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⁵ [Vigilance] Association for the defence of personal rights: report of the committee for amending the law in points wherein it is injurious to women (Manchester, 1871), pp. 4–8, 13–14Google Scholar. Cf. Behlmer, G. K., Child abuse and moral reform in England, 1870–1908 (Stanford, 1982), pp. 30–8Google Scholar; Shanley, , Feminism, pp. 88–92.Google Scholar

⁶ The description of personnel is Josephine Butler's: The Sentinel, 1882, p. 90.

⁷ Vigilance Association [hereafter VA]: report of the committee for amending the law (1871), pp. 3–4Google Scholar; Journal of the Vigilance Association [hereafter VA Journal], 1881, pp. 1–2Google Scholar. A circular letter of invitation to the November 1871 meeting may be found in the Josephine Butler letter collection, Fawcett Library, City of London Polytechnic [hereafter Butler papers], item no. 3063.

⁸ VA: Report (1871), p. 15.

⁹ Membership peaked at 230 subscribers and contributors in 1872–3 with subscription income peaking in the following year before dropping back in the later seventies and reviving (with the Contagious Diseases Repeal movement) in the early eighties. Approx. two of every three subscribers over these years were women, with husband–wife subscriptions making up the bulk of the remainder. Among women subscribers, the married outnumber the unmarried two to one. Cf. Walkowitz, , Prostitution, pp. 118–20Google Scholar for explanation of similar membership patterns in the Contagious Diseases Acts repeal movement.

¹⁰ Shanley, , Feminism, pp. 49–54Google Scholar. Other foundation supporters of the VA from the Manchester women's suffrage circle included Ursula Bright, wife of Jacob Bright M.P., and the Unitarian minister, S. A. Steinthal.

¹¹ On Shaen's role, see Shaen, M. J., William Shaen (London, 1912), pp. 25, 29, 34–5Google Scholar. Shaen's relatives and close acquaintances included Emily Ashurst Venturi and Clementia [Mrs P. A.] Taylor (secretary/treasurer to the London national society for women's suffrage), both of whom were in turn recruited to the VA executive in the early seventies.

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¹⁴ See esp. Harrison, B., Peaceable kingdom: stability and change in modern Britain (Oxford, 1982), pp. 145–6, 153–4, 385–90, 400–1Google Scholar; Taylor, M. W., Men versus the state: Herbert Spencer and late Victorian individualism (Oxford, 1992)Google Scholar, ‘introduction’ and ch. 3. Cf. Collini, S., Public moralists: political thought and intellectual life in Britain 1850–1930 (Oxford, 1991), pp. 324ff.Google Scholar

¹⁵ Brennan, T. and Pateman, C., ‘Mere auxiliaries to the commonwealth: women and the origins of liberalism’, Political Studies, XXVII, 2 (1979), 183–200.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

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¹⁸ Personal Rights Journal, 1888, p. 8.Google Scholar

¹⁹ VA, , Report No.3 (London, 1873)Google Scholar, supplement: ‘Speech of Mrs Butler at the annual meeting of the Vigilance Association’, p. 3.

²⁰ James Stuart to H. J. Wilson, 4 Sept. 1875, Butler papers.

²¹ Ibid, and see Becker reference at note 13 above.

²² Shanley, , Feminism, pp. 79–80, 93, 96, 102.Google Scholar

²³ The phrase is James Stansfeld's as reported by Josephine Butler in her letter to ‘Dear Friends’ [Miss Priestman and Mrs Tanner], 20 Aug. 1874, Butler papers. This letter also makes it clear that Butler felt the VA to be a tactically more versatile pressure group than Contagious Diseases Acts repeal organizations which could expect to have no influence at all over Conservative governments such as the newly installed Disraeli administration. For discussion of tensions in gender relations within the repeal movement, see Walkowitz, , Prostitution, pp. 96–7 and ch. 7.Google Scholar

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²⁶ Pelling, H., Popular politics and society in late Victorian Britain (London, 1968), ch. 1Google Scholar; Thane, P., ‘The working class and state welfare in Britain, 1880–1914’, Historical Journal, XXVII, 4 (1984), 877–900.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

