The Pamphlet Collection of Sir Robert Stout: Volume 3

Objections to the Extension of the Contagious Diseases Act to the Civil Population Considered

Objections to the Extension of the Contagious Diseases Act to the Civil Population Considered.

I shall now briefly consider some of the more prominent objections urged against the proposed extension of the Contagious Diseases Act to the civil population. These objections are based mainly on religious and moral grounds—the risk of encouraging sin,—and the injustice of Curtailing individual freedom.

From the language held by our opponents, one would imagine that they enjoyed a monopoly of love of liberty and regard for religion, but that we who desire to check disease, care for neither of these things. Now I desire the utmost freedom for all, except freedom to injure the community, and I reverence religion too much not to grieve when it degenerates into mere sentiment, and I repudiate the sensational and disingenuous arguments so freely used by our opponents in discussing these social questions. Among the many pamphlets recently circulated against the extension of the Contagious Diseases Act, I may notice, as a type of the class to which it belongs, one recently published by a provincial member of my own profession, Dr. Taylor. Its sensational character sufficiently appears from its title—

" On the Contagious Diseases Act

( Women, Not Animals.)

" Showing how the New Law debases Women, debauches" Men, destroys the Liberty of the Subject, and tends to "increase Disease."

How strangely do these frantic sentences compare with the extract I have already quoted from the last report of the House of Commons, which states—

"Although the Act has only been in operation two years and a-half, and, at some stations] only seven months, strong testimony is borne to the benefits both in a moral and sanitary point of view, which have already resulted from it.

"Prostitution appears to have diminished, its worst features to have been softened, and its physical evils abated."

I may at least pay Dr. Taylor the compliment of saying that the subsequent pages of his pamphlet will sustain the character gained for it by its title page.

Is it true, I have been asked, that, as stated in this pamphlet—

"Under the provisions of the Contagious Diseases Act, any "woman whom a policeman may choose to designate, or affect to believe, to be a prostitute, without proof, without evidence, trial, or conviction, is liable to be arrested, taken before a magistrate, and condemned to three months' imprisonment with hard labour, which may be repeated indefinitely, that is for life, if she decline to submit for at least a year in company with the vilest prostitutes, to a frequently repeated violation of her person with a surgical instrument. The policeman is disguised in plain clothes, and his functions are those of a spy. When he has spied out a woman, he informs her in the language of the force, that 'he shall run her in that is, take her before a magistrate, unless she consents to the operation I have described. In the middle ages, when our forefathers employed the rack, thumb-screw, fire, and other forms of torture, such exposure and violation was one of the ' peincs fortes et dures,' occasionally offered with others for selection to female criminals, but it was always the last chosen.

"It is now offered with the alternative of imprisonment for life to those, who at the very worst arc not criminals, and who may be entirely innocent."

At page 6 it is stated—

"The spies have nothing to guide them in their selection of victims, and I am informed that one of these officials recently told a girl, that his reason for arresting her was that he had seen her twice at a concert No proof is required.

"Suspicions—just, or unjust, aroused by worthy or unworthy motives, are all that is necessary to condemn the best woman in the land, and if she happens to be penniless and friendless, so much the worse for her."

At page 10, he goes on—

"Indeed it is a well-known fact, that wherever this Act is enforced, no respectable woman is safe. In fact, in Paris, it is not safe for a young lady to walk abroad; if she do so, she is almost certain to be arrested and accused of prostitution."

