It does not appear that until recently any special effort had been made to deal with the problem of the female recidivist: in fact, the study of the English Penal System does not show that at any time the method of dealing with criminal women has engaged that close attention which might have been expected from the nature and difficulty and importance of the problem. The law strikes men and women indifferently with the same penalties of penal servitude and imprisonment. In the case of women it only provides that they shall be separated from the other sex: that they shall be in the charge of female officers, and that they shall be relieved from the harder forms of labour. Generally speaking, the methods of punishment are the same, subject to such modification and exceptions as difference of sex obviously demands. This is not the place to examine those abstruse, psychological, and social causes which render the rehabilitation in honest life of women who have fallen from their high estate of probity and virtue so difficult. Prison workers can, from painful and almost daily experience, endorse the despairing plaint-- "L'honneur est comme une île, escarpée et sans bords, On n'y peut plus rentrer, quand on est dehors." But the admitted difficulty of the task has not prevented the most strenuous efforts being made in this country during recent years to rescue the female prisoner by visitation in Prison and by after-care on discharge. In 1901 the Lady Visitors' Association was founded with the object of securing at each Prison a body of earnest and devoted ladies, with experience of rescue-work and a keen sympathy with even the most degraded of their sex. This body worked for many years under the presidency of Adeline, Duchess of Bedford, until her much lamented death which recently occurred. These ladies working in all the female prisons, local and convict, under a regular and approved system, by their unfailing devotion to the quiet, if trying and inglorious, duty of cellular visitation, and in close co-operation with the authorities, lay and religious, have discharged a great and difficult public duty. They have undoubtedly contributed to that decrease in the number of female prisoners which recent statistics illustrate. Apart from this, they have furnished a notable example of high christian endeavour, and many prisoners owe their reclamation to the light from the torch of promise which these Visitors hold high in their work of encouragement and persuasion to turn from the paths of crime and evil-doing. Lady Visitors are appointed by the Commissioners, subject to the concurrence of the Visiting Committee and of the Prison Authorities, with a view to the regular and systematic visitation of _all_ Female prisoners, soon after reception, during sentence, and shortly before discharge.