In August 1954, Sir David Maxwell Fyfe, erected the Wolfenden Committee to detail the growth in prostitution solicitation in the UK, but specifically in London where it became a specific concern following the Queen’s coronation—where an increase in tourist traffic and illegal sex prosecutions intersected. Vice-Chancellor of Reading University John Wolfenden was appointed as Chairman, along with doctors, lawyers, and academics; the group consisted of three women and twelve men.

            The arranged meetings spanned 62 days within a three-year period. Their considerations included whether homosexual activity and female prostitution would be subject to further criminality. Prior to the report, both homosexuality and explicit displays of solicitation were considered a strict criminal offense—symptomatic of the enforced Anglicized idiosyncrasy of ‘public decency’ and ‘social obedience’.

            It was in this defining moment on 5 September 1957, where the Committee took the stand to explain their findings and conclusion. In context to the United Kingdom as a whole, the Wolfenden Report (of 1957) opened debate on ‘public and private morality,’ sin, and law. The report begins by stating their purpose to:

           “…distinguish between crime and sin, and regard as criminal only those acts, however sinful, which do injury to someone other than the sinner, or which are an offence against public decency. From this principle spring…Sin is not a crime.”

The Wolfenden Report of 1957 advocated, then, that two homosexuals participating in consensual sex in private was not a crime by the State, whereas the contempt of female prostitution was navigated as an more pertinent issue in a devolution ‘social health’ during vulnerable wartime periods between the 1930s and at the time of the report (and further bled into the 1970s). The Wolfenden Report suggested that rather than decriminalizing prostitution as a State mandate, it was an issue of sin, a moral sin and a social sin, and therefore a purposeful push to turn prostitution as a public activity into a private ceremony.

Work Cited:

The Wolfenden Report: https://www.theguardian.com/theguardian/2009/sep/05/wolfenden-report-arc...

Gleeson, Kate. “The Timeless Aberration: Wolfenden and the Making of Modern Prostitution.” Lilith (08138990), no. 16, Nov. 2007, p. 69. EBSCOhost, search.ebscohost.com/login.aspx?direct=true&db=edo&AN=33145009&site=eds-live.