The Age of Consent by Michael Pearson

Victorian society -divided by rigid class barriers, obsessed with a puritan conscience, in the midst of industrialisation and poverty -was in 1885 confronted by a sustained attack on the organisers of prostitution in Britain and continental Europe. A “double standard” of morality prevailed, and prostitution was on the whole condoned by the establishment. Josephine Butler rejected the double standard and demanded continence from both sexes. The Salvation Army, Methodists and the Quakers joined in, and William Stead, in the influential Pall Mall Gazette, conducted an exposé of London prostitution and the whole slave traffic to the continent. In this lively and perceptive study, Michael Pearson describes one of the seamier sides of Victorian life -the brothels, the characters who frequented or ran them, corrupt police, indifferent politicians. Here also is the story of the origins of the Women’s Liberation Movement, of the crusading Booth family, and of a skilful but unscrupulous journalist who vigorously campaigned for legal reform.