of the central council of the Inquisition of Madrid (The Suprema) written in 1614 stated that "adults" were then considered to be "women over twelve and men over fourteen". In the 16th century, a small number of Italian and German states set the minimum age for sexual intercourse for girls, setting it at twelve years. Towards the end of the 18th century, other European countries also began to enact similar laws. The first French Constitution of 1791 established the minimum age at eleven years. Portugal, Spain, Denmark and the Swiss cantons initially set the minimum age at ten to twelve years. Age of consent laws were historically difficult to follow and enforce. Legal norms based on age were not, in general, common until the 19th century, because clear proof of exact age and precise date of birth were often unavailable. In 18th century Australia it was thought that children were inherently sinful and vulnerable to sexual temptations. Punishment for "giving in" to these temptations was generally left to parents and was not seen as a government matter, except in the case of rape. Australian children had few rights and were legally considered the chattel of their parents. From the late 18th century, and especially in the 19th century, attitudes started to change. By the mid-19th century there was increased concern over child sexual abuse. Reforms in the 19th and 20th century A general shift in social and legal attitudes toward issues of sex occurred during the modern era. Attitudes on the appropriate age of permission for females to engage in sexual activity drifted toward adulthood. While ages from ten to thirteen years were typically regarded as acceptable ages for sexual consent in Western countries during the mid-19th century, by the end of the 19th century changing attitudes towards sexuality and childhood resulted in the raising of the age of consent. English common law had traditionally set the age of consent within the range of ten to twelve years old, but the Offences Against the Person Act 1875 raised this to thirteen in Great Britain and Ireland. Early feminists of the Social Purity movement, such as Josephine Butler and others, instrumental in securing the repeal of the Contagious Diseases Acts, began to turn towards the problem of child prostitution by the end of the 1870s. Sensational media revelations about the scourge of child prostitution in London in the 1880s then caused