Rebecca Jarrett

Rebecca Jarrett (1846-1928) was a former English 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 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 supposed 'purposes', and had her taken to a local midwife before being sent to a London brothel.

Posing as a rich businessman, Stead visited the brothel and had the girl drugged before she was brought to him (from where he had the girl taken to a Salvation Army home in France). Following a series of articles published by Stead in the Pall Mall Gazette, entitled The Maiden Tribute of Modern Babylon, which received an immediate public outcry resulting in the beginnings of the Social purity 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 (possibly arranged by George Cavendish-Bentinck) and Jarrett was imprisoned for six months until the Criminal Law Amendment Act 1885 was passed.

After her release, she stayed at a rescue home under a Mrs. Josephine Butler and helped with many other girls and young women who later resided there for a time before returning to Mrs. Booth's home where she resided until her death in early-1928.

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