English
common law had traditionally set the age of consent within the range of ten to twelve years old, but the
Offences Against the Person Act 1875 raised this to thirteen in Great Britain and Ireland. Early feminists of the
Social Purity movement, such as
Josephine Butler and others, instrumental in securing the repeal of the
Contagious Diseases Acts, began to turn towards the problem of
child prostitution by the end of the 1870s. Sensational media revelations about the scourge of child prostitution in London in the 1880s then caused outrage among the respectable middle-classes, leading to pressure for the age of consent to be raised again.
The investigative journalist
William Thomas Stead of the
Pall Mall Gazette was pivotal in exposing the problem of child prostitution in the London underworld through a publicity stunt. In 1885 he "purchased" one victim,
Eliza Armstrong, the thirteen-year-old daughter of a
chimney sweep, for five pounds and took her to a brothel where she was drugged. He then published a series of four exposés entitled
The Maiden Tribute of Modern Babylon, which shocked its readers with tales of child prostitution and the abduction, procurement, and sale of young English virgins to Continental "pleasure palaces". The "Maiden Tribute" was an instant sensation with the reading public, and Victorian society was thrown into an uproar about prostitution. Fearing riots on a national scale, the
Home Secretary,
Sir William Harcourt, pleaded in vain with Stead to cease publication of the articles. A wide variety of reform groups held protest meetings and marched together to
Hyde Park demanding that the age of consent be raised. The government was forced to propose the
Criminal Law Amendment Act 1885, which raised the age of consent from thirteen to sixteen and clamped down on prostitution.