The Criminal Law Amendment Act 1922 extended legal protections for children throughout the United Kingdom in relation to sexual activity, addressing significant gaps in the 1885 Act of the same name. The earlier Act had raised the age at which girls could consent to sexual intercourse from 13 to 16 years old but imposed a six-month time limit for bringing prosecutions for the relevant offence, unlawful sexual intercourse. This was now raised to nine months: an important amendment as many cases were only discovered when a pregnancy could no longer be concealed. The defence of reasonable belief that a girl was over 16 was also now limited to men under 23 years old. And perhaps most significantly, the age of consent to indecent assault was increased from 13 to 16, for both girls and boys.
The 1922 Act therefore brought greater consistency to sexual age of consent law, in ways which began to challenge the patriarchal Victorian model of sexuality. Less obviously, it is also significant for what it did not do: a Bill the previous year had failed thanks to a controversial proposal to criminalise sexual activity (‘gross indecency’) between women. The 1922 Act’s lack of reference to gross indecency between females saw the end of these efforts at criminalisation.
The full version of this landmark is written by Caroline Derry.