Many other causes received her sympathy and financial help. Agnes Weston’s work among sailors always appealed to her, as did also all efforts to set discharged prisoners on their feet again. She had, too, a warm spot in her heart for sufferers of her own class, impoverished women teachers and other workers. Dorothea Beale never cared much for prizes. She felt that the work ought to be done for the work’s sake, as it indeed was at Cheltenham. There were prizes given on the examination results and standards reached, but these were simply fetched by the prize-winners from the secretary’s room at the beginning of the next term. No emphasis was laid upon them and they were rather an acknowledgment of good work than something to be striven for. The College itself did little to attract public attention. It had no speech-day to draw celebrities to it, and went on year after year unnoticed save by those associated with it, and those who had a real interest in education. In the eighties, however, outside people began to honour the College in various ways. John Ruskin was one of the first to do so, by presenting it with some beautiful old manuscripts and printed books. He often criticised the College Magazine. On one occasion he hurt the editor deeply by criticising the verses of a dear friend. To her protest he replied:-- “DEAR MISS BEALE, “I am grieved very deeply to have written what I did of your dead friend’s verses. If you knew how full my own life has been of sorrow, how every day of it begins with a death-knell, you would bear with me in what I will yet venture to say to you as the head of a noble school of women’s thought, that no personal feelings should ever be allowed to influence you in what you permit your scholars either to read or to publish.” And again, a little later:-- “DEAR MISS BEALE, “So many thanks, and again and again I ask your pardon for the pain I gave you. I had no idea of the kind of person you were, I thought you were merely clever and proud. “These substituted verses are lovely. “Ever gratefully yours, “J. R.” In 1889 and 1900, the Ladies’ College won gold medals for its educational exhibits at the Paris Exhibitions. In 1894 Dorothea Beale was called to give evidence before another Royal Commission for inquiring into the condition of girls’ schools. In 1897, the Empress Frederick visited the college, and in 1899 Princess Henry of Battenberg, the latter to unveil a marble bust of Queen Victoria. In the year 1898 there was an outbreak of smallpox in England. It was particularly bad in Gloucestershire, and five times it broke out in Cheltenham.