Facts respecting the Contagious Diseases Acts : answer to a speech by Duncan McLaren, Esq., M.P., published under the above title / by James R. Lane.

  • Lane, James R. (James Robert), 1825-1891.
Date:
1870
Catalogue details

Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: Facts respecting the Contagious Diseases Acts : answer to a speech by Duncan McLaren, Esq., M.P., published under the above title / by James R. Lane. 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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    THE CONTAGIOUS DISEASES ACTS. A PAMPHLET purporting to be the substance of a speech delivered at Newcastle in September last, by Mr. Duncan McLaren, M.P., and published by the National Association for the Repeal of the Contagious Diseases Acts, has recently come under my notice, and I find it to contain a series of such extraordinary mis-statements, that I am tempted to say a few words in reply. The subject of the Contagious Diseases Acts has for some time occupied the attention of the public, and is likely to do so still more now that a Royal Commission is about to com- mence an inquiry into the whole question. It is, therefore, all the more necessary that the erroneous impressions which this widely-circulated pamphlet is calculated to convey should, as far as possible, be counteracted. Mr. McLaren attempts to show that the benefits stated to have resulted from the operation of the Acts in question are fallacious, especially as regards the alleged diminution in the number of prostitutes, and the diminished amount of disease, in the districts which have been placed under the Acts, and that instead of a diminution there has been actu- ally a great increase in both these respects. Mr. McLaren’s attack is mainly directed against the Report of the Commissioner of Police to the Lords of the Admiralty on the operation of the Contagious Diseases Acts printed by order of the House of Commons of the 8th August, 1870. This report is characterised by Mr. McLaren as “ the “ most unfair and untruthful public document which it has “ ever been his lot to meet with,” p. 15. “ The leading “ statements,” he says, “ in place of honestly giving the true “ results of the tables, contain gross misrepresentations and “ exaggerations, professing to prove the beneficial operation I “of the Acts, even in those cases where the very opposite “ results followed First, it is stated that 7,776 ; “ women were on the register, and that this number has “ been now reduced to 3,016,” P- 7. Whereas, “ In place of