Charles Dickens established the Urania Cottage London in 1847 as a reformatory, providing housing and vocational training for “fallen women,” and then encouraging them to emigrate. These were traditionally prostitutes, but some also came to the college due to imprisonment or poverty. The reformatory took a very progressive stance on women’s reformation; Dickens wrote to the founder of the reformatory, “It is explained to her that she is degraded and fallen, but not lost, having this shelter” (“Georgiana Morson”). Instead of determining a woman’s stay by a fixed length of time, such as six months, the reformatory implemented a marks system, in which a woman earned marks for positive progress and lost marks for misbehavior. The probationary period continued until the woman had earned a sufficient number of marks. Though the reformatory was remarkably progressive for its time, its perception still betrayed the gender biases of the time; the vast majority of the images of the reformatory were taken from the outside and most of the accounts of the reformatory center around Charles Dickens’s vision for the reformatory, focusing on the general public’s perspective rather than the perspectives and experiences of the women inside. This shows how, at the time and even now, the emphasis remained on the male savior rather than on the women themselves.

The building was operated as a reformatory from 1849 to 1854. In 1915, Gaumont film studios at Lime Grove was built next to it. The studio played an important role in film history; Alfred Hitchcock filmed The 39 Steps and The Lady Vanishes at the studio. During this period, Urania Cottage served as offices and dressing rooms for the studio. The studio was then taken over by the BBC from 1950 to 1991, where a number of famous shows, including Doctor Who were filmed. The studio is now filled by housing, but a source indicated that the site of the cottage itself is filled by a homeless shelter. No indication of the homeless shelter was available elsewhere online or on google maps.