ABSTRACT
Sitting in petty sessions in Gravesend in 1856, magistrate Henry Ditchburn presided over the prosecution of eighteen-year-old Sarah London, who had been discovered ‘noisy and drunk’ in West Street between eleven and twelve the previous evening. London had allegedly become abusive when instructed to move on by the attending officer, which resulted in her arrest, and had then been violent on arrival at the police station. 1 In sentencing London to one month's imprisonment in Maidstone Gaol, Ditchburn expressed himself of the view that it was ‘lamentable and disgraceful’ that someone of her age was leading ‘such a life’, adding, for good measure, that to his knowledge her mother lived ‘by the wages of prostitution’. Turning to make some more general remarks to the assembled courtroom, he announced that he and his colleagues ‘were trying to redeem the character of the town, so that respectable persons should not be annoyed’. They were determined, he said, ‘to completely rid the town of prostitutes’.
