The Maiden Tribute of Modern Babylon: The Report of the Secret Commission Book

The persistence of organized prostitution reflected one of the less savory aspects of Victorian life. In particular, attention was increasingly paid to the large number of young girls drawn into this way of life. Legislation, in the form of the Criminal Law Amendment Bill, was introduced in Parliament in the early 1880s with the intent of protecting young women. This was to be done through the dual means of raising the age of female consent from 13 to 16 and making brothels more susceptible to legal controls. For several years the Bill languished in Parliament. At a crucial moment, support for it was energized by a sensational report, serialized in the daily Pall Mall Gazette in 1885, documenting the complexity and reach of organized prostitution as an industry and its reliance on sophisticated techniques for the entrapment of young girls. The full text of this report, by the crusading journalist W.T. Stead, is reprinted here in its entirety for the first time since its original publication. Its impact was tremendous and the report itself is thought to have provided the necessary impetus for the enactment of the most influential piece of legislation in British history relating to sexuality and its exploitation. It is a major primary source documenting Victorian attitudes toward female sexuality and its exploitation and is here generally accessible to the modern reader for the first time. Annotations to the original text identify people and places mentioned and other references made by Stead. An introductory essay places Stead's work in its historical context and identifies the various legal efforts made to combat organized prostitution from the 1820s onward. This essay also addresses one section of the Act, the so-called Labouchère Amendment, which provided the principal legal means for harassing homosexuals for the following eighty years.Read More