Eliza Armstrong case
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.
Since the middle of the 19th century, efforts by the Social Purity movement, led by early feminists such as Josephine Butler and others, sought to improve the treatment of women and children in Victorian society.
The movement scored a triumph when the Contagious Diseases Acts were repealed under pressure due to their double standard nature and ultimate ineffectiveness.
Parliament recessed for the Whit Week bank holiday on 22 May, and upon the following day Benjamin Scott, anti-vice campaigner and the Chamberlain of the City of London, went to see W. T. Stead, editor of the Pall Mall Gazette.
As part of the investigation, two women, an employee of the Pall Mall Gazette and a girl from the Salvation Army, posed as prostitutes and infiltrated brothels, leaving before they were forced to render sexual services.
Stead, in turn, also spoke to a former director of criminal investigation at Scotland Yard to get first-hand information; he later cast his net wide to include active and retired brothel keepers, pimps, procurers, prostitutes, rescue workers and jail chaplains.
On Saturday 4 July 1885, a "frank warning" was issued in the Pall Mall Gazette: "All those who are squeamish, and all those who are prudish, and all those who would prefer to live in a fool's paradise of imaginary innocence and purity, selfishly oblivious to the horrible realities which torment those whose lives are passed in the London inferno, will do well not to read the Pall Mall Gazette of Monday and the three following days".
[1] The public's appetite whetted sufficiently in anticipation, on Monday 6 July, Stead published the first instalments of The Maiden Tribute of Modern Babylon.
The first instalment taking up six whole pages, Stead attacked vice with eye-catching subheadings: "The Violation of Virgins", "The Confessions of a Brothel-Keeper", "How Girls Were Bought and Ruined".
He argued that while consensual adult behavior was a matter of private morality and not a law enforcement issue, issues rife in London existed that did require legislative prohibition, listing five main areas where the law should intervene:[2] The theme of "Maiden Tribute" was child prostitution, the abduction, procurement and sale of young English virgins to Continental "pleasure palaces".
Stead acknowledged that his articles described the situation of a small minority of London's prostitutes, agreeing that most "have not come there by the road of organized rape", and that his focus was child victims who were "regularly procured; bought..., or enticed under various promises into the fatal chamber from which they are never allowed to emerge until they have lost what woman ought to value more than life".
The disclosure began properly in the 6 July publication, in which Stead reveals that he had asked if genuine maiden virgins could be procured, and being told it was so, asked whether such girls were willing and consensual, or aware of the intentions planned for them:[2] "But," I continued, "are these maids willing or unwilling parties to the transaction–that is, are they really maiden, not merely in being each a virgo intacta in the physical sense, but as being chaste girls who are not consenting parties to their seduction?"
"But," I said in amazement, "then do you mean to tell me that in very truth actual rapes, in the legal sense of the word, are constantly being perpetrated in London on unwilling virgins, purveyed and procured to rich men at so much a head by keepers of brothels?"
Before you have made up your mind and got dressed the screams cease, and you think you were a fool for your pains... Once a girl gets into such a house she is almost helpless, and may be ravished with comparative safety.
[2] The last section of the first instalment bore special mention: under the subheading "A Child of Thirteen bought for £5" Stead related the story of Eliza, a purchased victim, whose name he changed to "Lily".
Smith & Sons, who had a monopoly on all the news stalls, refused to sell the paper due to its lurid and prurient content, volunteers consisting of newsboys and members of the Salvation Army took over distribution.
Thousands, including wagon loads of virgins dressed in white, marched to Hyde Park demanding that the Bill be passed.
The government was soon on the defensive and those members of Parliament who had previously opposed the Bill, now understood that opposition would not only mean denying the existence of child prostitution, but condoning it as well.
Although Stead was supported in his investigation by the Salvation Army and religious leaders including Cardinal Henry Edward Manning and Charles Ellicott, the Bishop of Bristol, his plan backfired on him.
Stead, Jarrett, Booth and Louise Mourez, the midwife, and two others appeared in court on 2 September charged with the assault and abduction for Eliza Armstrong without the agreement of her parents.
The money paid for Eliza to attend Princess Louise Home for the Protection of Young Girls in Wanstead, receiving training to become a servant.
