Mary Jane Kelly and the Maiden Tribute to Modern Babylon
Mary Jane Kelly is perhaps Jack the Ripper’s most famous victim, yet few people know of an event in her life that links her to another scandal of the 1880s: the Maiden Tribute to Modern Babylon. This series of articles exposed the illicit trade in underaged English girls for sex work on the continent, resulting in the raising of the age of consent from 12 to 16 and a prison sentence for the articles’ writer.
But was Mary Jane Kelly a victim of this illicit trade when a ‘gentleman’ took her to Paris? In this blog, we revisit the scandal that arose from W.T. Stead’s investigation into the child sex trade and question whether Mary Jane Kelly was one of the young women trafficked to the content.
Mary Jane Kelly’s trip to France
Mary Jane Kelly often told a story of a visit she made to France soon after she arrived in London. She said that, while working in a West End brothel, she had made the acquaintance of a gentleman who took her to Paris, but she didn’t like it so returned home. After this, she moved rather suddenly to the East End, claiming she was hiding from her former madam. But why would she need to hide from her former madam if the trip was voluntary?
Paul Begg, a Ripper expert, suggests that Mary Kelly was victim of a procurer who lured her to France with the intention of selling her into sex work there. This may seem like something that would only happen in an overly dramatic retelling of the Victorian period, but, unfortunately, this could be the truth. Victorian London did have a problem with trafficking, especially of children and young women.
London’s dirty little secret
The Victorians had always been concerned about sexuality, but, by the 1880s, this concern had morphed into outright panic. In 1880, Alfred Dyer published a pamphlet entitled The European Slave Trade in English Girls, which discussed the sale of English girls to continental trafficking rings.
The pamphlet led to the formation of the London Committee for Suppressing the Traffic in British Girls, whose board included feminist reformer, Josephine Butler. Their findings prompted a committee in the House of Lords to investigate the concerns about procurement of young girls and women for brothels in France and Belgium. This would have been around the same time that Mary Jane Kelly was whisked away by her ‘gentleman’.
The Lord’s Committee and the police were able to discover a small trade between England and the continent. But the numbers the press were reporting were vastly exaggerated, and there was no evidence of widespread trafficking abroad. What they did learn, though, was that the issue was as prevalent at home as it was abroad.
WT Stead
WT Stead was a well-known journalist and social reformer who redefined journalism in the 1880s. As the editor of the Pall Mall Gazette, he introduced illustrations and developed the use of interviews in news stories.
Stead did not shy away from controversial topics. Instead, he used them to highlight the plight of the poor and further his social campaigns. His first big success was a series of articles about poverty and life in the slums, which prompted attempts at slum clearances.
But, by far, his most famous campaign was the Maiden Tribute to Modern Babylon.
Investigations into child trafficking
In May 1885, Benjamin Scott, the Chamberlain of the City of London, visited Stead and told him the stories of sexually exploited children. Stead set up a secret committee, including Josephine Butler, reps from the House of Lords committee and the Salvation Army.
As part of their investigation, Butler and her son Georgie spent £100 buying children in high-class brothels, but Stead wanted more. He wanted to buy a girl and sell her into sex work. He wanted irrefutable evidence that trafficking was happening in London. But, first, they had to find the right girl.
Finding the right girl
Josephine Butler had a vast network of social reformers, one of whom was Rebecca Jarrett, a reformed sex worker and procuress who was staying with Butler in Winchester. Butler introduced Jarrett to Stead.
After hearing her stories, Stead begged Jarrett to help him procure a child and take her to the continent. Jarrett met an old acquaintance called Nancy Broughton and, through her, learned of 13-year-old Eliza Armstrong.
Jarrett met with Mrs Armstrong and told her she wanted Eliza for an old gentleman. Jarrett claims she told Mrs Armstrong that they lived in a ‘gay house’, and Eliza must be ‘pure’. She was sure Mrs Armstrong understood that Jarrett was taking Eliza to a brothel. Jarrett paid £5 for Eliza.
The brothel
Jarrett took Eliza to Louise Mourez, a midwife and abortionist. Mourez examined Eliza and confirmed her virginity. Jarrett then took Eliza to a brothel near Oxford Street and drugged her with the chloroform she had bought from Mourez.
Stead, posing as her purchaser, came into the room Eliza was sleeping in. Eliza heard him and screamed. Stead left the room.
Bramwell Booth quickly took her to the Salvation Army in Paris, while Stead began work on his expose.