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²⁸ For evidence that the VA recognized the strength of both these tactical stances, and the costs of challenging them, see Butler papers, Josephine Butler to ‘Dear Friends’, 20 Aug. 1874; VA, Report No. 4 (London, 1874), p. 13Google Scholar. For discussion of the wider context, see Rose, S. O., ‘From behind the women's petticoats: the English factory act of 1874 as a cultural production’, Journal of Historical Sociology, IV, 1 (1991), 32–51.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

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³⁰ VA, Conference report (London, 1875), p. 10Google Scholar, and Report No. 8 (1878), pp. 12–13. Cf. Walkowitz, , Prostitution, pp. 143–5.Google Scholar

³¹ VA, Report No. 2 (London, 1872), pp. 5 and 9Google Scholar; Conference report (1875), p. 7Google Scholar. See also Report No. 3 (1873), pp. 14–15Google Scholar for linked critique of protective legislation and the law of married women's property.

³² Josephine Butler to ‘Dear Friend’ [Mrs Tanner], 4 May 1874, Butler papers; VA, Conference report (1875), pp. 7, 14–15Google Scholar; Select committee on the factory acts (Parl. Papers, 1876, XXX), Q. 13,190 (evidence of Lucy Wilson, member of VA executive committee).

³³ Ibid. QQ. 13,195–7.

³⁴ Feurer, , ‘Meaning of sisterhood’, pp. 241–3.Google Scholar

³⁵ VA, Report (1871), pp. 4–5, 8, 11–13Google Scholar. Cf. Shanley, , Feminism, p. 90Google Scholar; Behlmer, , Child abuse, pp. 34–6.Google Scholar

³⁶ VA, Report No. 2 (1872), pp. 24–5Google Scholar, and Report No. 3 (1873), p. 11Google Scholar. Copies of Wolstenholme's petition campaign circulars may be found bound into the Edinburgh University Library's copy of Report No. 2 between pp. 26 and 27.

³⁷ VA, Report No. 5 (1875), pp. 6–8Google Scholar. For Butler's defence of her tactical position see her letter to The Sentinel, 1882, pp. 90–2. Cf. McHugh, , Prostitution, pp. 75–7Google Scholar; Walkowitz, , Prostitution, p. 95.Google Scholar

³⁸ For VA attempts to locate ‘moral adulthood’ around the age of 17 or 18 years on the basis of community consensus evidenced by marriage age statistics, see VA, Report (1871), p. 12Google Scholar. Cf. assertion by VA witness before 1876 select committee on factory acts that age at which females should be treated as economic adults for purposes of bargaining with employers should normally be no higher than 13 years: P.P. 1876, XXX, Q, 13,208. For useful discussion of the social meaning of such discrepancies, see Gorham, D., ‘The maiden tribute of modern Babylon re-examined: child prostitution and the idea of childhood in late-Victorian England’, Victorian Studies, XXI, 3 (1978), 355–6. 362–5, 372–6.Google Scholar

³⁹ Cf. Walkowitz, , Prostitution, p. 117Google Scholar; Shanley, , Feminism, pp. 150–5.Google Scholar

⁴⁰ For general discussion of this theme, see Behlmer, Child abuse, ch. 3; Shanley, Feminism, ch. 5.

⁴¹ Barrett, R., Ellice Hopkins: a memoir (London, 1907), pp. 112–15Google Scholar. For contrasting appraisals of Hopkins' work, see Mort, , Dangerous sexualities, pp. 119–26Google Scholar; Jeffreys, , The spinster and her enemies, pp. 16–18.Google Scholar

⁴² VA, Journal, 1881, pp. 50–1, 90Google Scholar; 1883, pp. 43–4; 1886, p. 10, Cf. VA, Report (1871), pp. 15–16Google Scholar for VA opposition to state ‘confiscation’ of children of women with criminal records.

⁴³ VA, Journal, 1881, pp. 89–91Google Scholar; 1882, pp. 18, 93–5; 1883, pp. 41–2, 53. For personally expressed feminist suspicions along the same lines, see Josephine, Butler in The Sentinel, 1882, p. 75Google Scholar; Butler papers, Josephine Butler to H. J. Wilson, 6 May 1883.

⁴⁴ Ibid. Butler to Mrs Fawcett, 8 Dec. 1875. Full documentation of the Wolstenholme-Elmy marriage controversy is only now being retrieved. I am grateful to Dr Sandra Holton of the University of Adelaide for a preview of her forthcoming comprehensive survey of Mrs Wolstenholme-Elmy's life and career.

