was the deceptively innocent-sounding title of a story which horrified and enthralled British readers in 1913. Originally published as My Little Sister, the same story had created shock waves in the USA during the previous year. The book was so shocking that sales had clocked up at the rate of around a thousand copies daily, justifying a fourth edition within a month.1 The author of the story was Elizabeth Robins, a celebrated American actress then living in Britain. She was a woman of great intelligence, glamour and style. She was also a committed feminist. Robins was determined to publicise the evils of prostitution, and more particularly stories of contemporary trafficking in young women, what was known as the ‘white slave trade’. She had carried out intensive research for this book, even to the extent of dressing up in Salvation Army uniform and talking, through the night, with prostitutes working the streets around Piccadilly.2 The book told the tale of a pretty maid, ‘white and golden’, ‘dimpled and lovely like a small princess’, who fell into the clutches of a group of lustful and immoral men.
