Josephine Butler: The Christian feminist who took on the Victorian sex trade and won

She was a devout Christian, a passionate feminist and the most distinguished woman of the 19th Century. So why did Josephine Butler vanish from the pages of history?

In a world rife with human trafficking, the work of Josephine Butler (1828-1906) has never been more relevant. For decades, Butler worked tirelessly, refusing the comforts of her own refined and privileged background, to bring the hidden underworld of the Victorian sex trade into the light. In the early 1880s she discovered that girls as young as eleven were being bought from impoverished parents in London, shipped to the continent and sold to brothels in Brussels and Paris for a lucrative profit. The average life expectancy of such girls was rarely more than 28 years. Her work raised public and parliamentary awareness of the plight of destitute women, and it helped hundreds of individuals escape the trap of prostitution.