After four years of useful training and varied experiences in the West London Mission, during which she had had at some times the charge of a Working-Girls' Club and at others had been sent out at night on to the London Streets in order to save and succour the homeless and outcast women there, she and her friend, Miss Mary Neal, took rooms in a block of artisans' dwellings and gathered round them a small colony of social workers. Together they founded the Esperance Working-Girls' Club, to which was attached a co-operative dressmaking establishment, and a holiday hotel at Littlehampton called "The Green Lady." Later on, after her marriage Mrs. Pethick Lawrence built a small cottage near her house at Holmwood called "The Sundial," where the junior members of the Esperance Club were invited during the summer. Writing of these early years, and of her own decision to take part in the Votes for Women Movement she says: Out of that part of my life there stand out many memories.... I remember a little girl belonging to the Children's Happy Evening Club, who went mad with grief because her widowed mother lost her work, and was in despair. The dread of being separated in the workhouse was upon the whole family, and the child was taken to the asylum, crying, "Poor, poor mother." I remember a girl about twenty, alone in the world, earning a pittance as a waitress in a tea-shop. She was a quiet, gentle creature, who made no complaint. All the greater was the shock when the girl put an end to her life, leaving a little note, with the words, "I am tired out." These two cries still ring out at times in my memory with their terrible indictment against life as men have made it.... We recognised the fact that we were only making in a great wilderness a tiny garden, enclosed by the wall of human fellowship. As we saw more and more of the evil plight of women, we realised ever more clearly that nothing could really lift them out of it until the power had been put into their hands to help themselves.... Suddenly a light flashed out. News came of the arrest and imprisonment of Christabel Pankhurst and Annie Kenney. Here at last was action. So it was that Mrs. Pethick Lawrence had prepared herself to take part in the great Votes for Women Movement. We had now decided to organise our London Committee on a more formal basis. Mrs. Lawrence was asked to become one of its members and I well remember her coming to my little room in Park Walk to take part in the formation of the new Central Committee. It was the first time I had seen her, and I can never forget how much I was attracted by her dark expressive eyes, and the quiet business-like way in which she listened to what was being said, only interposing in the debate when she had something really valuable to suggest. It was later that I noticed the untrammelled carriage and the fine free lift of the head.