⁴⁵ Butler papers, Butler to H. J. Wilson, 6 May 1883.

⁴⁶ Ibid, and see note 20 above.

⁴⁷ For Levy, see Soldon, N., ‘Joseph Hiam Levy’ in Baylen, J. D. and N.J., Gossman (eds.), Biographical dictionary of modern British radicals (Hemel Hempstead, 1988), III, 523–4Google Scholar, though this seems inaccurate in several of its assertions about Levy's work with the VA. For Herbert, see Harris, S. Hutchinson, Auberon Herbert: crusader for liberty (London, 1943)Google Scholar. Their split with Herbert Spencer over the female suffrage is analysed in Taylor, , Men versus the state, pp. 65–7, 106Google Scholar. Spencer, though he never joined the VA, did allow his name to be used in endorsement of its work and had a social link with its members through the ‘Aubrey House circle’ of Clementia and Taylor, P. A.: VA Journal, 1884, p. 19Google Scholar. See also Duncan, D., The life and letters of Herbert Spencer (London, 1908), p. 420Google Scholar, for evidence of Josephine Butler's later-life interest in reconciling her own principles of libertarian action with those of Spencer.

⁴⁸ The choice between personal freedom and state protection: addresses delivered by the hon. Auberon Herbert and Mrs Butler at the annual meeting of the Vigilance Association, 1880 (London, 1880)Google Scholar; VA Journal, 1883, pp. 1 and 25; 1885, p. 3. See also the retrospective survey in Personal Rights Journal, 1894, pp. 79–80 which makes clear the strictly Liberal Party focus of the VA's efforts at this time. Neither the VA nor Spencer would accept their position as compatible with ‘Toryism’, pace Greenleaf, W. H., The British political tradition (London, 1983), II, 264ffGoogle Scholar. Cf. Taylor, , Men versus the state, pp. 262ffGoogle Scholar., esp. pp. 272–4.

⁴⁹ VA Journal, 1883, p. 42. See also 1881, p. 50; 1882, p. 18.

⁵⁰ VA, , Report No. 12 (London, 1883)Google Scholar. See also VA, Journal, 1882, pp. 93–5Google Scholar, and cf. (for evidence of similar qualms within government ranks), Mort, , Dangerous sexualities, p. 128.Google Scholar

⁵¹ VA Journal, 1882, p. 85Google Scholar. This attitude is congruent with Josephine Butler's private views on indecency between males (also criminalized by the finally enacted criminal law amendment bill of 1885): Butler papers, James Stuart to H. J. Wilson, 11 Aug. 1875.

⁵² VA Journal, 1883, pp. 42 and 105.Google Scholar

⁵³ Ibid. 1885, p. 19 (Dr Bell Taylor of Nottingham). For official VA policy on the bill as debated and enacted – less vehement but still negative – see pp. 31, 66–9.

⁵⁴ Butler papers, Butler to ‘Dear Friend’ [Miss Priestman], 5 June 1885.

⁵⁵ The same to the same, 4 Oct. 1884.

⁵⁶ The same to the same, 1 Aug. 1885.

⁵⁷ See e.g. Butler papers, Butler to ‘Dear Friends’, 10 July 1885, where, in the aftermath of Stead's ‘maiden tribute’ revelations, she talks of ‘judgment day for the vicious upper classes’. Cf. Walkowitz, , Prostitution, pp. 248–9Google Scholar; McHugh, , Prostitution, pp. 246–7Google Scholar. Note also the likely influence on Butler's tactical thinking of the successful campaign under ‘democratic’ political conditions of her French libertarian ally, Yves Guyot, during the later 1870s against the Paris police des moeurs. This campaign was (like Stead's) strikingly dependent on the triggers of press-circulated scandal and legal martyrdom: Harsin, J., Policing prostitution in 19th-century Paris (Princeton, 1985), pp. 324ffGoogle Scholar. For Butler's attraction to certain aspects of Stead's melodramatic techniques of opinion-raising, see the compelling analysis in Walkowitz, J., City of dreadful delight: narratives of sexual danger in late-Victorian London (Chicago, 1992), pp. 87ff.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

⁵⁸ Butler papers, Butler to ‘Dear Friend’ [Miss Priestman], 4 Oct. 1884; The Sentinel, 1882, p. 75; 1886, pp. 6–7 (reprint of Butler correspondence with Scotland Yard in 1881).

