In February 1894, Bates returned to England, enrolling her son Arnold in a Catholic boarding school and telling Jack that she would return to Australia only when he had a home established for her. She arrived penniless in England, but found a job working for journalist and social campaigner WT Stead. Despite her skeptical views, she worked as an assistant editor on the psychic quarterly "Borderlands". She developed an active intellectual life among London's well-connected and bohemian literary and political milieu.