# How common was pedophilia in the past? **URL:** \ **Category:** Factual Questions\ **Created:** [April 14, 2002, 9:06pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/how-common-was-pedophilia-in-the-past/103618 "2002-04-14T21:06:15Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 10\ **Page:** 3
**Author:** ![Superhal](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/b4bc9f/32.png) [@Superhal](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Superhal)\ **Post date:** [April 18, 2014, 12:01am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/how-common-was-pedophilia-in-the-past/103618/41 "2014-04-18T00:01:20Z")
> [@kanicbird](#): > > 12 years to get a answer. Yes it was common enough to have to pass a law against it, and Cecil is expecting the war to be fought on some time table 😕 If a pedophile needs an ass-kicking, sign me up. ---
**Author:** ![thalia19](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/t/ce73a5/32.png) [@thalia19](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/thalia19)\ **Post date:** [April 18, 2014, 12:14am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/how-common-was-pedophilia-in-the-past/103618/42 "2014-04-18T00:14:36Z")
> [@Superhal](#): > > Tons in Indian (Asian) history. One example is the film “Bandit Queen,” about the female warrior bandit Phoolan Devi. She was married at 12 by a man in his 30’s or something by arranged marriage. Well less shockin than Aisha; Remember that age of consent at those times where 12 approx. that means at least girl was a pubescent. something imposible in modern society and moral questionable. no doubt about it. but by “pedophilic” i mean sex with childs under that age. even more disturbing in my opinion :mad: ---
**Author:** ![BigT](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/bigt/32/12044_2.png) [@BigT](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/BigT)\ **Post date:** [April 18, 2014, 3:11am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/how-common-was-pedophilia-in-the-past/103618/43 "2014-04-18T03:11:47Z")
> [@thalia19](#): > > Well less shockin than Aisha; Remember that age of consent at those times where 12 approx. that means at least girl was a pubescent. something imposible in modern society and moral questionable. no doubt about it. > > but by “pedophilic” i mean sex with childs under that age. even more disturbing in my opinion :mad: What I’ve read is that no one accuses him of having sex with her before pubescence, but of conspiring to marry her before then. They say this means he was attracted to her a child, which is what makes him a pedophile. A pedophile need not be a child molester or child rapist. That said, it is not absolutely necessary that he sexually desired her as a child. And he did call her his favorite wife throughout, even after she became an adult. So he didn’t seem to have the usual pedophiliac tendency of being attracted to a child but losing that attraction as an adult. Nor did he pick a new favorite little girl. That Aisha was not one of several is a testament to a lack of any general sexual desire for children. Yes, I’ve thought about all this before, as “Muhammed was a pedophile” is often used by certain types of Christians to discredit Islam, and I had to see how true it was. ---
**Author:** ![md2000](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/m/73ab20/32.png) [@md2000](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/md2000)\ **Post date:** [April 19, 2014, 3:08pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/how-common-was-pedophilia-in-the-past/103618/44 "2014-04-19T15:08:15Z")
King John (of Robin Hood fame) apparently took up with a girl of 13. There were complaints they spent too much time in bed to the neglect of other duties as the kingdom fell apart. Interestingly, she did not have any children until age 18, at which time she was popping them out regularly. The implication would be that she began menstruating at about 17, which apparently seems to be not unusual for those days. Similarly, Pepys married his wife when she was 15 but put off consummation for a while - presumably, because she had not yet begun menstruating. Not sure if that was a prevalent attitude. However, one item I recall reading mentioned (there’s a technical term for it) that girls begin developing before they begin ovulating. The evolutionary explanation being that it helps ensure they have an established mate by the time they produce children. Males are the opposite, they tend to be fertile before they are obviously men; so in cultures where men are seen as suspicious and a threat to another man’s women, they can enjoy the camouflage of childhood for a bit longer. Presumably a 13-year-old would look like an adult to some extent, even back then. One article I recall put the age for breast development nowadays near 10 years old. It’s just that modern society requires so much more education for people to function properly, that it important to shelter children from these “distractions”, which seem to come more often from their peers, not much older people. ---
**Author:** ![Urbanredneck](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/u/ea5d25/32.png) [@Urbanredneck](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Urbanredneck)\ **Post date:** [April 20, 2014, 4:54am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/how-common-was-pedophilia-in-the-past/103618/45 "2014-04-20T04:54:56Z")
Lewis Carroll who wrote “Alice in Wonderland” seemed to have a thing for naked little girls. ---
