Criminal Law Amendment Act 1885

Under the

This

The bill for the amendment of the law took four years to bring to completion. It began when

The bill passed easily in the House of Lords in 1883, but was dropped in the

Despite the effort of the

With the assistance of

The revelations caused an uproar. Copies of the Pall Mall Gazette were snapped up, often fetching premium prices. While many denounced Stead's exposé, it did what it was intended to do: it prompted Parliament to resume the debate over the Criminal Law Amendment Bill on 9 July 1885.

The SPCC, which celebrated its first anniversary on 13 July 1885, took advantage of the resumption of the debate to make its own recommendations to the bill, including the raising of the age of consent to 18 years and more severe measures to protect children from exploitation. These proposals were introduced through their representatives in Parliament. However, many members of Parliament, already infuriated by Stead's tactics, sought to obstruct any alterations to the laws.

In addition to the recommendations made by the SPCC, on 31 July 1885 Liverpool MP

Outraged by this defeat, Stead condemned it in the Gazette, listing the names of each member who voted against the clause.

The Criminal Law Amendment Act was finally passed on 14 August 1885 and in its final form effectively repealed Sections 49 and 52 of the

• It raised the age of consent from 13 to 16 years of age;
• It made it a criminal offence to procure girls for prostitution by administering drugs, intimidation or fraud;
• It punished householders who would permit under-age sex on their premises;
• It made it a criminal offence to abduct a girl under 18 for purposes of carnal knowledge;
• It gave magistrates the power to issue search warrants to find missing females;
• It gave power to the court to remove a girl from her legal guardians if they condoned her seduction;
• It provided for summary proceedings to be taken against brothels; and
• It raised the age of felonious assaults to 13 and misdemeanor assault between 13 and 16 as well as imbecile women and girls.
• It criminalised "gross indecency between males" — previously the only homosexual crime was "
  buggery
  " (anal sex).

It also had sections outlining the penalties for abduction and procuring for the purpose of prostitution for girls under the age of eighteen, as well as relaxing the rules on witness testimony: while children under the age of 12 were allowed to testify as proposed by the SPCC, it also gave the right of the accused to testify on his own behalf.

The effect of the law became noticeable almost immediately. While few cases of sexual offences were reported before the passage of the law, the number of reported cases skyrocketed in the months afterwards, especially child molestation cases.