The European Commission on Human Rights was the vehicle by which individuals could appeal to the European Court of Human Rights, an arm of the Council of Europe and an organization committed to European integration. In 1994, in the context of a campaign by gay rights activists to have the British age of consent for homosexual acts set at the same level as the age for heterosexual acts, Euan Sutherland appealed to the Commission. He was not facing trial, but made his case on the basis that he feared prosecution due to evidence that the law was being enforced.

The Commission's decision, excerpted here, held that the unequal age of consent in British law was a breach of human rights. A Labor Government elected in 1997 agreed to amend the law, so the Commission stayed its decision. In 1998 and 1999, the House of Commons passed bills that were defeated in the House of Lords. When a third bill was defeated in 2000, the British government used the Parliament Act to override the House of Lords and enact an equal age. In a previous decision, the Commission endorsed the right of governments to legislate different ages. This excerpt highlights the background of growing tolerance and changing expert opinion that lay behind the argument that equal age was a human right.

Morris Ploscowe was a graduate of Harvard law school who served as chief clerk of the Court of Special Sessions, and later as magistrate, in New York City. Ploscowe also served on the staff of the Wickersham Commission that investigated Prohibition and a variety of other crimes in the U.S. By the 1950s, he was an influential commentator on criminal and family law.

The book from which this excerpt is drawn had a major influence on policymaking in the area of sex crime, including the American Law Institute's Model Penal Code, a touchstone for law reform into the 1980s. Ploscowe's commentary on the age of consent is notable for how it employs new ideas about adolescence and for its emphasis on the gap between the law, public opinion, and legal practice.

This 25-second "kinetoscope" shot on Vitagraph's roof-top studio in New York City by Thomas A. Edison Inc. in 1898/1899, sheds light on shifting notions of girlhood at the turn of the 20th century. In Victorian children's stories, a father who buried his head in a newspaper was a standard trope that spoke of paternal preoccupation with the pressing demands of the world beyond the home at the expense of a sad yet submissive daughter. Tricking father into thinking that a fly is tickling his neck, the middle-class girl in this short narrative reveals a number of different profound social forces at work at the dawn of the modern age: the erosion of paternal authority and the ascendance of an active, assertive, and imaginative girlhood.

The mischievous boy who was as devilish as he was delightful had appeared widely in literature (e.g., Tom Sawyer and Huckleberry Finn), American genre painting, and popular culture (including Edison's 1904 films based on the turn-of-the-century cartoon character, Buster Brown). However pervasive among boys and as a symbol of boyhood, there was no counterpart among representations of girls in American culture. This film of the female troublemaker reveals the ways in which girls were expanding their boundaries as well as the growing acceptance of a broader range of roles for girls, including comedy. Little Mischief's prank not only tickled her father, but turn-of-the-century viewers.

The Arena was an evangelical Christian periodical published in Boston that was known for its advocacy of social reform and women's issues, such as birth control. In 1895, it published a series of articles on age of consent reform edited by Helen Hamilton Gardener. Gardener, an American feminist, was a lecturer and the author of articles and fiction, including two novels written to assist the age of consent campaign.

The publication of "The Maiden Tribute of Modern Babylon" directed the attention of American reformers to the age of consent in their country and they were not pleased with what they found. The age of consent in the U.S., determined by each state, ranged from seven years, in Delaware, to an average of 10 to 12 years, lower than the age the British had recently deemed too low. Efforts to change those laws met significant opposition from male legislators. Accounts of these arguments, made by those opposed to changing existing laws, were featured in Gardener's articles and reports of state campaigns.

This excerpt comes from a report on activities in Texas by the state president of the WCTU as quoted by Gardner. The key points outlined here against raising the age of consent are similar to those found throughout the Anglo-American world, although in Texas, race was particularly prominent. The seduction laws referred to are likely the common law action that allowed a father to recover damages for the loss of his daughter's services if she became pregnant outside marriage.

This image of games for girls is one of a pair of woodblock prints by the artist Utagawa Hiroshige (1797–1858). The companion print (not included) shows games for boys. Woodblock prints, or ukiyo-e, can teach us about the children of townsmen (chônin) during the Tokugawa period (1600–1868). Ukiyo-e is a major artistic genre from this era. The word literally means “pictures of the floating world,” and refers to the Pleasure Quarters, an area zoned for vice. It was associated with a lively urban culture centered on merchants, tea-house girls, and the Kabuki theater. Woodblock print technology enabled cheap reproductions of “celebrity portraits” of actors and famous courtesans, which doubled as advertising. Eventually, woodblock prints of famous landscapes became popular souvenirs. Peasant and warrior children are rarely depicted because ukiyo-e was mainly produced by and for the townsmen, who tended to be artisans and merchants.

Ukiyo-e showing children may be divided into two kinds: Images about children and images for children. This one probably belongs to the latter category, because children enjoyed collecting pictures of "sets" of things, such as sets of kitchenware or sets of armor. They also enjoyed cutting out and assembling pre-printed paper dolls and guessing riddles based on illustrated hints. They played with a variety of board games and card games, and looked at illustrated folktales, or practiced writing with iroha (illustrated ABC charts). All this printed imagery could be purchased from a dagashiya, a sundries store selling toys and candies, or from a street vendor during a shrine festival, as well as from bookstores.

Of the games shown in this image, at least two are associated with the Lunar New Years celebration (O-Shôgatsu): Oibane (#1), batting a shuttlecock into the air with fans, and Carta (#2), a card-matching game in which the player tries to match a card inscribed with a well-known maxim to a card illustrated with a picture and the first syllable of the maxim. Girls also made handballs out of silk thread (Temari, #3), folded paper cranes (Origami, #4) or practiced Bon dancing and singing (Bonbon, #5).