Girl Trouble (33 page)

To highlight the ways in which girls' and young women's lives have changed for the better is not to suggest that there aren't still problems deriving from double standards and inequality. Of course there are. Sexual double standards still distort and damage young women's lives. Material inequalities – and the ways in which these appear to be widening – give profound cause for concern. These inequalities constrain and distort the life chances of girls, particularly those from less privileged social
backgrounds. The historian bent on taking the long view may discern clear signs of progress, but this is not in any way to surrender to complacency. For history also demonstrates the ever-present possibilities of backlash, reaction and new oppressive forces. Young women need feminism as much as ever, if they are to see their lives in context and to live them fully.

NOTES

Introduction

1
See for instance, McRobbie, A.,
The Aftermath of Feminism: Gender, Culture and Social Change
, London: Sage, 2009, especially the Introduction; Harris, Anita
, Future Girl: Young Women in the Twenty-first Century,
London: Routledge, 2004; Ringrose, J., ‘Successful Girls? Complicating Post-Feminist, Neoliberal Discourses of Educational Achievement and Gender Equality',
Gender and Education,
19:4, 2007, pp. 471–89; Gonick, M., ‘Between “Girl Power” and “Reviving Ophelia”: Constituting the Neoliberal Girl Subject',
National Women's Studies Association Journal,
18:2, 2006, pp. 1–23. There is a wide range of viewpoints in Harris, A., (ed.),
All About the Girl: Culture, Power and Identity,
Abingdon: Routledge, 2004; see also Aapola, S., Gonick, M., and Harris, A. (eds),
Young Femininity: Girlhood, Power and Social Change
, Houndmills: Palgrave, 2005.

2
Purvis, J., ‘The Prison Experiences of the Suffragettes in Edwardian Britain',
Women's History Review
, 4:1, 1995, pp. 103–33.

3
In 1963, the Conservative politician John Profumo was at the centre of a widely publicised scandal involving sex and fears about national security.

4
For example, Gillis, S., and Munford, R., ‘Genealogies and Generations: The Politics and Praxis of Third Wave Feminism',
Women's History Review
, 13:2, pp. 165–82; Baumgardner, J., and Richards, A.,
Manifesta: Young Women, Feminism and the Future
, New York: Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 2000.

1 White slavery

1
Robins, E.,
Where Are You Going To?
London: Heinemann, 1913; John, Angela V.,
Elizabeth Robins: Staging a Life, 1862–1952,
London: Routledge, 1995, p. 185.

2
Thomas, S., ‘Crying “the Horror” of Prostitution: Elizabeth Robin's “
Where Are You Going To…?”
and the Moral Crusade of the Women's Social and Political Union', in
Women, A Cultural Review
, 16:2, 2005, pp. 203–21.

3
Martindale, L.,
Under The Surface
, Brighton: Southern Publishing Company, 1909. There were at least six editions of the book. Pankhurst, C.,
The Great Scourge and How To End It
, London: E. Pankhurst, 1913.

4
John,
Elizabeth Robins,
p. 185.

5
Pankhurst,
The Great Scourge
, p. 152.

6
Kent, S. Kingsley,
Sex and Suffrage in Britain, 1860–1914
, London: Routledge, 1995, pp. 5–7 for a summary of the different ways in which
The Great Scourge
has been received. See also Savage, G., ‘“The Wilful Communication of a Loathsome Disease”: Marital Conflict and Venereal Disease in Victorian England',
Victorian Studies,
1990, 34:1, pp. 35–54.

7
Pankhurst,
The Great Scourge,
Appendix, p. 134, ‘The Truth about the Piccadilly Flat Case'.

8
Information on the Piccadilly Flat case comes mainly from Home Office Papers in the National Archives (HO 45/24649). This file includes press cuttings and contemporary pamphlets. See also James Keir Hardie's
The Queenie Gerald Case: A Public Scandal
, Manchester and London: National Labour Press, 1913. There is further material on Queenie Gerald's activities in the Metropolitan Police Files in the National Archives (MEPO 3/1352). Hansard records details of the questions Keir Hardie asked about the case in the House of Commons, on 6 August 1913, together with the Home Secretary's answers.

9
‘The Midwife', Report of Central Midwives' Board, in
British Journal of Nursing Supplement,
15 November 1913, p. 415.

