The Criminal Law Amendment Act 1885 (48 & 49 Vict. c.69), or "An Act to make further provision for the Protection of Women and Girls, the suppression of brothels, and other purposes", was the latest in a 25-year series of legislation in the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Ireland beginning with the Offences against the Person Act 1861 that raised the age of consent and delineated the penalties for sexual offences against women and minors. It also strengthened existing legislation against prostitution and recriminalised male homosexuality. This act was also notable for the circumstances of its passage in Parliament.
Read more about Criminal Law Amendment Act 1885: Background, The Bill Languishes, Armstrong Case, The Debate Resumes, Passage and Effects, Repeals
Famous quotes containing the words criminal, law, amendment and/or act:
“It could probably be shown by facts and figures that there is no distinctly native American criminal class except Congress.”
—Mark Twain [Samuel Langhorne Clemens] (1835–1910)
“There is ... but one response possible from us: Force, Force to the uttermost, Force without stint or limit, the righteous and triumphant Force which shall make Right the law of the world and cast every selfish dominion down in the dust.”
—Woodrow Wilson (1856–1924)
“The First Amendment is not a blanket freedom-of-information act. The constitutional newsgathering freedom means the media can go where the public can, but enjoys no superior right of access.”
—George F. Will (b. 1934)
“It was the most ungrateful and unjust act ever perpetrated by a republic upon a class of citizens who had worked and sacrificed and suffered as did the women of this nation in the struggle of the Civil War only to be rewarded at its close by such unspeakable degradation as to be reduced to the plane of subjects to enfranchised slaves.”
—Anna Howard Shaw (1847–1919)