A toxic web: what the Victorians can teach us about online abuse

In the 1850s, adulterated food was causing widespread malnutrition. Campaigners, scientists, governments and industry leaders worked together to eventually put it right. Let's learn from this history

Jude Milhon, a cyberfeminist who died in 2003, was one of the first women to witness online harassment. Writing in Wired magazine, she urged women to "toughen up". "Whether we're set upon by zealots or bigots or abusively correct politicos, we have to learn to defend ourselves," she said. The year was 1995, and Jude already had 20 years of experience with harassment. In the early 1970s, she was active on Community Memory, a digital classifieds service in libraries and record shops in Berkeley, California. To reduce the abusive comments, the system charged 25 cents per post.