10
Hardie,
Hansard
, 6 August 1913, p. 16.

11
National Archives, HO 45/24649.

12
http://hansard.millbanksystems.com/commons/1913/aug/05/queenie-gerald-prosecution
.

13
National Archives, MEPO 3/228. See also MEPO 2/1763, 2/1610.

14
Willis, W. N.,
White Slaves in a Piccadilly Flat,
London: Anglo-Eastern Publishing Company, 1915.

15
Ibid., esp. pp. 10, 22, 38 and 49.

16
HO 45/24649.

17
See Chief Inspector's report of visit to Queenie Gerald's flat at 85 Newman Street in December 1927. This contains a mass of fascinating detail. Mrs G. was reported as having greeted her visitor ‘dressed in a loose kind of white silk sleeveless dress or covering, apparently of the best quality, which was scalloped round the bottom and which showed at the sides at least 5 inches of her naked thigh above the knees. She also wore white silk stockings worked with sequins on the front, with large garters with ornaments above her knees, white high heeled shoes, also worked with sequins.'

‘I have never, during my career, ever seen a person dressed in this condition when calling to make an enquiry respecting any matter,' commented the inspector somewhat breathlessly. A note is appended to the description suggesting that ‘no officer should call alone to see this woman'; further, ‘no junior officer should call to see her on any enquiry whatever'. All this is in MEPO 3/1352.

18
See press cuttings from
John Bull
and correspondence 1917–1920 in HO 45/24649.

19
The W. T. Stead Resource site
www.attackingthedevil.co.uk/
is a good introduction, and has the complete text of Stead's ‘Maiden Tribute' articles as originally published in the
Pall Mall Gazette.
See also Walkowitz, J.,
City of Dreadful Delight: Narratives of Sexual Danger in Late Victorian London,
Chicago, IL and London: Virago, 1992. There is an older, less academic account by Charles Terrot,
The Maiden Tribute: A Study of the White Slave Traffic of the Nineteenth Century,
London: Muller, 1959. This was published in the USA in 1960 as
Traffic in Innocents: The Shocking Story of White Slavery in England.
See also Plowden, A.,
The Case of Eliza Armstrong, ‘A Child of 13 Bought for £5'
, London: BBC Publications, 1974.

20
Report of the Select Committee of the House of Lords on the Law Relating to the Protection of Young Girls from Artifices to Induce Them to lead a Corrupt Life, PP. 1881, vol. XIII and 1882, vol. IX.

21
‘The Maiden Tribute of Modern Babylon: The Report of Our Secret Commission', serialised in the
Pall Mall Gazette,
from 6 July 1885, reproduced at
www.attackingthedevil.co.uk/
.

22
For an interesting discussion of this, see Deborah Gorham's ‘The “Maiden Tribute of Modern Babylon” Re-Examined: Child Prostitution and the Idea of Childhood in Late Victorian England',
Victorian Studies,
21:3, Spring 1978, pp. 353–79.

23
See, for instance, Bristow, Edward J.,
Vice and Vigilance: Purity Movements in Britain since 1700,
Dublin: Gill and Macmillan, 1977; Bland, L.,
Banishing the Beast: English Feminism and Sexual Morality 1885–1914
, London: Penguin, 1995.

24
See particularly Doezema, J., ‘Sex Slaves and Discourse Masters: The Historical Construction of “Trafficking in Women”', D. Phil. thesis, University of Sussex, Institute of Development Studies, 2005. A version of this thesis was published as
Sex Slaves and Discourse Masters: The Construction of Trafficking,
London: Zed Books, 2010. See also Irwin, Mary Ann, ‘“White Slavery” as Metaphor: Anatomy of a Moral Panic',
Ex Post
Facto:
The History Journal,
1996, vol. V, San Francisco State University,
www.walnet.org/csis/papers/irwin-wslavery.html
.

25
See collections in the Women's Library, London Metropolitan University, which holds the records of the National Vigilance Association, 1885–1969, including a large collection of pamphlets on the white slave trade, e.g. ‘White Slave Trade Official Documents 1905–7', ‘White Slave Traffic 1912 and After'. Pamphlets in papers of the Ladies' National Association for the Abolition of the State Regulation of Vice and the Promotion of Social Purity, 1869–1915, also held in the Woman's Library. See also: Report of International Conference on ‘The White Slave Traffic' held in Paris 1902, presented to Parliament August 1905 (Cd 2667, HMSO). There is relevant material in the National Archives, especially MEPO 2/558 and MEPO 2/1312. Jens Jäger has brought some of this material together in ‘International Police Co-Operation and the Associations for the Fight Against White Slavery',
Paedagogica Historica
, 38:2, pp. 565–79.

