Document 10: "Seduction a Felony," Philanthropist, 3 (September 1888), p. 4.

Introduction

       This anonymous article reiterates the seduction story so prominent in social purity literature in the 1880s and 1890s that portrayed men as sexual predators and working girls as victims. Reformers often used a comparison of the theft of a girl's virginity with the theft of her money to make their case for raising the legal age of consent, arguing that the former was much worse and yet not legally punishable.

SEDUCTION A FELONY. __________
        Crimes against women and girls are of such frequent occurrence as to render obvious the urgent need or more adequate legal protection for womanhood and girlhood. Progress has been made latterly in this and several other states, in raising the "legal age" of consent, in cases of rape, from ten to sixteen years; in others to thirteen and fifteen; and in two or three states to eighteen. But, alas! In many states the legal age of protection is still at the shockingly low period of ten years, and in Delaware at SEVEN! One of these is Maryland, and a lady writing from Baltimore, mentions a recent case of a lovely young girl, the daughter of a poor widow, betrayed by one who should have been her protector, and when her friends determined to make an effort to have her destroyer brought to justice, and carried the matter to the court, they were coolly informed that nothing could be done, because the girl was over ten years of age. Another lady, writing from Ohio, says: "Even here; in our rural districts, we repeatedly mourn over instances of neglected and unprotected girlhood, and we have no recourse to law in case of seduction."

        In the state of New York, and most others, there is no penalty for seduction, except in cases of breach of promise of marriage. A man who would be subject to arrest and imprisonment if he should rob a girl or woman of her pocket book, may with comparative legal impunity seduce her and despoil her person. Libertines not unfrequently boast of the number of their sensual conquests. The loss of money is a trifling matter, compared with the loss of purity and honor. It is quite time that seduction as well as rape, should be made a punishable offense, and, as a felony, that it should legally subject men guilty thereof to both imprisonment and fine. Nor in this particular should men alone be held amenable to law. It sometimes happens that evil disposed women victimize young men and boys and lead them into vicious pathways. Such women should also be placed under legal restraint.

        Of course we do not expect law wholly to take the place of right moral training for the individual, and a right popular education concerning an equal standard of morality for both men and women. It is, however, clearly within the proper province of government as declared by Mr. Gladstone, "to make it easy to do right and difficult to do wrong."

        In the forthcoming legislative season we hope a general and an effective movement may be inaugurated and prosecuted by women, and by true and honorable men to secure legislation which shall everywhere brand and punish seduction irrespective of age, a felony and crime.

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