Cora began to attract the attention of reformers, men and women who not only agreed with Cora that the Contagious Diseases Act needed to be repealed but believed that they could get it done through public discourse. Some of the so-called “reformers” were merely men and women that made a little song-and-dance about caring for fallen women just so they could feel good about themselves. They treated Cora as a prop, as something to shake hands with and then move on from, but others truly were reformers, others truly fought tooth and nail to make the world a better place. One reformer in particular became a close friend of Cora--Josephine Butler, a founder of the International Abolitionist Federation, a group dedicated to ending the state regulation of prostitution.

Josephine had accepted fallen women into her Oxford home. She had uncovered the horrible secrets of licensed, “legitimate” brothel owners, pimps, and policemen who profited on a system that coerced girls as young as 13 into sex work. In return for her investigative work, she had been threatened, assaulted, and chased through the streets. Pimps and brothel madams saw Josephine as their greatest enemy, for while their girls hated the Contagious Diseases Act, they loved it, as it gave them a certificate they could point to and say “Our girls are all clean.”

An angry pimp had even tossed a bucket of cow dung on her and threatened to burn her alive during one of her speeches. But nothing stopped her. She had the work of God to perform.

At first, Cora felt very uncomfortable in Josephine’s presence, for Josephine was a pious woman, the wife of an Anglican divine and schoolmaster named George. She was a wife, and a mother, and by all measures she was a successful woman, and in comparison Cora was nothing more than trash. But Josephine reassured her that God hated the sin, not the sinner, and though Cora was responsible for the direction her life took, there were elements of the world that were unduly cruel to her, elements that could be changed so that the world would be kinder to later generations of women,

Cora thought Josephine was a very remarkable woman, easily as remarkable as the manesologists. She was a prolific writer, Cora wasn’t even aware that there were any women writers, and she was interested in recording Cora’s experience as a fallen woman in a booklet.

Cora told her everything she could, and in exchange Josephine told Cora about herself. Josephine understood misery. At the age of 17, she found a suicide hanging from a tree while riding. This challenged her faith, but her faith emerged from the challenge galvanized and strengthened. As a young mother, her youngest child, little Evangeline, fell off a bannister and died. Again, her faith was challenged, but again, it emerged ever stronger.

Cora believed that she herself knew the extent of the world’s cruelty. But she couldn’t imagine what it would be like to lose a child, couldn’t imagine what she would have done in Josephine’s place.

Josephine’s faith had given her a resilience that Cora saw as nearly superhuman, yet the most remarkable thing about it was that Josephine claimed this resilience was available to everyone--even Cora herself. Josephine was fond of saying that God and one woman made a majority. Cora loved that saying.

Josephine had many ideas for improving the world, ideas that Cora believed were wonderful, though strange. Josephine and her International Abolitionist Federation believed, like many did, that marriage was the best thing for a woman or man, but they also saw that marriage was not an equal option for men and women. An unmarried man could still earn a living, but an unmarried woman either had to marry--a difficult feat if a man had ruined her--beg, or go into prostitution. To reduce the tempting incentives of prostitution, they proposed the education of women, particularly the learning of a trade. Cora wouldn’t have believed anyone would have cared for an educated woman, but Josephine was proof that someone clearly did. Josephine was one of the most educated people Cora knew. She particularly had an interest in Italian culture and spoke the language fluently.

Josephine and the International Abolitionist Federation also believed in female suffrage, which Cora thought was a joke the first time she heard it. When, in the history of the world, did women vote on anything? At least with the concept of an educated woman, Josephine could produce herself as evidence, but if history had gone this long without women voting in elections, Cora believed that the idea was far-fetched.

Less far-fetched to Cora, however, was their belief that they could put an end to licensed prostitution and the physical examinations it allowed, examinations Josephine called “steel rape.’ which Cora knew from bitter experience to be an accurate term. Cora knew that prostitution wasn’t always regulated. It only began in 1864. Cora could see no reason why the world couldn’t return to 1863.

