The Spinster and Her Enemies - Feminish

‘HENPECKING’
Davies, Lady Strachey, Miss Alison Neilans, Miss Maude
Royden as well as Lady Bunting of the NVA and Miss Helen
Wilson of the AMSH. Seventy-two supporting societies were
named including the Ladies National Association, the National
Organisation of Girls’ Clubs, the National Union of Women
Workers among Women and Children (which later became the
National Council for Women), the United Girls School
Settlement, the National Women’s Labour League, the Women’s
Freedom League and many other suffrage organisations. 18 A
conference was held in 1913 and in 1914 a Bill known as the
Bishop of London’s Bill was introduced into the Lords. The
clauses were to raise the age of consent to indecent assault for
either sex to 16, to raise the age of consent to sexual intercourse
for a girl to 18, to extend the time limit to 12 months and
remove the reasonable cause to believe clause. The Bill reached
as far as the committee stage in the Lords and was changed
into the Criminal Law Amendment Bill for introduction in 1917.
The 1917 Bill included clauses making it a criminal offence
to engage in sexual intercourse when suffering from venereal
disease and clauses dealing with brothels and indecent
advertisements. The Bill was amended in committee to include
a clause which provoked considerable controversy and illustrates
the growing differences between the organisations involved over
their attitudes to the civil liberties of women. Clause 3 gave
power to the courts to order the detention of girls under 18 in
certain cases; where the girl was convicted of loitering or
importuning, for an offence under the Vagrancy Act, i.e.
wandering or behaving in a riotous manner, and an offence
under the Incest Act or any offence under the proposed 1917
Act itself. Subsequently the offence of being a common prostitute
was added to the list. The detention was supposed to be a way
of protecting the girl from sexual misadventure and was
considered to be in lieu of punishment. The girl was to be
detained until she was 19 or for any period less than that as the
court might direct, in an institution or home. Rather than being
in lieu of punishment, this clause would have introduced a very
effective punishment for any girls who behaved in ways which
the courts disapproved of. The spirit of this idea is practised
today as girls who act out sexually (but not boys) are incarcerated
in homes, supposedly for their own safety. Unfortunately this
punitive and anti-woman clause gained much support,
praticularly from the NVA. The NVA commented: ‘Already
those who have been accustomed to co-operate in all matters
80