nl_e17

"Protection of Girlhood," October 1886
Document 5: "Protection of Girlhood," Philanthropist, 1 (October 1886), p. 2.
Introduction
The following article outlined strategies recommended for use in various states
to influence legislators to raise the age of consent. The author also argued, in
accordance with the narrative of seduction outlined in Document 4, that workingclass
girls were particularly in need of protection.
PROTECTION OF GIRLHOOD.
__________
We published elsewhere a petition asking better legal protection
for women against assault, and that the "age of consent" on the part of
young girls be raised to at least eighteen years, recently issued by the
National Woman's Christian Temperance Union for general circulation,
which we commend to the attention and hearty co-operation of our
readers in all parts of the country. It may be most usefully employed in
petitioning any and all State legislatures, and duplicates may be also
as appropriately addressed, simultaneously, to the Congress of the
United States from the citizens of every State in the Union.[A]
In most of the States, as we have heretofore mentioned, the "age
of consent," in cases of assault, is ten years, in a few twelve, in Iowa
and Massachusetts it was by their last legislatures raised to thirteen,
and in Washington Territory (where women are voters) to sixteen. In
the District of Columbia, the national capital, under the exclusive
jurisdiction of Congress, it is ten years. In one State, Delaware, it is at
the shockingly low period of SEVEN years! This is a state of things
thoroughly discreditable to the law makers of the States and of the
nation. We invited attention to it, and strongly urged prompt remedial
action in the first number of THE PHILANTHROPIST, at the beginning
of the present year, while Congress and many of the State legislatures
were yet in session. In Iowa and Massachusetts, as we have stated,
the subject was under consideration and the age changed to thirteen
years. In the Legislatures of New York, New Jersey, and other States,
petitions issued by the New York Committee for the Prevention of
State Regulation of Vice were presented, but no action taken. In
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