Slum Sisterhood, philanthropy and Sapphic dialogues in Margaret Harkness’s In Darkest London (1890) Garth Wenman-James (g.wenman-james@surrey.ac.uk) Introduction: Sisterhood, Charity, and the Slums My research focusses on three main elements of the slum novel in the late nineteenth century: New Horizons: By the mid-1890s, over half a million women in Britain were ‘occupied continuously’ in philanthropic work (Poole, 2014, p. 3). Up until this point, philanthropic efforts in the slums were often led by clergymen and doctors—typically male occupations. Known as ‘slum sisterhoods’, these groups of women crafted new horizons that made way for major re- forms of the Poor Laws as well as laying foundations for later suffrage movements. Poverty Porn: Novels like Margaret Harkness’s In Darkest London (1890) represent the social reform enacted by these women. Yet, they also act as a form of entertainment, or ‘poverty porn’, to evoke pleasure in readers. Sex and Desire in the Slums: The eroticisation of poverty in the slum novel appears in dialogue with Harkness’s use of the slum space to express ‘Sapphic desire’, an expression of sexual or emotional passion between women (Vanita, 1996). Margaret Harkness: Slum Sister, Socialist, Philanthropist  Margaret Harkness was a socialist, philanthropist, nurse, novelist and journalist working towards social reform at the end of the nineteenth centu- ry  Harkness saw the perceived divides between religious (the Salvation Ar- my) and secular (socialist) philanthropic groups as detrimental to improving the conditions of the poor, stating that the ‘two organisations ought to work more together than they do at present, they have many points of common interest’ (1888, p. 2).  In Darkest London follows the lives of women in the Salvation Army as well as socialist sisterhoods, emphasising the social progress that can be achieved with both groups working together. The title is taken from the Salvation Army manifesto In Darkest England and the Way Out (1890), further indicating the influence that this context had on Harkness’s novel writing  As a socialist herself, Harkness worked as a slum sister alongside Beatrice Webb and Eleanor Marx, both highly influential figures on social reform an economic theory (Ross, 2007, p. 90). Harkness’s experience with slum work sets her writing apart from the slum novels of Arthur Morrison and Eliz- abeth Gaskell. Sapphic desire and Masochism  In much the same way that In Darkest London operates a form of poverty porn which evokes pleasure from the reader through its im- ages of grotesque poverty, the Slum Sisters gain pleasure from their work in the slums.  Speaking of the slum sisters, an unnamed pauper states that ‘you can’t scare those girls […] it’s not good trying to scare em’, they just enjoys it’ (p. 180). A shared masochism (the experience of pleasure when faced with pain or danger) occurs among the slum sisters, who ‘enjoy’ the danger posed by the poor they attempt to as- sist.  Masochism of this form features within Sapphic, same-sex desire as a shared pleasurable experience (Prins, 1999, p. 155). The slum sisters themselves therefore experience the novel’s environment as poverty porn. Slumming together: Passionate dialogues and Sapphic relations among slum sisterhoods Slum sisters enacted social change by ‘dressing, walking, and writ- ing together’ (Rappoport, 2012, p. 136). In these same-sex commu- nities, a Sapphic dialogue was produced; according to Ruth Vanita (1996), the Sapphic mode refers to a same-sex desire created be- tween women through social action and shared sympathetic experi- ence. Harkness herself alludes to something much like Sapphic desire in a letter to Beatrice Webb, where she defined love as the mixture between ‘sympathy + kindred feeling’ (1887); this is represented throughout In Darkest London, with the protagonist Ruth managing to cross from secular to religious sisterhoods. In sharing the sympathies of both sisterhoods, Ruth