The Spinster and Her Enemies - Feminish

CHAPTER 4
‘Henpecking’
Women’s campaigns to gain legislation against the sexual
abuse of girls
It was the National Vigilance Association, an organisation
founded directly from the indignation aroused by W.T.Stead in
the Pall Mall Gazette, which was most influential in the
campaign to gain legislation against sexual abuse of girls after
1885.
Many feminists joined the NVA in its early years as they
redirected their energies from the Contagious Diseases campaign
after these Acts were abolished finally in 1886. Josephine Butler
gave her support at first until she became disillusioned in the
1890s over the enthusiasm of some NVA members to legislate
against women engaged in prostitution instead of protecting
them. Millicent Fawcett of the National Union of Women’s
Suffrage Societies chaired the Rescue and Preventive subcommittee
which was concerned with rescuing women and girls
from prostitution and sexual exploitation. The National
Vigilance Association fought not only sexual abuse of children
but many other forms of sexual exploitation and harassment of
women. The Association or its branches provided solicitors to
conduct prosecutions in innumerable cases of rape and attempted
rape, sexual assault and indecent exposure to adult women,
against senders of obscene letters to girls, against sexual
harassment of women and girls in the street. Soliciting by men
was not an offence and the NVA took non-judicial action in
such cases. An entry in the executive minutes in 1902 reads,
A lady, living in Grosvenor Road, had written asking for
assistance with regard to her servants, who were annoyed
by workmen opposite her house. The secretary had seen the
lady and her servants, and subsequently interviewed the
foreman of the works. 1
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