ABSTRACT
In July 1885 the Salvation Army launched a nationwide purity campaign.1 In less than three weeks the army gathered nearly four thousand signatures for a petition demanding a new criminal law amendment act, raising the age of consent to eighteen and giving the police increased powers to search and arrest brothel keepers. The monster document, nearly two-and-a-half miles long, was drawn in a wagon to the House of Commons by cadets from the Clapham training home. Over the cart was a white canopy bearing the inscription: ‘In the name of the people and the Queen, mother of the country, the Salvation Army demand that iniquity shall cease.’ Behind the cadets marched three hundred uniformed women soldiers of the army. The whole line of the route, through the working-class districts of Hackney, Shoreditch and Bishopsgate, was filled with crowds. At Whitehall the petition was unloaded and carried on the shoulders of eight officers into the Commons.
