ABSTRACT
The last decades of the nineteenth century saw the coming together of all the major themes of its sexual discourses: class pride and evangelism, moral certainty and social anxiety, the double standard and ‘respectability’, prurience and moral purity. Moral reform, from the 1870s, came close to the centre of political debate – much more so than structural social reform ever did in the nineteenth century. Individual conduct and moral reformation were seen as the key to public health. The sexologist Krafft-Ebing evoked a European-wide theme: ‘The material and moral ruin of the community is steadily brought about by debauchery, adultery and luxury.’ 1 The challenge was how to establish an appropriate framework within which moral reform could take place.
