Complicating the Duality: Reconceptualising the Construction of Children in Victorian Child Protection Law

Kieran Walsh

doi:10.1111/johs.12272

Abstract

AbstractThis article seeks to challenge the prevailing view that child protection legislation introduced in the late Victorian and Edwardian periods was characterised by a victim/threat duality. An examination of the parliamentary debates leading to the passage of major reforming Acts leads to a more complex construction of children. While the classic duality was present in respect of some issues earlier in the period under examination, it gave way to a view which placed greater emphasis on the child as a victim. At the same time, the law began, in an admittedly limited sense, to recognise children as agents with individual stories capable of contributing to the legal process, especially through increased capability to participate at trials. This conclusion can add significantly to our understanding of how the law understood childhood before the development of the modern children's rights movement.

Highlights

This article traces the changing conceptions of children which underpinned the development of child protection legislation in the United Kingdom during the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries
The article will examine the passage of the Criminal Law (Amendment) Act 1885, the Prevention of Cruelty to Children Acts 1889 and 1894, and the Punishment of Incest Act 1908
The 1885 Act is best known for the raising of the age of consent, the 1889 Act because of its radical reform of the laws relating to parental child abuse, the 1894 Acts for reform of the law of evidence, and the incest legislation for transferring incest cases from the ecclesiastical courts

Summary

Introduction

This article traces the changing conceptions of children which underpinned the development of child protection legislation in the United Kingdom during the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. Literature in this area has sometimes utilised the idea of a victim/threat duality to understand how legal reformers approached children protection and welfare laws.

Results

Conclusion