The Criminal Law Amendment Act 1885 received Royal Assent, raising the age of consent to 16 and strengthening laws against child prostitution and trafficking.
On 14 August 1885, the Criminal Law Amendment Act 1885 received Royal Assent in Britain, a landmark piece of legislation that raised the age of sexual consent for girls from thirteen to sixteen and introduced new criminal penalties against procurement, trafficking, and the operation of brothels involving minors.
The Act's passage followed a wave of public outrage triggered by journalist W. T. Stead's sensational 1885 exposé The Maiden Tribute of Modern Babylon, which documented the ease with which young girls could be purchased for sexual exploitation in London. Josephine Butler played a significant behind-the-scenes role in this campaign, having spent over a decade exposing the trafficking of women and children across Europe, including her direct involvement in Belgian trafficking prosecutions in 1879–1880. She provided crucial testimony, contacts, and moral authority that helped Stead and reform allies build public and parliamentary pressure for legislative change.
The Act represented a major victory in the long struggle against child sexual exploitation and human trafficking, embedding into law protections that had previously not existed. While Butler's specific influence was cumulative rather than tied to a single lobbying action on this date, the law's enactment reflected the culmination of feminist and reformist pressure in which she was one of the most prominent and persistent voices, linking her earlier anti-regulation campaigning directly to concrete child protection legislation.