**Author:** ![Mississippienne](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/m/d2c977/32.png) [@Mississippienne](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Mississippienne)\ **Post date:** [April 20, 2014, 9:29pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/how-common-was-pedophilia-in-the-past/103618/46 "2014-04-20T21:29:17Z")
> [@md2000](#): > > King John (of Robin Hood fame) apparently took up with a girl of 13. There were complaints they spent too much time in bed to the neglect of other duties as the kingdom fell apart. > > Interestingly, she did not have any children until age 18, at which time she was popping them out regularly. The implication would be that she began menstruating at about 17, which apparently seems to be not unusual for those days. John’s second wife, Isabelle of Angouleme, was about twelve or thirteen when he married her, but the marriage was (as were most royal marriages) made for political reasons. For the first few years of their marriage she actually lived in the same household with John’s ex-wife, Isabel of Gloucester. Perhaps he was sleeping with her, perhaps he wasn’t. The fact that their first child wasn’t born until seven years after their wedding suggests that they delayed consummation for some time. Henry III, the eldest child of the aforementioned John and Isabelle, married Eleanor of Provence when he was 29 and she was 12. That one seems to have been consummated fairly quickly, as a year or so later an assassin broke into the king’s bedchamber but was unable to find and kill him because Henry was spending the night in Eleanor’s bedroom. Henry III and Eleanor’s first child, the future Edward I, was born three years after their marriage, when his mother was about fifteen. Edward I and his wife, Leonor (Eleanor) of Castile, married when she was thirteen and he was fifteen. They had a stillborn daughter born the next summer and continued having children together for almost thirty years! ---
**Author:** ![Chihuahua](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/c/dec6dc/32.png) [@Chihuahua](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Chihuahua)\ **Post date:** [April 21, 2014, 6:19am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/how-common-was-pedophilia-in-the-past/103618/47 "2014-04-21T06:19:09Z")
Zombie thread, but still confused as to how it refers to “in the past.” In at least one part of the world pederasty is considered normal and vaginal intercourse is done only for procreation: [http://www.allvoices.com/contributed-news/6667523-afghanistan-for-westerners-it-is-pedophilia-for-pashtuns-it-is-bacha-baz](http://www.allvoices.com/contributed-news/6667523-afghanistan-for-westerners-it-is-pedophilia-for-pashtuns-it-is-bacha-baz) ---
**Author:** ![md2000](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/m/73ab20/32.png) [@md2000](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/md2000)\ **Post date:** [April 21, 2014, 6:57am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/how-common-was-pedophilia-in-the-past/103618/48 "2014-04-21T06:57:15Z")
Lewis Carroll (Charles Dodgson) apparently had a thing for little girls. From what I’ve read about this, he was a stutterer and was tormented badly by his peers growing up. Probably this was mainly boys, and his opinion was that little boys were vile creatures and little girls were angels. He took a number of photos of young girls, many nude. Ah, the naiveté of the age - apparently he persuaded many of the mothers to permit this, and to some even watched the photo sessions to assure themselves nothing was happening except this newfangled photography thing. In later life, he destroyed the photos. I recall seeing a book once that showed a few plates that survived. From my hazy recollection, they were the allegory type poses, like “spring in the flowers” or “the little match girl” or some such. Certainly not explicit porn, very much in tune with the putti or adult female nudes of the time, the classic “ribbon draped over the crotch” kind of Victorian stuff if I recall. Whether he actually acted out on these, who knows? One theory is that he charmed Alice Liddell quite a lot, and since he was not of the appropriate station or social circle, her parents made sure he kept away when she got close to marriageable age. – One thing not to overlook is that we have a very warped view of privacy in modern society. A hundred years ago, let alone 500 or 1000, most people lived in small communities. You could not live without knowing your neighbours, you could not live without a household or servants or someone to do your laundry. You could not drive far away every day where you got lost in a crowd. Even in the big cities, it was like a small town. Everyone knew everyone else’s business. People didn’t have their own apartment or bedroom unless they were rich. I suspect the opportunity for privacy was very limited, plus making a living would involve working long hours. It would be difficult to find the alone time, especially with anyone other than immediate family. Any interaction with children other than your own would be hard to get away with. I suspect the majority