The Enigmatic Josephine Butler: Struggling to Understand the Secular Saint of Prostitutes; Originator of 'Human Trafficking'

2:00pm - 3:30pm / Tuesday 18th October 2022
Type: Lecture / Category: Research
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Understanding Josephine Butler (1828-1906) and her legacy is perplexing. The leader of the first successful modern feminist campaign - to repeal the Contagious Disease Acts of the 1860s - she challenged and sought to change the sexual double-standard which made of Victorian women the locus of purity, while giving men free rein to 'sow their wild oats'. In seeking to change society and to protect working-class girls and women from profligate men of the aristocracy and ruling-class she was willing to sacrifice others for the good of her 'Great Crusade'. Most evidently so in the Maiden Tribute to Affair, in which she conspired with a London daily-newspaper editor and the head of the Salvation Army to demonstrate that it was possible to purchase a child and deliver her supposedly to a Continent brothel. Instead, the Pall Mall Gazette's William Stead and others went to prison for kidnapping and indecently assaulting a twelve-year old girl.

This talk seeks to understand the life and work of Josephine Butler, by drawing from her own publications and her use of legal cases as catalysts in creating the concept of the 'white slave traffic' or what is today termed 'human trafficking'.