At the Pioneer Valley Ephemera Society show a few weeks ago, we picked up a 1902 Springfield Home for Friendless Women and Children pamphlet and a friend asked if "Friendless" was a common term. In mid 19th c. New England, it was a vernacular adjective describing women who were single, poor, sometimes widowed, sometimes immigrants to the US, sometimes internal migrants traveling to find work, sometimes in dire straits related to alcohol or other vice related circumstances. Sometimes they were with children, sometimes they were fleeing domestic violence, often they were looking for employment. In Boston, an organization that helped homeless women recently let out of jail was called the Home for Repentant Women.