Age of consent in Britain and Russia from Edward I to the laws of 1886

In 1837, when Victoria came to the throne, the age of consent in Britain was 12, and only in 1875 was it raised to 13. Needless to say, child prostitution flourished thanks to this provision. Although Edward I, who reigned in the thirteenth century, had introduced severe penalties for rape, up to and including death, sexual acts against children under the age of 12 were treated by the law merely as a misdemeanour. Only in 1576, under Elizabeth I, did sex with girls under 10 come to count as rape, yet sexual acts with children between 10 and 12 were still regarded as a misdemeanour. So it remained until 1886, when the age of consent was raised to 16.

In Russia, in the same year, the law set the age of consent for girls at 14. And even then only on condition of innocence and ignorance! That is, a girl deprived of her virginity at the age of 10 stood an enormous chance of becoming a serial victim of sexual violence or ending up in a brothel, and sex with her was not punishable by law, since the child failed to satisfy both criteria: innocence and ignorance of illicit liaisons. As the Senate explained, children under 10 were presumed by default to be innocent and uninformed; all the others were obliged to prove their ignorance and purity.

Russian law protected boys somewhat more seriously: their age of consent was 14, while relations with underage boys were punished more severely because of the odium attached to homosexual intercourse, which was regarded as a crime against public morality and could not be settled by agreement between the parties. That, however, is a separate and dreadful subject, in which, among other things, even oral and anal sex between spouses was counted as homosexual relations.