The Contagious Diseases Act, or a few suggestions for controling [i.e. controlling] men as well as women.

Date:
[between 1870 and 1879]
Catalogue details

Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: The Contagious Diseases Act, or a few suggestions for controling [i.e. controlling] men as well as women. Source: Wellcome Collection.

Provider: This material has been provided by The Royal College of Surgeons of England. The original may be consulted at The Royal College of Surgeons of England.

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    purpose of extorting money. But those who make this objection should remember that it applies in a much stronger degree to the law of filiation; under which it does not appear that false accusations have taken place to any great extent. We say in a much stronger degree because there is a decided difference between the two cases. Under the law of filiation a charge may be brought against a respectable man (a master of a family, for instance), and he may have no means of disproving it; whereas, under the enactment proposed, no man can be charged with communicating disease to a woman unless he be himself diseased, or has lately been so ; in which case he would not be what is commonly called a respectable man. § 2. Another objection is that the measure would be inoperative from the amount of penalty not being sufficient to restrain profligate young men. But this objection exists in theory rather than in practice. It is a mistake to suppose that, because a pecuniary penalty is small in comparison with the offence, it is disregarded by the mass of the population who come within its scope. They who are rich enough to make light of a small mulct form a trifling minority of the population of a country. The far greater number have no more than sufficient for their necessities, and would find the weekly payment for the maintenance of the patient a serious incumbrance. Those, again, who are in easier circumstances would be affected in another way, even more seriously. Young men of the middle classes have a great dread of appearing before magistrates. They are so dependent on their character for their success in life, that to have their names brought before the public in connection with a dis- graceful affair is ruin to them. It cannot, therefore, be doubted that such a law would exercise a repressive influence upon the great mass of the community. § 3. A third objection may be urged against this