The Spinster and Her Enemies - Feminish

‘THE SORT OF THING THAT MIGHT HAPPEN TO ANY MAN’
instance, described incest as ‘a standing menace to the homes
of many of the poor of this land’. 42 The following quotation
from an AMSH enquiry associates incest with the general
immorality of the lower orders:
Incest is not uncommon; there is much illegitimacy; and there
is said to be a good deal of drug-taking to procure abortions.
… There is a good deal of overcrowding and of back-toback
housing with insufficient lavatory accommodation. But
even in good-sized houses, people will confine their sleeping
accommodation to one or two rooms. Sexual promiscuity is
rife among the lower classes, and grown women will sell
themselves for a glass of beer. 43
The Bishop of Ely thought along similar lines: ‘It will not be
possible to dwell on the causes of this evil – the low state of
parental example, for instance, or over-crowding.’ 44 Ignorance
was blamed for the fact that parents did not know that offences
should be reported or that they were even illegal:
It has been one of the evidences of the low moral
understanding of many parents that in many cases of incest
the fathers have claimed a right to their actions, and in others
the mothers have acquiesced in what was being done. 45
The NSPCC suggested that the ignorance of the children could
be remedied by teaching about incest in schools.
Overcrowding was a popular form of explanation. The
Departmental Committee linked overcrowding with incest and
also pointed out that the practice of taking in lodgers by
working-class families to help pay the rent, led to assaults on
children. 46 Parr of the NSPCC described the effects of
overcrowding thus: ‘The most private acts of some members of
the family are witnessed by others and this low standard of
living is invariably accompanied by a habit of speech on sexual
matters which has the worst possible effect on children.’ 47
Surprisingly enough the main opposition to the idea that
sexual abuse offenders came from the lower classes came from
the NSPCC. Parr followed the statement above on overcrowding
with the comment that ‘Men of all classes are among the offen
ders, those of good education and of bad; those whose character
has never been called in question, as well as those of no
reputation.’ 48 Certainly those organisations which dealt first
hand with cases of sexual assault would have had difficulty in
assigning offenders to the working class. The NVA detailed
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