Report of Royal Commission upon the Administration and Operation of the Contagious Diseases Acts.

  • Great Britain. Royal Commission on the Contagious Diseases Acts.
Date:
1871
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Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: Report of Royal Commission upon the Administration and Operation of the Contagious Diseases Acts. Source: Wellcome Collection.

Provider: This material has been provided by London School of Hygiene & Tropical Medicine Library & Archives Service. The original may be consulted at London School of Hygiene & Tropical Medicine Library & Archives Service.

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    5948-9, to bear upon the inmates of the Lock wards through tliese agencies are not without 6068. effect. Many of the women on their discharge from the hospitals have been induced to enter the refuges and homes which are ready for their reception. It was not to be expected that a large proportion of the women would submit for a lengthened })eriod to the restraints of institutions, the discipline of which is necessarily somewhat strict; but some of them, weary of a life into which they have drifted from neglect and poverty rather than from wantonness, have gladly embraced llie opportunity offered to them of returning to a regular life, or rather perhaps of entering upon it for the first time. 42. The police returns show that out of an aggregate of 9,688 women who have been registered since the Acts came into operation in the several districts, 7,038 have been removed from the register for various causes. The largest proportion are those who have left the district; the next are those who have been restored to their friends. A smaller proportion of the women have entered Homes; some have married, and a few have died. Tiie inspector of police charged with the enforcement of the Acts in the 971-5. Devonport district, states on inquiries which satisfied him that 90 per cent, of the women removed from the register have ceased to be pro^>titutes. The highest number registered in the Devonport district was 2,621 ; the number remaining on the register on the last day of 1870 was 557 ; but t!ie inspector explained, on cross-examination, that it some- times happened that a woman, after having been removed from the register, returned after an interval to prostitution, and was re-registered. In about 60 or 70 cases the same woman was thus registered two or three times. But even making abatement for such cases, and further for women who would have left the trade independently of the Acts, the proportion of women reclaimed directly and indirectly by the operation of the z'Vcts, must be considerable. 43. Another very important quality ascribed to the Acts is their deterrent effect. 355. They operate, says Mr. Superintendent Wakeford, to prevent an accession of fresh women from the ranks of the respectable in the district, or from other districts, into 357. the number of the positively immoral. He goes on to say, Women going to brothels for the first time, and being met thereby the police—very often very young and inexperienced girls—there is an opportunity afforded of their being cautioned as to the nature of the place they are in, and the consequences which Avill '* attend it, and of their being advised to return to the situations w^hich perhaps they have left, or to the places from which they have come, and of the consequences if they remain there, which has a great deterring effect with regard to keeping the ranks of prostitutes from being recruited. We have had abundant evidence upon this point. Mr. Wolferstan a surgeon sometime engaged in the administration of the Acts, and not favourable to them in their present foim, distinctly stated that the Acts had a deterrent effect in keeping women from becoming common prostitutes. W^e ha\e 3731. been assured by witnesses who spoke from personal knowledge, that not only young girls 4J95. but married women, seamstresses, and others, were restrained from indulging in occasional 5860-2. license by the fear of the Acts. The superintendent of the local police at Plymouth, 10,680. though of opinion that the statements of his metropolitan brethren with reference to the Acts were exaggerated, nevertheless admitted that the Acts had retluced the number of 8715. public women, and that they had a deterrent effect. Inspector Anniss, of the Devonport 8735. district, stated that the effect of the reduction of the public women from about 2,000 (every one of whom lie had registered by name) to less than 600, involved the total disappearance from the brothels and the streets of some 200 or 300 children of from 13 to 15 years of age. If such results have been attained either wholly or partially 1114. through the operation of the Acts, those who demand their absolute repeal are bound to show that they have produced evils to counterbalance the good, which, after ail reasonable deductions have been made, may be fairly attributed to them. 44. Among the papers referred to this Commission by Your Majesty's Government, and Aj'p- which we print in the Appendix, is a memorial to the Secretary of State, Adopted at a conference of delegates from associates and committees formed in various towns for promoting the repCcd of the Contagious Diseases Act, aiid signed F. W. Newman, chairman. We do not propose to criticise this paper at length, nor should we have thought it fair to notice it at all, as representing the views of the opponents of the Acts, had it come before us under less respectable credentials. The memorial reads more like a vindication of the Rights of Prostitution than a grave argument against the Acts on moral and political grounds. Prostitutes, it is urged value their personal liberty as highly as other women do, and to shut up a diseased street-walker in a hospital until she is cured would be to change the whole structure and arrangement of her life; the relations which she may have formed would be abruptly ended; milliners, dressmakers, sempstresses, domestic servants, &c., who eke out a precarious existence, or provide themselves with coveted luxuries in the form of dress, &c., by recourse to occasional prostitution, would at once lose their business connexions, or if in