of pedophilia fell in the category of isolated hillbilly farmer activity. (The aristocrats happily cavorted with each other. Several of the historical writings and novels I’ve read mentioned that they did not try to hide their adulteries from the servants; they didn’t care and there’s no way they could. The servants may have gossiped among themselves, but unless someone was paying spies, at least their peers didn’t learn about it first hand.) Also consider the case of Catherine Howard, fifth wife of Henry VIII (hint - it ended badly for her…) > [@](#): > > In the Duchess’s household, Catherine’s music teacher, Henry Mannox, had a sexual relationship with her around 1536, when she was about thirteen. He later gave evidence in the inquiry against her. Mannox and Catherine both confessed during her adultery trial that they had engaged in sexual contact, but not intercourse. Catherine was even quoted as saying, “At the flattering and fair persuasions of Mannox, being but a young girl, I suffered him at sundry times to handle and touch the secret parts of my body, which neither became me with honesty to permit nor him to require.” > > This adolescent affair came to an end in 1538, when Catherine was pursued by a secretary of the Dowager Duchess’s household, Francis Dereham. They became lovers, addressing each other as “husband” and “wife”. Dereham also entrusted Catherine with various wifely duties, such as keeping his money when he was away on business. Many of Catherine’s roommates among the Dowager Duchess’s maids of honour and attendants knew of the relationship, which apparently ended in 1539 when the Dowager Duchess caught wind of the matter. Despite this disapproval, Catherine and Dereham may have parted with intentions to marry upon his return from Ireland, agreeing to a precontract, as it was then known. If indeed they exchanged vows of their intention to marry before having sexual intercourse, they would have been considered married in the eyes of the Church. Of course, the men involved were punished not for the age of the girl, but for the temerity of doing anything with a future or current queen. At this point Henry was a little touchy about these details. ---
**Author:** ![Wendell\_Wagner](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/w/8491ac/32.png) [@Wendell\_Wagner](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Wendell_Wagner)\ **Post date:** [April 21, 2014, 7:27am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/how-common-was-pedophilia-in-the-past/103618/49 "2014-04-21T07:27:27Z")
For what it’s worth, the theory that Dodgson was a pedophile or even that he was attracted to young girls but didn’t do anything is highly disputed. It’s not just that it would take a separate thread to argue this. Really, it would take a book to debate the issue. There’s a short discussion of it in the Wikipedia entry on Dodgson and citations from books and articles on this matter: > **[Lewis Carroll](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lewis_Carroll)** > > Charles Lutwidge Dodgson (/ˈlʌtwɪdʒ ˈdɒdʒsən/ LUT-wij DOJ-sən; 27 January 1832 – 14 January 1898), better known by his pen name Lewis Carroll, was an English author, poet and mathematician. His most notable works are Alice's Adventures in Wonderland (1865) and its sequel Through the Looking-Glass (1871). He was noted for his facility with word play, logic, and fantasy. His poems Jabberwocky (1871) and The Hunting of the Snark (1876) are classified in the genre of literary nonsense. > Carroll ca... Here’s a long essay on this question: [http://www.victorianweb.org/authors/carroll/dreamchild/dreamchild1.html](http://www.victorianweb.org/authors/carroll/dreamchild/dreamchild1.html) ---
**Author:** ![slash2k](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/439d5e/32.png) [@slash2k](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/slash2k)\ **Post date:** [April 21, 2014, 10:55pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/how-common-was-pedophilia-in-the-past/103618/50 "2014-04-21T22:55:15Z")
There’s actually a fair amount of dispute as to Aisha’s age. Depending on which set of hadith you accept or which biographers you believe, a compelling case can be made for her age to have been anywhere between six and nineteen at betrothal. For example, Tabari reported that Aisha and all of her siblings were born during the Jahiliyyah or pre-Islamic period, which ended in 610 CE. The traditional date of her betrothal is 622 CE, making her no younger than twelve, and possibly a few years older. Ibn Hisham’s version of the first surviving biography of Muhammad says that Aisha was the 18th convert to Islam. If she was old enough to have spoken the words “There is no god but Allah” by 610 or 611, again she was older than six by 622. Other hadith record that Aisha was ten years younger than her sister Asma, who is supposed to have been born ca. 595. That puts Aisha’s birth around 605, making her about seventeen at marriage. The notion that Aisha was so young and a virgin had important political connotations in the battles to succeed Muhammad (she was reputedly his only virgin wife), but at this late date, there’s no way to know which is the most reliable source(s). [Previous page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/how-common-was-pedophilia-in-the-past/103618.md?page=2)