While we’re all gearing up to celebrate the abolition of slavery, Eye would like to pay homage to a 19th century Englishwoman who campaigned successfully on behalf of prostitutes and abducted British children sold into sexual slavery on the continent of Europe.

This year sees the centenary of the death of this crusader, Josephine Butler. She was supported in her battle by our Society and by individual Quakers. She is a lesser known social reformer but the editor happens to live in the village where she died and had her roots. Plays, lectures and tours have taken place throughout the summer in the Glendale Valley in Northumberland, bringing the extraordinary story of Josephine’s struggle to local people. This picture of Victorian sleaze has been a revelation to many. 'We know generally what they got up to but the details are quite shocking' the editor tells us.
Josephine tackled head on the sexual double standards of her time, particularly those of the wealthy. She campaigned for 16 years to have the Contagious Diseases Acts repealed. These Acts made medical examination of prostitutes compulsory, but any woman living in a garrison town was in danger of being ‘examined’ if police suspected her of being a prostitute. Women sometimes miscarried as a result of these forced examinations. Men were not exposed to such indignities.

During her long campaign Josephine uncovered other vices of the Victorian middle and upper classes, notably child abduction and forced prostitution. In seeking to prove this white slave trade she was helped by brave men who went undercover and by Quaker repealists who funded their investigations and published the findings. Quaker bankers, led by Benjamin Scott, Chamberlain of the City of London, formed the London Committee for the Exposure and Suppression of the Traffic in English, Scotch and Irish Girls for the Purposes of Foreign Prostitution.

The story of how this was exposed – including the ‘tabloid’ escapade of the flamboyant editor of The Pall Mall Gazette who 'abducted' a child in England and sold her on the Continent to prove the trade existed (and who went to jail for his efforts) - is told in the excellent biography Josephine Butler, by Jane Jordan (John Murray, ISBN: 0719555841).