss Beale’s pity for the helpless was not confined to women. She felt deeply the needs of discharged prisoners, and more than once sent donations of money to one of her old girls who was in a position to help them. She also supported Miss Agnes Weston’s work for sailors.