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As Cora spent her days with Josephine, the man grew even smaller and paler. He was short for a man, but now he was the size of a child. His obscured stare no longer held the strength it once had. Now it seemed almost comical, as if he were an obstinate little boy glaring at his mother. Esmee no longer had to watch Cora sleep, which freed her up to return to her work at Ernst, Morton, and Glass. There were other ghosts that needed Esmee’s help, and Cora was glad that Esmee could go to them now that she didn’t have to worry about her.

One day, Josephine presented Cora with a copy of a booklet recording everything Cora had told her with Josephine’s comments. It was the most flattering gift Cora had ever received. Josephine assured her that the booklet had been warmly received by an interested multitude. Even as they spoke, it was being printed and presented around the English speaking world and would soon be translated in several different languages. There was a copy in the office library of Ernst, Morton, and Glass and all three manesologists plus Esmee owned a copy.

Josephine had titled the booklet The Morning Cometh. When Cora asked her why she gave it that title, she answered that it was in reference to the great victory she had won over the little goblin that squatted in her shadow. He had clung to her like a long and awful night. He had reduced her to a corpse, then to a running victim for several years. But nights could not last forever, and when the morning came, Cora proved to be the radiant dawn, and she reduced the dark shadow down to next-to-nothing.

Josephine went further in her praise of Cora. She had a way with words and when she got going, she was able to put a great deal of emotion behind them. Josephine said it was the Italian in her. She actually likened Cora’s story to the resurrection of Christ, and if Cora had the blood to blush with, she would have.

Hearing Josephine explain the title caused Cora to remember something Dr. Martin Glass told her many, many nights ago when she had just learned the truth about herself and was frightened.

“You have had an awful night, but now comes the morning.”

Day

1872, Early August

One day, while walking Chopin Street, Cora saw the man.

But this time, the man was not a manifestation of her reputation. Her reputational manifestation was, as always these days, a weak little troll crouched in her shadow. She knew with one look that before her was the true ghost of the Werewolf of Blackwall--because he looked nothing like her manifestation, or the crazy-eyed madman that adorned the covers of so many issues of Illustrated Police News, or the superhuman menace printed on reformist pamphlets.

He looked just like a man in a coat.

Cora smirked.

One cover of Illustrated Police News came to her mind. It depicted the Werewolf as a beast-man with a mouth full of fangs. The cover asked WHO IS THE WEREWOLF? Inside the issue, several answers were offered--the insane son of a prominent family kept locked away in their ancestral home until one stormy night he escaped, the ghost of Bluebeard, Springheel Jack, or maybe even an actual werewolf.

None of the options were a little man with a crooked nose and bad teeth.

He was so different from her manifestation. The way she remembered him, with the darkness and the violence, garbed him in a terror that was not his own. But now that there were no shadows to hide his face, she could see that he was always just a man, just a sad man with a disgusting compulsion.

How could she not pity him?

The Werewolf’s blade and arm went through her like one breeze parting another.

Cora laughed, and her laugh was louder than any made by Agnes Little.

“Your father was a right bastard.” she whispered to the man. “But you don’t have to follow him, see? You’re his ghost. You aren’t him.”

The man continued to stab her, desperate to see a flash of blood and frustrated to find his blade clean.

“Oh, don’t you get it?” Cora sighed. “I suppose you don’t. I stopped being a victim, but you continued to be a killer.”

The man fell to his knees and looked at his hands.

He could do nothing to her, and thus he was nothing.

He wept as if he was a child who had been beaten.

“No blood for you. But that’s a good thing, if only you realized it. It keeps your hands clean.”

Cora helped the man off the ground, took him by his shoulders, and led him through the street. “Come on, little creature, let’s find you some help.”

By 1882, the certification of prostitution was repealed, ending the surgical rape that was legal under the Contagious Diseases Act and several reforms were passed within the Criminal Law Amendment Act which impaired the brothel trade including the raising of the age of consent from 12 to 16 and the criminalization of procuring prostitutes through intimidation or fraud. The swift passage of these reforms is historically credited to reformers such as Josephine Butler, the International Abolitionist Federation, and a ghost best known under the name Cora.