26
Report of International Conference on ‘The White Slave Traffic' held in Paris 1902.

27
National Archives, MEPO 3/228, MEPO 2/1610. MEPO 2/1763.

28
See reports in the
Manchester Guardian,
‘White Slave Traffic, The King's Message', 2 July 1913, p. 10, and ‘The White Slave Traffic Conference', 5 July 1913, p. 10.

29
See, for instance, Lindsey, Shelley Stamp, ‘Is Any Girl Safe? Female Spectators at the White Slave Films',
Screen
, 37:1, Spring 1996, pp. 1–15. See also Bristow,
Vice and Vigilance
, pp. 189–90.

30
Lindsey, ‘Is Any Girl Safe?' p. 10. On concern over white slavery in the US see,
inter alia
, Donovan, B.,
White Slave Crusades: Race, Gender and Anti-Vice Activism 1887–1917,
Urbana and Chicago: University of Illinois Press, 2006.

31
Malvery, Olive Christian (Mrs Archibald MacKirdy), and Willis, W. N.,
The White Slave Market,
London: Stanley Paul, 1912.

32
Ibid., p. 13.

33
Bell, Ernest A.,
Fighting the Traffic in Young Girls; or, War on the White Slave Trade,
G. S. Ball, 1910.

34
White Slave Traffic, 1912, and After,
pamphlet published by the Ladies' National Association for the Abolition of State Regulation of Vice, London: Halsey Brothers, 1913.

35
Bristow,
Vice and Vigilance
, p. 193.

36
Hansard, House of Commons 11 December 1912, vol. 45, cc. 699–734.

37
See Fletcher, Ian C., ‘Opposition by Journalism? The Socialist and Suffragist Press and the Passage of the Criminal Law Amendment Act of 1912',
Parliamentary History
, 25:1, 2006, pp. 88–114.

38
‘White Slave Traffic, Lord Lytton's Branding Proposal',
Manchester Guardian, 29
November 1912, p. 13; ‘The White Slave Traffic, The New Act in Operation',
The Times
, 14 December 1912, p. 6.

39
‘Flogging Under the White Slave Act: A Woman's Protest',
Manchester Guardian,
6 March 1914, p. 10.

40
West, Rebecca, essay on the White Slave Traffic Bill originally published in the
Clarion
, 22 November 1912, reprinted in Marcus, J., (ed.),
The Young Rebecca: Writings of Rebecca West, 1911–17,
London: Macmillan and Virago, 1982, p. 122.

41
Billington-Greig, T., ‘The Truth about White Slavery',
English Review,
June 1913, pp. 428–46.

42
Ibid., p. 441.

43
Ibid., p. 439.

44
Ibid.
,
p. 445.

45
Correspondence Respecting International Conferences on Obscene Publications and the White Slave Traffic, Paris 1910, London: HMSO, 1912, Cd 6547, with notes added 1913 by F. S. Bullock, the Women's Library.

46
Ibid., Notes, p. 6.

47
Letter from D. J. Bigham, New Scotland Yard, to A. Maxwell, dated 14 February 1919, in the National Archives, MEPO 2/1763.

48
Hale, K.,
A Slender Reputation: An Autobiography
, London: Warne, 1998, p. 52.

49
Gorham, D.,
Vera Brittain: A Feminist Life,
Cambridge, MA: Blackwell, 1996, p. 51.

50
Vera Brittain, diary entry for March 1913, cited in Gorham,
Vera Brittain
, p. 51.

51
Vera Brittain,
Testament of Youth,
London: Gollancz, 1933, pp. 46–7.

52
Marshall, D. (edited by David Edge Marshall),
The Making of a Twentieth Century Woman: A Memoir
, London: Blazon Books, 2003, p. 24.

53
Ibid.

54
Papers of Travellers' Aid Society in the Women's Library. The British Library has some reports of the Metropolitan Association for Befriending Young Servants (MABYS), founded by Jane Nassau Senior. There are more reports in with Joan Bonham Carter's papers in Hampshire Record Office (94M72/F519). For rescue work at railway stations, see among others, Anon., (‘London, Offices of “M.A.P”'),
In the Grip of the White Slave Trader,
London: c. 1910.