Stead, Booth, Rebecca and three others were charged with the abduction of Eliza, the unlawful administering of a noxious drug and indecent assault. Although Stead had disguised her name in his articles, by September 1885 – a month after the Act had been passed and two months after his original publications – Eliza Armstrong’s name was everywhere. The court was besieged by applicants wanting to witness the trial – from Eliza’s mother tearfully stating that she had not been informed of her daughter’s removal for immoral purposes and insisting that she had visited Mr Booth to be assured of Eliza’s welfare (Booth having offered to show her a certificate that Eliza had left for Paris a virgin, and had certainly not been molested in any way) – to Eliza’s very own testimony. She had enjoyed her life in Paris, and at no time had suspected that she had been removed from her family for any other reason than employment, although, on leaving her in Paris, Rebecca Jarrett had told her that her mother had agreed to let her go, and for immoral purposes, but Eliza had refused to believe her. There is something sadly innocent about Eliza’s evidence. Although her case brought attention to very real and horrifying issues in the Victorian period, she does seem to have been unwittingly manipulated by adult figures desperately using her to prove their own arguments.

After the trial it was only Booth who escaped without sentence: Stead received three months; Rebecca, six. But it did little to quell Stead’s ‘New Journalism’ investigations and he continued to write and publish on social sexual control until his death on board the Titanic in 1912. But Stead was not alone in his desire to further the protection of women and children in the nineteenth century and the actions of one woman influenced him more than any other.

Josephine Butler is a name few know, but all should cherish. Her attack on the Contagious Diseases Acts of the 1860s highlights one of the worst forms of sexual legislation that has ever been passed in Britain. First brought into law in 1864, and then again in 1866 and 1869, the Contagious Diseases Act was an attempt by the government to regulate and control the spread of venereal disease through its population. A report into the diseases suffered by the armed forces had highlighted that a large percentage of the men suffered from a sexually transmitted disease, often either syphilis or gonorrhoea. In 1860 the rate of infection was so bad that The Lancet declared that of those stationed in Portsmouth, ‘508 of every 1000 men, one in every two, were venereal patients’.

Clearly, something had to be done, and for the government the answer lay in the passing of the Contagious Diseases Acts. But, instead of legislating the men, punishing them for immoral sexual interactions and visiting prostitutes, or providing education and medical aid to those suffering, the Contagious Diseases Acts targeted women. This was because of an old-fashioned idea common in the early Victorian period – and frighteningly echoed by some discussions surrounding the sex industry today – that prostitutes were required by men to protect virtuous women from men’s uncontrollable lusts. Men were not able to control themselves and needed access to public women – prostitutes – for the safety of society. So it was women who were seen as the carriers of the disease, not men, and it was the women who had to be controlled.

The Contagious Diseases Acts allowed for any woman to be forcibly examined for symptoms of venereal disease if a policeman suspected that she might be carrying the disease. Often, this was targeted at known prostitutes, but all that was needed for the examination to be carried out was the officer’s belief that the woman ‘might’ be infected, whether or not she was known locally as a prostitute. Little or no evidence was provided other than the policeman’s word. The woman was then ordered to appear before a magistrate, who would decide whether or not the examination should take place and, if he decided to allow it, he would order her to be examined by a doctor. If she was found to have any symptoms of venereal disease, or the doctor suspected she might show them later, the woman was immediately removed to a lock hospital or locked ward. Here she would remain for three to nine months, with little or no contact with the world outside. Lock hospitals were exactly as their name suggests, wards specifically for the treatment of sexual diseases, from which there was no escape.

When the Acts were first enforced they were passed with little opposition, applying only to port and barracks towns, and heavily couched in the language of social improvement. It was for the benefit of the health of the population, protection against the social evil of prostitution. Given that many of the women targeted were working class, little interest was taken in their welfare. But by 1869, when the boundaries of the Acts were extended to the civil population and stories of horrifying episodes – in which women seemed just to disappear from the streets – began to be published in the press, the terrifying realities of life under the Contagious Diseases Acts became apparent.

There was an immediate response: The Ladies National Association for The Repeal of the Contagious Diseases Acts was founded, launching a frank and honest discussion on the relationship between men and women and the sex industry at its meetings, in pamphlets, and the national press. ‘An Englishwoman’ wrote of the need and motivations of the Ladies National Association (LNA) in the London Daily News published in 1869:

Permit me to explain, in a brief but careful way, what the danger is in which we find our country and everybody in it involved, through the ignorance and carelessness of whole classes of our countrymen, whose duty it is to know better, the apathy of legislators who have permitted the destruction of our most distinctive liberties before their eyes, and the gross prejudices and coarse habits of thought of professional men who have been treated as oracles on a subject on which they are proved mistaken at every turn.