⁵⁹ Butler papers, Butler to ‘Dear Friends’, 10 July 1885.

⁶⁰ The same to the same, 17 Aug. 1885.

⁶¹ VA Journal, 1886, p. 12. See also p. 24.

⁶² Ibid. pp. 12–13 (Lucy Wilson, VA executive member); p. 22 (Mrs S. W. Browne, secretary of the Moral Reform Union, and a generous contributor to VA funds in the early 1870s).

⁶³ Ibid. p. 14.

⁶⁴ The key ‘police clause’ in the 1885 Act was s. 13 which set out a summary procedure for shutting down brothels, thus evicting prostitutes who could then be picked up on the streets under the provisions of the Vagrant Act. For the vagaries of police and magistrate interpretation of this latter act during the 1880s, see Storch, R., ‘Police control of street prostitution in Victorian London’ in Bayley, D. H. (ed.), Police and society (London, 1977), p. 53–6.Google Scholar

⁶⁵ Elizabeth, Wolstenholme-Elmy, ‘English and French morality’, VA Journal, 1886, pp. 13, 25, 38Google Scholar, and esp. pp. 49–50.

⁶⁶ VA Journal, 1886, p. 24.Google Scholar

⁶⁷ Ibid. pp. 9–10, 13.

⁶⁸ Ibid. pp. 54, 71.

⁶⁹ Caine, , Victorian feminists, pp. 229–30Google Scholar; Rubinstein, D., ‘Millicent Garrett Fawcett and the meaning of women's emancipation, 1886–99’, Victorian Studies, XXXIV, 3 (1991), pp. 369–71Google Scholar. See also Bland, L., ‘Purifying the public world: feminist vigilantes in late Victorian England’, Women's History Review, I (1992), 397–412CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Walkowitz, , City of dreadful delight, pp. 132–4.Google Scholar

⁷⁰ Caine, pp. 191, 256–7. Note also Becker's support of Stead in 1885: Women's Suffrage Journal, 1885, p. 143.Google Scholar

⁷¹ The NVA treasurer, Francis Peek, also had VA links, having been a major contributor to its funds in the early and mid-seventies. For full NVA executive in 1886, see Bristow, E. J., Vice and vigilance: purity movements in Britain since 1700Google Scholar, appendix B.

⁷² Personal Rights Journal, 1887, p. 56Google Scholar; John, , By the sweat of their brow, pp. 148–57.Google Scholar

⁷³ Coote, W. A., A romance of philanthropy (London, 1916), pp. 155ff.Google Scholar; and see note 70 above.

⁷⁴ Personal Rights Journal, 1888, p. 38Google Scholar. Cf also 1886, pp. 81–2; 1889, pp. 3–4.

⁷⁵ Ibid. 1887, p. 97; and 1888, p. 80.

⁷⁶ Butler papers, Butler to ‘Dear Friends’, 17 Aug. 1885.

⁷⁷ Butler to Miss Priestman, 1 Aug. 1885.

⁷⁸ The same to the same, 9 Sept. 1891, cited in Bristow, , Vice and vigilance, p. 117.Google Scholar

⁷⁹ ‘He is a dangerous man…He has no tact, and as you say, Rhoda, he “has not a nice way of putting things”’: Butler papers, Josephine Butler to her daughter-in-law, Rhoda Butler, Oct. 1896. Cf. Walkowitz, , City of dreadful delight, pp. 117–20.Google Scholar

⁸⁰ Ibid. Cf. Caine, , Victorian feminists, p. 188Google Scholar; Uglow, J., ‘Josephine Butler: from sympathy to theory’ in Spender, D. (ed.), Feminist theorists (London, 1983), pp. 146–9Google Scholar. It is worth noting that one path forward acceptable to a key group of evangelically committed Liberal intellectuals during the 1880s – T. H. Green's idealist conception of ‘ethical fulfilment’ via ‘active citizenship’ – seems not to have been explored by Butler, though Green had been an ardent fringe supporter of her circle in the early 1870s: Anderson, O., ‘The feminism of T. H. Green’, History of Political Thought, XII, 4 (1991), 678–80, 686–92.Google Scholar

⁸¹ Lucy Wilson (1834–91), candidate in first Leeds school board election (1870); moved to London on father's death (1876); member of VA executive (1871–86), married women's property committee (1876–82), ladies’ national association for repeal of Contagious Diseases Acts executive (1885–6), etc.; anti-vivisectionist, vegetarian, promoter of rational dress for women: Personal Rights Journal, 1891, p. 106.Google Scholar

⁸² See note 67 above.

