The age of consent is the age at which a person is considered to be legally competent to consent to sexual acts. Consequently, an adult who engages in sexual activity with a person younger than the age of consent is unable to legally claim that the sexual activity was consensual, and such sexual activity may be considered child sexual abuse or statutory rape. The person below the minimum age is considered the victim, and their sex partner the offender, although some jurisdictions provide exceptions through "Romeo and Juliet laws" if one or both participants are underage, and are close in age.
In Greek mythology, Minos was a King of Crete, son of Zeus and Europa. Every nine years, he made King Aegeus pick seven young boys and seven young girls to be sent to Daedalus's creation, the labyrinth, to be eaten by the Minotaur. After his death, King Minos became a judge of the dead in the underworld.
William Thomas Stead was an English newspaper editor who, as a pioneer of investigative journalism, became a controversial figure of the Victorian era. Stead published a series of hugely influential campaigns whilst editor of The Pall Mall Gazette, including his 1885 series of articles, The Maiden Tribute of Modern Babylon. These were written in support of a bill, later dubbed the "Stead Act", that raised the age of consent from 13 to 16.
The Pall Mall Gazette was an evening newspaper founded in London on 7 February 1865 by George Murray Smith; its first editor was Frederick Greenwood. In 1921, The Globe merged into The Pall Mall Gazette, which itself was absorbed into The Evening Standard in 1923.
Josephine Elizabeth Butler was an English feminist and social reformer in the Victorian era. She campaigned for women's suffrage, the right of women to better education, the end of coverture in British law, the abolition of child prostitution, and an end to human trafficking of young women and children into European prostitution.
The Criminal Law Amendment Act 1885, or "An Act to make further provision for the Protection of Women and Girls, the suppression of brothels, and other purposes," was an Act of the Parliament of the United Kingdom, the latest in a 25-year series of legislation in the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Ireland beginning with the Offences against the Person Act 1861. It raised the age of consent from 13 years of age to 16 years of age and delineated the penalties for sexual offences against women and minors. It also strengthened existing legislation against prostitution and homosexuality. This act was also notable for the circumstances of its passage in Parliament.
The Eliza Armstrong case was a major scandal in the United Kingdom involving a child bought for prostitution for the purpose of exposing the evils of sexual slavery. While it achieved its purpose of helping to enable the passage of the Criminal Law Amendment Act 1885, it also brought unintended consequences to W. T. Stead.
"The Goose Girl" is a German fairy tale collected by the Brothers Grimm and first published in Grimm's Fairy Tales in 1815. It is of Aarne-Thompson type 533.
The Review of Reviews was a noted family of monthly journals founded in 1890–1893 by British reform journalist William Thomas Stead (1849–1912). Established across three continents in London (1891), New York (1892) and Melbourne (1893), the Review of Reviews, American Review of Reviews and Australasian Review of Reviews represented Stead's dream of a global publishing empire.
Section 11 of the Criminal Law Amendment Act 1885, commonly known as the Labouchere Amendment, made "gross indecency" a crime in the United Kingdom. In practice, the law was used broadly to prosecute male homosexuals where actual sodomy could not be proven. The penalty of life imprisonment for sodomy was also so harsh that successful prosecutions were rare. The new law was much more enforceable. Section 11 was repealed and re-enacted by section 13 of the Sexual Offences Act 1956, which in turn was repealed by the Sexual Offences Act 1967, which partially decriminalised male homosexual behaviour.
Rebecca Jarrett (1846–1928) was a former English prostitute and procuress who, with reformer and newspaper editor William Thomas Stead, fought against child prostitution and white slavery during the late 19th century.
Mary Frances Jeffries was a madam and procuror in London's underworld during the late 19th century.
In Greek mythology, Pallas was a warrior and a daughter of Triton.
Aja Kim is an American singer and songwriter.
Elizabeth Needham, also known as Mother Needham, was an English procuress and brothel-keeper of 18th-century London, who has been identified as the bawd greeting Moll Hackabout in the first plate of William Hogarth's series of satirical etchings, A Harlot's Progress. Although Needham was notorious in London at the time, little is recorded of her life, and no genuine portraits of her survive. Her house was the most exclusive in London and her customers came from the highest strata of fashionable society, but she eventually ran afoul of the moral reformers of the day and died as a result of the severe treatment she received after being sentenced to stand in the pillory.
Henry Yates Thompson was a British newspaper proprietor and collector of illuminated manuscripts.
Benjamin ScottFRAS served as the Chamberlain of the City of London, from 1858 until his death. As well as an enduring figure in the life of the city, he was a committed social activist of the age, collaborating with prominent campaigners such as Josephine Butler and W. T. Stead.
Dorcas "Darkey" Kelly was an Irish brothel-keeper and alleged serial killer who was burned at the stake in Dublin in 1761.
Government by Journalism was a form of New Journalism pioneered by the English newspaper editor William Thomas Stead in which he began to think of journalism as more than just a position to report information, but through the paper the journalist or editor could become ruler.
The Minotaur is an 1885 painting by the English painter George Frederic Watts. It depicts the Minotaur from Greek mythology as he waits for his young sacrificial victims to arrive by ship. It is an allegorical comment to child prostitution, an issue brought to attention by W. T. Stead in 1885. The painting has been in the collection of Tate Britain since 1897.
