Knowledge of evil [electronic resource] : child prostitution and child sexual abuse in twentieth-century England / Alyson Brown and David Barrett.

Includes bibliographical references (pages 192-207) and index.

Foreword / Ian Sparks -- 1. Introduction -- concepts and contents -- 2. Debating late nineteenth-century child prostitution -- Maiden Tribute -- Child prostitution -- Society in the Cremorne Pleasure Gardens -- 3. Edwardian England and the ideal family -- Intervention and resistance, the work of the children's charities -- Childhood, 'moral danger' and prostitution -- Publicity, prosecution and public awareness -- feeble-minded and other perceived causal factors -- 4. War and the 1920s -- First World War -- 1920s and the strategies of children's voluntary societies -- Prostitution: investigation and debate -- Unregulated adoptions and abuse -- 5. Prostitution, child abuse and feminism during the 1920s and 1930s -- Feminism and society -- white slave trade: rhetoric or reality? -- Child abuse and prostitution -- Prostitution, delinquency and psychology -- 6. Reconstruction and a new society -- War, juveniles and commercial sex -- Post-war social change and social policy -- Delinquency and sexuality -- Wolfenden and the Street Offences Act 1959 -- Contemporary attitudes and research on prostitution -- Child and youth prostitution -- 7. rediscovery of child prostitution during the 1960s and 1970s -- print media, social problems and child prostitution -- Children and commercial sex -- Studies of delinquency -- Child prostitution, the social services and the media -- Concepts of delinquency and the structure of social services for children -- 8. Child prostitution in the 1980s and 1990s / Margaret Melrose and Patrick Ayre -- socio-economic and policy context of child prostitution -- Scale of child prostitution in the 1980s and 1990s -- Legal and social service responses to young people involved in prostitution.

Print version record.

This book aims to document and analyse the enduring involvement of children in the commercial sex trade in twentieth-century England. It uncovers new evidence to indicate the extent of under-age prostitution over this period, a much-neglected subject despite the increased visibility of children more generally. The authors argue that child prostitution needs to be understood within a broader context of child abuse, and that this provides one of the clearest manifestations of the way in which 'deviant groups' can be conceived of as both victims and threats. The picture of child prostitution whic.