It is difficult to answer such loose assertions. So far as they come within the region of reason, I will endeavour to deal with them, but, I here quote them rather to show what extraordinary things some men will say, and some others, I presume, believe, than with a view to serious argument. Any one who will take the trouble to compare the clauses of the Contagious Diseases Act with these statements of Dr. Taylor's, will be at a loss to discover what foundation any one outside St. Luke's could have found for such wild and startling propositions. What, for, instance, are we to do with a man who actually believes, or at least asserts, that "one of these officials recently told a girl that his reason for arresting her was that he had seen her twice at a concert"—that "suspicions just or unjust are all that is necessary to condemn the best woman in the land," that "wherever this act is in force, no respectable woman is safe, and that in fact, in Paris, it is not safe for a young lady to walk abroad Such notions, as they have found a propagator, may also find adherents. It is some comfort to believe that such persons are never likely to exercise much influence on the course of legislation. The dark allusion to the peines fortes et dares of the middle ages, is even more incomprehensible to persons of ordinary minds than the other grotesque statements by which it is surrounded. Were it not for the proneness of mankind to believe that where there is smoke there must be fire, these random sentences might be left to refute themselves; but lest any one should imagine that this Act does really open the door to, if not actually introduce something very had indeed, I will now proceed to discover, if possible, and then to deal with the objections hidden under this cloud of words. They appear to be two: First, that this Act puts the virtue of the women of England in the hands of the police. Secondly, that the medical examination of a prostitute is an unjustifiable outrage, and is as painful to her as the worst form of torture. The first proposition is obviously untrue, and on examination must resolve itself into the milder, yet serious objection—that under this Act, it is possible for the police to be guilty of arbitrary and capricious conduct. If this be so, Dr. Taylor has doubtless succeeded in hitting a blot, for it is impossible to exaggerate the serious consequences to an innocent woman of being falsely accused of leading an immoral life. This, however, seems to be an objection to the particular Act, rather than to the principle embodied in it, and, if it can be substantiated, shows the necessity of guarding in future legislation against the possibility of any modest woman being treated as a prostitute, through the mistake or malice of a policeman. It seems to me that this can be done without much difficulty. I am aware that Mr. Mill * is of a contrary opinion, "he does not think the abuses of power by the police mere accidents, which could be prevented. He thinks them the necessary consequences of any attempt to carry out such a plan thoroughly" This observation of Mr. Mill's would be undeniably true, if it were proposed to bring under supervision all the women of loose habits in the country; but I, at least, suggest no such enterprise. I shall be satisfied, if we can subject to the provisions of this sanitary law all the open and notorious prostitutes. As I have already shown, it is from these women that the mischief principally, if not altogether, proceeds, and whatever danger there may be, that women of good repute should from exceptional circumstances become the objects of undeserved suspicion, it is absurd to suggest that they could ever be mistaken for, or accused of being professional prostitutes, to whom alone it is proposed to extend the Act. If it be said that in dealing only with the notorious prostitute, we reach but a small part of the evil, and the experience of clandestine prostitution in France be advanced in support of this position, I reply, that there is no analogy between the fille clandestine of the continent and the secretly dissolute woman in England. The clandestine prostitute and the public prostitute belong to precisely the same class, the only difference being, that the one evades, and the other submits to medical inspection; the result being, that the one exhibits disease in the proportion of about 1 in 5, the other of about 1 in 200. In England all prostitutes living outside the protected districts are in the sense in which the term is used in France of being uninspected, clandestine, and may be reasonably supposed to be diseased in the same proportion as women similarly circumstanced in other countries. It is, therefore, perfectly accurate to speak of clandestine prostitution on the continent as the great source of danger to the public health; but such a statement with regard to prostitution in England is absolutely meaningless; and if by clandestine, the intention is to allude to the more reserved class of prostitutes, or rather to women who, though not prostitutes, are guilty of immorality, it is positively false.

If it be objected that the proposed legislation will create the clandestine class in this country—that is, that the same repugnance will be exhibited by prostitutes in England to the proposed moans of checking the disease by which they are afflicted, as is exhibited in France to being subjected to the police regulations in vogue there,—I reply, that this is jumping to a conclusion most unwarrantably. The places from which we should draw our inferences as to the possibility of effectually currying out a Contagious Diseases Act, are not foreign countries subjected to an entirely different system, but the protected districts at home, where the plan is already in successful operation. The first objection then is not to the principle of the Contagious Diseases Act, but to the supposed absence from it of sufficiently careful provisions; these, if the objection can be substantiated, may be supplied. I may fur- ther remark, that so far as this objection is countenanced by Mr. Mill, it appears to be on account of his misapprehension of what is really proposed to be done, and the amount of good that can thereby be accomplished. The second objection goes undoubtedly to the principles of the measure, but appears to be one of little weight. The charge conveyed by it is, that we are proposing to submit unfortunate women to a system worse than the worst torture. Can serious trifling be carried further, and can we be expected to believe, that women whose bodies are free to all the world, will, if examined by a surgeon, feel misery akin to that which drove modest women to prefer torture to violation? It is wonderful that a man professing so much regard for what is due to women should so travesty their most sacred feelings.

The public should be made fully aware of the fact that we are not legislating for "soiled doves" but for a class of women that we may almost call unsexed, who, I have elsewhere shown, have so far lost womanly feelings, that they will consort with as many as from eight to twelve different men in the same night. Acton on Prostitution, p. 25.

* Mr. Mill's Avignon Letter, Echo January 17, 1870.