Modern & Historical Research about Child Sexual Abuse

During my PhD I researched the history of laws about the age of consent. I read a line in a 1978 academic article discussing the Maiden Tribute, a series of scandalous 19^th century newspaper articles. It mentioned Mrs Mary Jeffries: ‘Her clients, it was said, included some of the men who had for years opposed age of consent legislation in parliament.’[1]

This suggested that some of the men responsible for the laws concerning child sexual exploitation were committing it! It horrified me. Was this true? Why would a woman run such a business? Why do something so awful? I could not find any academic articles focussed on her. Was it too late to find anything out? I looked on a genealogical site and discovered that there was a wealth of information available.

Since then I’ve been researching her, her clients and the girls she exploited. I’m writing it all up into a book and hopefully one day soon it’ll be published.

[1] Deborah Gorham, ‘The “Maiden Tribute of Modern Babylon” Re-Examined: Child Prostitution and the Idea of Childhood in Late-Victorian England’, Victorian Studies, 21.3 (1978), 353–79.