Criminal Law Amendment Act 1885

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:

    Think of admitting the details of a single case of the criminal court into our thoughts, to stalk profanely through their very sanctum sanctorum for an hour, ay, for many hours! to make a very barroom of the mind’s inmost apartment, as if for so long the dust of the street had occupied us,—the very street itself, with all its travel, its bustle, and filth, had passed through our thoughts’ shrine! Would it not be an intellectual and moral suicide?
    Henry David Thoreau (1817–1862)

    At the end of one millennium and nine centuries of Christianity, it remains an unshakable assumption of the law in all Christian countries and of the moral judgment of Christians everywhere that if a man and a woman, entering a room together, close the door behind them, the man will come out sadder and the woman wiser.
    —H.L. (Henry Lewis)

    ... when we shall have our amendment to the Constitution of the United States, everyone will think it was always so, just exactly as many young people believe that all the privileges, all the freedom, all the enjoyments which woman now possesses were always hers. They have no idea of how every single inch of ground that she stands upon to-day has been gained by the hard work of some little handful of women of the past.
    Susan B. Anthony (1820–1906)

    In my dealing with my child, my Latin and Greek, my accomplishments and my money stead me nothing; but as much soul as I have avails. If I am wilful, he sets his will against mine, one for one, and leaves me, if I please, the degradation of beating him by my superiority of strength. But if I renounce my will, and act for the soul, setting that up as umpire between us two, out of his young eyes looks the same soul; he reveres and loves with me.
    Ralph Waldo Emerson (1803–1882)