‘My experience has shown me that children of a very tender age have vicious propensities’: Child testimony in Nineteenth Century cases of sexual abuse

Because of our adversarial legal system, and the cultural - especially religio-moral - values that frame it, debates over the admissibility and reception of children’s evidence have often distorted attempts to uncover the truth of what actually happened. This paper explores the judicial approach to the admissibility of child testimonies in the nineteenth century, an issue largely under-analysed due to the paucity of accessible primary source material. Informative secondary examples can be found in digitised newspaper reports