The White Slavery Panic

The roots of the white slavery panic can be found in england's social purity movement of the late 18 hundreds. This was a social reform campaign aimed at eliminating prostitution. At the time, a common way of dealing with prostitutes was simply jailing them. The british government detained prostitutes under the contagious diseases act. And the church of england even had their own penitentiaries in which they incarcerated prostitutes. These were like semi prisons in which women were compelled to stay for at least two years. For these women, freedom was really curtailed. But an evangelical feminist named ellis hopkins had a different perspective, namely that the prostitutes were not criminals, but victims in need of assistance

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