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Abstract: 

Although the women’s movement is widely believed to have initiated the effort to provide shelter for women fleeing abuse, many historians actually give credit for opening the first shelter for domestic violence survivors—in London in 1971—to an individual: Erin Pizzey. Pizzey recently published “This Way to the Revolution: A Memoir” (2011). How she came to establish a string of shelters, and the forces that ended up creating and funding systems that diverge radically from her vision and understanding of the problem and its solutions, is one of the memoir’s primary themes.

Keywords: Erin Pizzey; Chiswick; women’s shelters; men’s shelters; addiction to violence

Affiliations:  1: Policy and Program Director FORGE Transgender Violence Project.