⁸³ Moral reform union: report no. 5 (1887), p. 5Google Scholar. Cf. Hollis, P., Ladies elect: women in English local government 1865–1914 (Oxford, 1987), pp. 317–23.Google Scholar

⁸⁴ The equal rights/essentialist distinction is traced from late sixties sources forward in Holton, S. S., Feminism and democracy: women's suffrage and reform politics in Britain 1900–1918 (Cambridge, 1986), pp. 12–18Google Scholar. See also Caine, , Victorian feminists, pp. 41–2.Google Scholar

⁸⁵ Moral reform union: report no. 1 (1882), pp. 3–4, 14Google Scholar; and no. 4 (1886), p. 3.

⁸⁶ The MRU felt that ‘girls below eighteen are immature’ and restricted full participation in its own activities to members twenty-five years and above. For its unconditional support of Stead in 1885 and conditional approval of the 1885 Act, see its Report no. 4 (1886), pp. 4–10. The ultimate result of attempts to tighten the 1885 Act is set out in Mort, , Dangerous sexualities, pp. 144–8.Google Scholar

⁸⁷ Shanley, , Feminism, p. 182Google Scholar. See also pp. 143–9, 156, 184–8. For the original Millite formulation of the case against coerced marital sexual activity, see The subjection of women, p. 148.

⁸⁸ Personal Rights Journal, 1889, p. 12Google Scholar; and 1890, p. 28. Other ex-VA supporters of the Women's Franchise League included Josephine Butler, Ursula Bright and Clementia Taylor. (My thanks to Sandra Holton for this information.)

⁸⁹ Cf. Gatrell, V. A. C., ‘Crime, authority and the policeman-state’, in Thompson, F. M. L. (ed.), The Cambridge social history of Britain (3 vols., Cambridge, 1990), pp. 257ff.Google Scholar; Wiener, M. J., Reconstructing the criminal: culture, law and policy in England, 1830–1914 (Cambridge, 1990), pp. 149–56, 261–2, 303–4.Google Scholar

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⁹² See examples referenced at note 20 above.

⁹³ Note Mill's lack of interest in exploring the transition from childhood to adulthood: Subjection of women, pp. 160–1. Note also Butler's tactical willingness to subordinate age of consent legislation to Contagious Diseases Acts priorities in 1872 (note 37 above). Cf. assertion by Contagious Diseases Acts repeal activist, Alicia Bewicke (Sentinel, 1883, p. 199) that, at meetings to discuss criminal law amendment bill proposals to raise age of protection against seduction to 16 years, ‘some mother has invariably moved the amendment that the age should be 18 or 21, and this amendment has been invariably carried unanimously’.

⁹⁴ See Levine, , Feminist lives, pp. 80–1, 87, 94ff.Google Scholar; Mort, , Dangerous sexualities, pp. 117–26Google Scholar. Cf. Gray, J., Liberalism: essays in political philosophy (London, 1989), chs 9 and 12, esp. pp. 150–3Google Scholar, for discussion of the continuing tensions in liberal theory between ‘utilitarian’ and ‘entitlement-based’ concepts of liberty.

⁹⁵ Bellamy, R., Victorian liberalism: nineteenth-century political thought and practice (London, 1990), pp. 10–11Google Scholar; Taylor, , Men versus the state, pp. 5–6, 32–3.Google Scholar

⁹⁶ Ibid, chs 2–5. See also Hall, S. & Schwarz, B., ‘State and society, 1880–1930’, in Crises in the British state (London, 1988), pp. 8–18Google Scholar; Caine, , Victorian feminists, pp. 247–50.Google Scholar

⁹⁷ Holton, , Feminism and democracy, pp. 13–16Google Scholar. Cf. Lewis, J., Women and social action in Victorian and Edwardian England (Aldershot, 1991), pp. 304–6.Google Scholar