"Is he a licentious lewd Sort of a Person?" Constructing the child rapist in early modern England.

Abstract

When in April 1747 judge presiding over trial of John Hunter for rape of Grace Pitts, aged ten, at Old Bailey, London's central criminal court, asked a witness called testify Hunter's character and reputation, Is he a licentious Sort of a Person? he clearly had in mind that a particular kind of man was likely be guilty of rape of a child. Such a man would have demonstrated through his behavior that he was likely behave in a sexually immoral and immodest fashion--but not necessarily that he would direct his attentions primarily toward Unlike modern pedophile, who is understood have a primary, if not exclusive, interest in children that he is likely conceal, early modern child rapist was a man whose immorality would be clearly visible as someone who frequented lewd women or who acted in an unseemly fashion with other women. This article investigates how individuals living in early modern England may have understood and thought about behavior of those who engaged in activities with children below age of consent and especially whether they were regarded as having a particular, and abnormal, desire for It examines how such people were characterized and represented in prosecutions of crime involving children in late seventeenth- and eighteenth-century London and what extent such characterizations and representations conformed later sexological categorizations. It argues that, as suggested by quotation above, such men were thought be a particular sort of a person, but not one whose identity was defined by whom he had sex with. He was, rather, a man who was characterized as generally immoral, lewd, lustful, and loose-living, notable for his debauchery and lack of self-mastery, and therefore inevitably coming a very bad, and untimely, end. Categories of deviation--or perversion--emerged with development of psychiatry and sexology in late nineteenth century, particularly from Richard von Krafft-Ebing's exhaustive cataloging of such behaviors in his Psychopathia Sexualis, first published in German in 1886. Krafft-Ebing did not, in his brief discussion of those who engaged in activities with employ term pedophilia or pedophile describe such individuals but rather referred violation of individuals under age of fourteen. The term paedophilia, defined by Oxford English Dictionary as sexual desire directed towards children, appears have first been used by Havelock Ellis in his Studies in Psychology of Sex in 1906. The American Psychiatric Association's Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders (DSM) first used term in 1980 to describe a specific subset of child molesters who displayed particular characteristics. By 1987 DSM definition had been revised define pedophilia as characterized by recurrent intense urges and sexually arousing fantasies involving activity with a prepubescent child or children. One of major narratives in history of sexuality since Foucault has been shift in understandings of behaviors, particularly homosexual, between early modern and modern worlds. Sexual acts that were previously understood as subject religious and legal regulation and that anyone might commit now became understood as integral identities. The rise of sexology and medical categorization of behaviors defined primarily by object choice gave birth the homosexual as well as other types such as pedophile. The early modern period predates these formulations, so it would be anachronistic use term pedophile for those who engaged in activities with It would also be next impossible: there are few diaries, letters, or autobiographies recording thoughts or fantasies, let alone behavior, including with those who today would be under age of consent. Sir Simonds D'Ewes and Samuel Jeake both recorded marriages girls of thirteen and that these marriages were consummated, but these marriages were legally contracted, since age of consent marriage for girls was twelve. There would not have been any contemporary sense that such men harbored abnormal desires. Despite some contemporary concern about... Language: en