Knowledge of Evil

by Brown; Alyson

• ISBN13: 9781903240632
• ISBN10: 1903240638
• Format: Hardcover
• Copyright: 2002-01-01
• Publisher: Willan

Summary

This book aims to document and analyse the enduring involvement of children in the commercial sex trade in twentieth-century England. It uncovers new evidence to indicate the extent of under-age prostitution over this period, a much-neglected subject despite the increased visibility of children more generally.The authors argue that child prostitution needs to be understood within a broader context of child abuse, and that this provides one of the clearest manifestations of the way in which 'deviant groups' can be conceived of as both victims and threats.The picture of child prostitution which emerges is one of exclusion from mainstream society and the law, and remoteness from the agencies set up to help young people in trouble, which were often reluctant to accept the realities of child prostitution.The evidence provided in this book indicates that the circumstances which have led young people into prostitution over the last hundred years amount, at worst, to physical or psychological abuse or neglect, and at best as the result of limited choice.

Table of Contents

Foreword	vii
Ian Sparks
Acknowledgements	ix
Introduction -- concepts and contents	1	(12)
Contents	9	(4)
Debating late nineteenth-century child prostitution	13	(25)
The Maiden Tribute	20	(3)
Child prostitution	23	(3)
Society in the Cremorne Pleasure Gardens	26	(6)
Conclusions	32	(6)
Edwardian England and the ideal family	38	(27)
Intervention and resistance, the work of the children's charities	40	(4)
Childhood, `moral danger' and prostitution	44	(8)
Publicity, prosecution and public awareness	52	(4)
The feeble-minded and other perceived causal factors	56	(3)
Conclusions	59	(6)
War and the 1920s	65	(27)
The First World War	67	(6)
The 1920s and the strategies of children's voluntary societies	73	(3)
Prostitution: investigation and debate	76	(8)
Unregulated adoptions and abuse	84	(3)
Conclusions	87	(5)
Prostitution, child abuse and feminism during the 1920s and 1930s	92	(22)
Feminism and society	93	(3)
The white slave trade: rhetoric or reality?	96	(4)
Child abuse and prostitution	100	(7)
Prostitution, delinquency and psychology	107	(4)
Conclusions	111	(3)
Reconstruction and a new society	114	(32)
War, juveniles and commercial sex	116	(5)
Post-war social change and social policy	121	(4)
Delinquency and sexuality	125	(3)
Wolfenden and the Street Offences Act 1959	128	(5)
Contemporary attitudes and research on prostitution	133	(3)
Child and youth prostitution	136	(4)
Conclusions	140	(6)
The rediscovery of child prostitution during the 1960s and 1970s	146	(30)
The print media, social problems and child prostitution	147	(5)
Children and commercial sex	152	(4)
Studies of delinquency	156	(5)
Child prostitution, the social services and the media	161	(3)
Concepts of delinquency and the structure of social services for children	164	(6)
Conclusions	170	(6)
Child prostitution in the 1980s and 1990s (Margaret Melrose and Patrick Ayre)	176	(13)
The socio-economic and policy context of child prostitution	176	(2)
Scale of child prostitution in the 1980s and 1990s	178	(2)
Legal and social service responses to young people involved in prostitution	180	(3)
Conclusions	183	(6)
Postscript	189	(3)
References	192	(16)
Index	208