Protecting ‘injured female innocence’ or furthering ‘the rights of women?’ The sexual Slander of Women in New York and Victoria (1808–1887)

Abstract

ABSTRACT By the end of the nineteenth century, reforms across the British common law world—often labelled ‘The Slander of Women Acts’—enabled women to sue more easily for sexual slander by removing the burden of proving economic loss, known as ‘special damage’. Sexual slander was a pressing and highly gendered issue. Women brought actions in the thousands seeking to vindicate their reputations when subject to slurs of prostitution, unchastity, fornication, or adultery. These cases spurred transnational debates about the status of white women in the transpacific New World and English law's failure to incorporate their interests and experiences. This article compares and connects reform efforts in New York with those in Victoria. It argues that whereas New York cases and legislators emphasised the need to ‘protect innocent females’ and employed racially coded language linking sexual morality with whiteness, Victorian judges and politicians framed sexual slander reform as an issue of women's rights.