Loss of Innocents

Thirteen year-old Lucy Williamson is tricked by her nanny into entering a brothel, where she finds herself imprisoned. This is a factual story of one of the most tumultuous periods in English history, during which it was the center of the worldwide trafficking in white slavery. For over one hundred years, the age of consent in England was twelve, then thirteen, and 3,000 to 4,000 young girls were lured or abducted from the streets of London each year, destined to spend the remainder of their youth, and often their lives, entrapped in a life of prostitution and debauchery. By 1885, the extent of this depravity had almost destroyed the fabric of English society, and the criminal elements dominating London's 10,000 brothels exerted virtual control over the police and many elements of the government. We follow Lucy's plight and the successful efforts to rescue her. The Reform Movement, led by the legendary Josephine Butler, history's first and most fearless crusader for women's rights, convinces a reluctant William Stead, editor of the Pall Mall Gazette, and widely acknowledged as the founder of tabloid journalism, to run an exposé of this trafficking, which reveals to a totally oblivious nation, for the first time, how almost 400,000 young girls had been abducted and forced into a life of white slavery. The public's explosive reaction brings the country to the brink of civil war, leading to the intervention of Queen Victoria herself. Strangely, this entire period of ignominy has been rarely mentioned in history books, where it is referenced primarily with a footnote.