Vernon Lushington Thomas Hughes, and Richard Buckley Litchfield, became a unifying force at the College. He was a friend to artists, authors and activists, particularly those of The Pre-Raphaelite Brotherhood and the Arts and Crafts Movement who gravitated to the Working Men's College. In 1856, it was he who first introduced Edward Burne-Jones to Dante Gabriel Rossetti in his college rooms. Rossetti used Lushington’s wife, Jane, as a model in 1865. Lushington, friend of William Morris, was a frequent visitor to Kelmscott Manor. He was a close friend of Leslie Stephen and his family; Stephen’s daughter Virginia (later Woolf) based her character
Emelia Russell Gurney that has endured. When Hill in 1898 was formally presented with a portrait, she made a speech of thanks in which she mentioned particular supporters who were dead: Emelia Gurney with Sydney John Cockerell, F. D. Maurice, Jane Senior and William Shaen. The Gurneys knew Francis Galton, through his wife Louisa Jane (née Butler). It was at their house that Gerard Manley Hopkins met Christina Rossetti and William Holman Hunt. The Gurneys bought works by Dante Gabriel Rossetti, and Emelia was a supporter of Emily Ford. She had been taken to Rossetti's studio in 1862 by Ellen Heaton, a friend.