The Maiden Tribute to Modern Babylon
Throughout July, Stead published articles on this experience under lurid headlines such as ‘The Violation of Virgins’ and ‘The Ruin of the Very Young’. Collectively, these articles became known as the Maiden Tribute to Modern Babylon.
Reactions to the Maiden Tribute to Modern Babylon
Public outcry was swift. The British upper classes were horrified by the findings. Home Secretary, Sir William Harcourt, asked Stead to stop publishing his articles. Stead agreed as long as a bill raising the age of consent was passed as soon as possible. Harcourt couldn’t guarantee this, so Stead continued to publish.
Protests and demonstrations were held throughout London, including one in Hyde Park where women dressed in white to resemble virginity.
But not everyone believed in Stead's crusade. W.H. Smith, who controlled the news stalls in London, refused to sell the Pall Mall Gazette. This Stead overcame by paying Salvation Army volunteers to sell the paper for him. The next test would not be so easy.
Arrest and imprisonment
Despite having disguised Eliza as ‘Lily’ for his articles, it was not long before Eliza was identified and Stead was revealed as her purchaser. The Times and other rival newspapers made much of the fact that Stead was more involved than his articles seemed to suggest.
Meanwhile, Mrs Armstrong, having recognised the story, went to the police and accused Stead and Jarrett of abducting Eliza. She was adamant that she thought Eliza was going into service and that she had never known or consented to her daughter being taken to a brothel. Jarrett would insist at her trial that Mrs Armstrong was well aware of where Eliza was being taken.
Stead, Jarrett, Mourez, Booth, Jacques and Elizabeth Combe were arrested and sent for trial at the Old Bailey. Stead, Jarrett, Mourez and Jacques were found guilty of ‘unlawfully taking Eliza Armstrong, aged 13, out of the possession and against the will of her father’. Booth and Coombe were acquitted.
The Criminal Law Amendment Act
The government was forced to rethink their approach to the Bill to raise the age of consent. Some were not happy about the potential age increase. Cavendish Bentinck argued that prostitution was a necessary and inevitable occurrence. Others, according to Judith Walkowitz in her book Prostitution and Victorian Society, defended aristocrats’ rights to sexual access to working-class girls ‘as a time-honoured prerogative of gentlemen’.
But Stead’s findings, and the public’s response to them, were too strong to ignore. It became clear that opposition to raising the age of consent would be seen as condoning child sexual exploitation. So, in August 1885, the Criminal Law Amendment Act, which raised the age of consent from 12 to 16, was passed into Law.
Josephine Butler and her circle were thrilled by the passing of the Criminal Law Amendment Act, but they were concerned that this Act gave the police far greater control over working class women and children than they’d had before, something which Butler had always tried to avoid.
The police applied the Act mostly to sex workers and brothel keepers, not the men who were soliciting children and young woman for sexual purposes. The working class continued to face punishment for the sins of others, while the government ignored the economic factors that might drive women to sex work in the first place.
The aftermath
In his summing up, Mr Justice Henry Charles Lopes gave Stead credit for his noble intentions in exposing child sex trafficking and accused Jarrett of misleading Stead. Stead was given a lenient sentence of 3 months without hard labour and was generally treated well in prison. Did he deserve this lenient sentence?
I don’t think so. Stead claimed no physical harm came to Eliza, but was confirmation of her ‘purity’ really necessary? Did she really need to be drugged? No. It was perfectly possible for Stead to pull off this plot without subjecting Eliza to either of those experiences. He was successful at pushing the Criminal Law Amendment Act through the House of Lords, but, for me, the ends do not justify the means.
Was Mary Jane Kelly the victims of a procurer?
Many girls and women suffered at the hands of procurers, pimps and brothelkeepers. Mary Jane Kelly may have been one of them. Her short trip to France, followed by her sudden flight from the more comfortable West End to the squalor of the East End suggest that she was running from someone. Perhaps the person who had procured her for sex work on the continent and was now out of money.
This seems a likely reason, but we will never know for sure.
Final thoughts
Let’s finish the story with Eliza Armstrong. Despite being a ploy in a game of politics, Eliza was subjected to most of the experiences a child who was actually being trafficked would experience, and that must have been traumatic for her. But she seems to have forgiven Stead because around 1910 she wrote to him to tell him that she was happily married to her second husband and had six children. She and her husband would have two more children in the years that followed. Eliza O’Donnell, as she was then known, died in 1938 in County Durham, aged 66.
