In Anglophone countries in the 19th and early 20th centuries, the phrase "white slavery" was used to refer to sexual enslavement of white women. It was particularly associated with accounts of women enslaved in
Middle Eastern harems, such as the so-called
Circassian beauties. The phrase gradually came to be used as a euphemism for prostitution. The phrase was especially common in the context of the exploitation of minors, with the implication that children and young women in such circumstances were not free to decide their own fates.
In
Victorian Britain, campaigning journalist
William Thomas Stead, editor of the
Pall Mall Gazette, procured a 13-year-old girl for £5, an amount then equal to a labourer's monthly wage (
see the
Eliza Armstrong case).
Moral panic over the "traffic in women" rose to a peak in England in the 1880s. At the time, "white slavery" was a natural target for defenders of public morality and crusading journalists. The ensuing outcry led to the passage of antislavery legislation in Parliament. Parliament passed the
1885 Criminal Law Amendment Act, raising the
age of consent from thirteen to sixteen in that year.
A subsequent scare occurred in the United States in the early twentieth century, peaking in 1910, when
Chicago's
U.S. attorney announced (without giving details) that an international crime ring was abducting young girls in Europe, importing them, and forcing them to work in Chicago
brothels. These claims, and the
panic they inflamed, led to the passage of the United States
White-Slave Traffic Act of 1910, generally known as the "Mann Act". It also banned the interstate transport of females for immoral purposes. Its primary intent was to address prostitution and immorality.