The tone of her writing expresses the violent anger many women felt at the loss of liberties and the double standards that they were subjected to under the Acts. This was not an attack on a class or profession of women, this was an attack on womankind. The LNA began a long and loud campaign to expose the truth of the Acts, from their basis in poor statistics to the punishment of women in what was – to the Victorians – a very male sin, that of physical sexual lust. For 20 years, one of the Ladies National Association founding members, Josephine Butler, was at the forefront of the campaign for the repeal of the Acts. She was one of the earliest female social investigators, heading into the towns and ports where the Acts were enforced in order to bring back the stories of the women who suffered under them. They were published in The Shield, as well as in the national press, and exposed not only the women’s experiences, but also those of the common soldiers and naval men.

Working-class men and women who did not seek a legal marriage, but who often lived in committed lifelong common-law marriages, were also targeted by the enforcers of the Acts. Although they lived what society would have regarded as ‘respectable’ lives, the lack of a legal marriage meant that they were punished and degraded under the Acts, whereby enforcers could seize the women and remove them for months at a time. The risk of this happening to a woman who was not a prostitute was increased with the creation of a task force of special constables, sent down from London to oversee and enforce the Acts on the local populace.

Josephine took her campaign to international levels, travelling across Europe to build international pressure on a British government who refused to admit the Acts were the most ‘conspicuous disgrace of our time’. After many years of vilification, in 1886 the repeal campaign was finally successful, owing much, if not all, to her tenacity and dedication. She was an exceptional woman, uniting women in the fight for their own freedoms and liberties long before the Suffragette Movement even began. You can learn more about her from Mrs. Dollymop in ‘Advice for Single Ladies’.

It’s against the backdrop of these two moments of sexual reform and legislation – headed by Stead and Butler – that the Victorians explored and examined their attitudes to sex. From the marriage guides and pamphlets that were published continually throughout the nineteenth century, to the hotly debated medical ideas, and reports in the newspapers, sex was rarely out of the public gaze. Every single piece of advice contained within this book has been collected from the wealth of those sources. Instead of presenting A Victorian Guide to Sex chronologically, I’ve set it out thematically, to give you a real flavour of what was available to the Victorians throughout their century.

We collect information throughout our lifetimes, never knowing when it may become relevant to us. Sex advice can be passed down from generation to generation, or friend to friend, and this gives it an almost timeless quality, as you can never really be sure how old, or how new, the ideas you encounter might be. We know the Victorians were great collectors and classifiers – most of our museums house collections they created – and that attitude can be seen in their approach to sex. Ideas from earlier centuries are stacked up next to the modern medical discoveries, and everything, everything, is investigated.

What may surprise you about the Victorians is not how different to us they are, but actually how similar their ideas might be. And so this leads me to the book you are now reading. Let’s begin with a quick description of your narrators, who will guide you from here on in. I have brought them together as if they are the members of the fictitious Society of Social Morality, to offer the advice to their members on all things sexual. Published annals of a society’s activities were not uncommon, and while this society and its characters are my own invention, everything they describe, each object, attitude and idea, is authentically Victorian.

The first person you will meet is Dr. Dimmick and for me, he is representative of that great Victorian showman, the quack doctor. He may, at some point, have been a showman, or a strongman, as his dedication to health and the physical figure might suggest. But in recent memory he has given himself to providing a clear and accurate guide to the physical anatomy of the human body and how that will influence your choice of a mate. With an understanding of sexual desire; the purpose of menstruation; and the many risks and dangers to your health from the practice of celibacy and masturbation, the good doctor will set out all the medical knowledge he has at his disposal.

However, given he was a devotee of that spectacular moment of Victorian bad science known as physiognomy, I’m not sure how far to trust his ‘medical’ credentials. Indeed, as legitimate qualifications for medical men became standardised during the Victorian period, the number of quack doctors – or fake doctors – began to go into decline. They had often specialised in patent medicines, or general-purpose ointments and pills, which claimed to cure everything from colds to cancer. One such man was Thomas Holloway, who began creating his general-purpose ointment in 1837 and who manufactured it until his death in 1883. He managed to accrue a huge fortune from the sale of his products and was responsible for the stunning building of Royal Holloway College in 1879, which was officially opened to its female students in 1886. I like to think he would have inspired Dimmick.

Mrs. Dollymop has clearly never legally been married. After an active youth in bohemian Paris, her adult life has been spent in service to the young ladies of her school, where she has watched many come and go. But she has never lost faith in the institution of marriage, or in love. Her advice ranges from ideas of womanhood, fashion choices, health, the importance of a padded bust and flirtation to that most central of virtues of the Victorian woman: the importance of being yourself. She briefly discusses when to marry and the considerations of choosing the right husband, but ends with some important lessons to be learnt from the lives of Victorian women.

