Another week gone, and the deadline for handing in my dissertation grows ever closer. Today I have mainly been writing about the Contagious Diseases Acts of the 1860s - 1880s in Victorian Britain, Acts that permitted women considered to be 'common prostitutes' (no official definition of such was ever arrived upon) living near certain military bases to be registered, examined for disease and forcibly detained if considered to be contagious. Somehow it escaped the notice of the authorities that actually some of the men partaking in the transaction may also be diseased; not to mention the occasional scandal that occurred when ladies were incorrectly identified (sometimes because they were not wearing a hat or gloves).
Tomorrow I turn my focus to the journalistic sensation that was WT Stead's 'Maiden Tribute of Modern Babylon', (available to read online if you fancy it) in which he exposed the story of a 12 year old girl, bought from her mother for £5, certified a virgin and then taken abroad to a brothel. As you might imagine, a nation was outraged, and additional laws were quickly put in place. These laws raised the age of consent (for girls) to 16 from 13; and also put in place extra punitive measures against brothel keepers. One unfortunate repercussion is that more of the poorest of working girls were driven out onto the darkest and most dangerous backstreets, a fact not unrelated to Jack the Ripper being able to find his prey so easily...
There's a lot more to come; I'm only just getting started; so bloggage is going to remain necessarily dissertation focused and potentially sporadic over the next few weeks. In the meantime, here's a photo of a crow I took recently on a brief study break.
Might it form part of a future project? I couldn't possibly comment.
Tomorrow I turn my focus to the journalistic sensation that was WT Stead's 'Maiden Tribute of Modern Babylon', (available to read online if you fancy it) in which he exposed the story of a 12 year old girl, bought from her mother for £5, certified a virgin and then taken abroad to a brothel. As you might imagine, a nation was outraged, and additional laws were quickly put in place. These laws raised the age of consent (for girls) to 16 from 13; and also put in place extra punitive measures against brothel keepers. One unfortunate repercussion is that more of the poorest of working girls were driven out onto the darkest and most dangerous backstreets, a fact not unrelated to Jack the Ripper being able to find his prey so easily...
There's a lot more to come; I'm only just getting started; so bloggage is going to remain necessarily dissertation focused and potentially sporadic over the next few weeks. In the meantime, here's a photo of a crow I took recently on a brief study break.
Might it form part of a future project? I couldn't possibly comment.
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