The Spinster and Her Enemies - Feminish

‘THE SORT OF THING THAT MIGHT HAPPEN TO ANY MAN’
A Miss Costin gave evidence to the same committee about the
indifference of the police to the protection of young girls. She
was indignant that men were never arrested for solicitation,
and told the following story:
as a young girl living in London she had often been solicited
and…when she complained to the police they replied…she
had better go home as the streets were no place for her. The
police had told her that when girls complained about being
annoyed they had merely remarked that the girl was a little
hussy and ought to be in bed. 10
It was not just the police and the judges who failed to take
sexual assaults on children seriously. An NSPCC paper describes
how men of influence would use blackmail on the society after
a case had been taken up, threatening to withdraw subscriptions
to protect their acquaintances. The example given is of a
cathedral canon who threatened to withdraw the annual
collection for the NSPCC to protect a church organist. 11
There was much complaint from the campaigners that the
sentences given for sexual assault on children bore no relevance
to the seriousness of the offence. The fact that sentences for
minor offences against property were higher caused particular
indignation. Mrs Goslett at the 1914 Child Assault conference
was angry that the punishment for father/daughter incest was
often less than that for stealing a loaf. 12 A Mrs Rackham at the
same conference stated that the real danger of light sentences
was that they set the standards for behaviour. The NSPCC
complained of light sentences, and the Shield took up the issue
of sentences again and again. 13
The feminist approach
Women involved in the campaign against sexual abuse of
children included both those who were self-consciously feminist
and those who, representing the Church Army and the Mothers’
Union, probably were not. The issue of sexual abuse figured
largely in two journals representing the militant wing of the
suffrage struggle before the First World War. These were the
Vote, journal of the Women’s Freedom League, and Votes for
Women an independent journal edited by the Pethick-Lawrences
after their split from the WSPU in 1912. In the 1920s when the
militant stage of the suffrage struggle was over with the
achievement of partial enfranchisement for women in 1918,
sexual abuse remained a subject of feminist concern for the
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