Women have often been painted into a very submissive role where sex in the nineteenth century is concerned, either depicted as desperately trying to live up to an impossible male-imagined ideal of the perfect wife and mother, or as fallen women, again the result of male attitudes towards women and prostitution. Neither of these ideals reflect women in any light other than as victims. But the Victorian period was full of incredible women, women like Josephine Butler, who fought hard for their place on an equal footing with men. The campaign for women’s right to vote began in the nineteenth century and it was women’s determination to protect their own sex from discrimination and sexual predation that drove much of the campaigns for social reform. Women did not have a passive role where sex was concerned.

The Reverend J.J. James is one of my favourite characters, although he doesn’t have much to say, rather, I think, suffering under the impression that young men don’t really listen to you anyway. Religion is something I have avoided tackling, believing that it has little to do with the act of sex outside of its perceived legitimisation. For the Victorians, religion, and the place of religion, was in dramatic flux after Darwin and it was also surprisingly absent from much of the material I examined. But whilst it may not have had a practical application to sex, it was the driving force behind many of the social reformers, who sought to rescue nineteenth-century society from its vice-ridden existence and to create a new moral utopia.

The Reverend offers his young charges advice on manliness, holding up the physical perfection of Eugen Sandow – known as the ‘Monarch of Muscle’ – as someone to aspire to. He dispenses wisdom on courtship and flirtations and the ever faithful practical guide on how to choose your wife by the shape of her legs, as well as notes on the wedding day itself. For those less willing to abide by society’s rules and who indulge in fornication before a marriage has taken place, he can offer some methods of contraception – protection also – against any connections that might result in a nasty infection.

Lady Petronella Von-Hathsburg was, at one time, a great society beauty, but she has gone to seed a little in the resulting years, after a very happy marriage to her much beloved, and lately departed husband. Her enjoyment of the good life is something she advises in moderation, but then I have never felt she believes very heavily in practising what one preaches. Her thoughts on marriage, after many successful decades as both wife and mother, are unsurpassed. She outlines the roles of husband and wife, tackles the question of a woman’s inferiority, and gives advice on establishing – and then somehow maintaining – matrimonial harmony. But of greater importance are her practical efforts to discuss sex itself.

From Victorian foreplay to the art of conception, her knowledge encompasses methods to combat sterility, pleasure and pregnancy, as well as when it is least advisable to have sex. Finally, she sets out what is needed for a lasting happy family life, and, should all else fail, considers the subject of divorce. This may be the most surprising of volumes, as it deals very much with the realities of sex in the Victorian period without the taint of criminality or social disapproval. This is how to have sex and how to enjoy sex as the Victorians would have wanted.

Mr. Mandrake, the continually nervous chemist, walks a fine tightrope between what is legal and what is illegal. Although he may offer you medical aid for all your sexual woes, I have never been able to shake off the nagging feeling that, should you appear to be of a discreet nature, his back room, accessed from behind the counter and through a faded red velvet curtain, will hold a number of objects surely at risk of being confiscated by the police. Pills and solutions he has aplenty and cures for gonorrhoea, syphilis, gleet and hysteria. He will espouse his knowledge of massage and the best practice of it, as well as the devices available to aid you with its effects – all of which come fitted for the new art of ‘vibration’.

And when the light is low, or perhaps the shop is empty, he will direct you to a perusal of his latest ‘Parisian Rubber Articles’. From the Femme de Voyage to the Ladies Syringe, he also stocks a number of other practical aids: an ivory carved phallus (with plunger), Baundruches – with the faces of notable personages painted on the front – and preventative rings with their sharply pointed metal teeth, perfect for a gentleman with untameable urges.

Lord Arthur Cleveland has not been, nor will he ever be, a good man. He has indulged in every vice and fetish it has been possible for him to find, is a regular of the East End girls, and possibly the West End boys, and his memoirs demonstrate the darker side of sexual life in the Victorian period. From brothels such as Madam D’Alma’s, the trafficking of Chinese girls in railway crates, and prostitutes and their practices, to the early sexual experiences of a young man, Lord Arthur will lead you through some of the worst sexual attitudes of the nineteenth century. The attitudes of the rich and the belief that the upper classes preyed sexually on the weaker members of society – from working-class prostitutes to respectable serving girls – were rife throughout the time that Victoria was on the throne.

As the nineteenth century drew to a close, the attacks of Jack the Ripper and the revelations during Oscar Wilde’s trial for sodomy focused those fears on class victimisation. And when we find out, after Princess Alexandra purchases ‘Vigor’s Horse-Action Saddle’, that her husband and heir to the throne, Prince Albert Edward, had a sexual predilection for custom-built furniture, the sexual practices of the rich seem to swing very much into focus.

Victorian societies were at the heart of much of the social reform in this period, and each member of the fictitious Society of Social Morality exposes the humorous and confusing ideas the nineteenth century had throughout its history. The volumes compiled here are the Annals of the Society and within them, every facet of Victorian sexuality can be explored. Discover, perhaps for the first time, the wealth of knowledge, the bizarre ideas and the unique practices of the Victorians, and see for yourself just how like them we really are…