Rebecca Jarrett

Who was Rebecca Jarrett?

Rebecca Jarrett was a former British prostitute and procuress who, with reformer and newspaper editor William Thomas Stead, fought against child prostitution and white slavery during the late 19th century.

Involved in prostitution during much of her early life, she was eventually found by a Salvation Army officer in Northampton in "a distressing condition" and was eventually transferred to a Rescue Home in London, where she resided in a small house in Whitechapel in November 1885. It was while she stayed there that she told the head mistress Mrs. Bramwell Booth of the conditions she experienced regarding the prostitution of girls as young as thirteen in the brothels and streets of London.

Later that year, she helped Stead in obtaining a 13-year old Eliza Armstrong from her mother, making sure the mother was well aware of their purposes, and had her taken to a local midwife before being sent to a London brothel.

Posing as a rich businessman, he visited the brothel and had the girl drugged before she was brought to him. Following a series of articles published by Stead in the Pall Mall Gazette, titled The Maiden Tribute of Modern Babylon, which received an immediate public outcry resulting in the beginnings of the moral reform movement as rallies were held across the country and a petition sent to the House of Commons. However, despite public support behind them, both she and Stead were arrested on charges of abduction and indecent assault with Jarrett imprisoned for six months until the Criminal Law Amendment Act 1885 was passed.