Contagious Diseases Acts (1866-1869) Repeal : summary of the debate on Mr. W. Fowler's motion, "That leave be given to bring in a Bill to repeal the Contagious Diseases Acts (1866-1869)", Tuesday, May 24, 1870.

Date:
1870
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Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: Contagious Diseases Acts (1866-1869) Repeal : summary of the debate on Mr. W. Fowler's motion, "That leave be given to bring in a Bill to repeal the Contagious Diseases Acts (1866-1869)", Tuesday, May 24, 1870. Source: Wellcome Collection.

Provider: This material has been provided by The University of Glasgow Library. The original may be consulted at The University of Glasgow Library.

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    I ought to state the proportions of all enthetic diseases. For this purpose I must use the Returns of the police, which are no doubt approximatively cor- rect, though they can scarcely claim the rigid accuracy of those to which. I have referred. By these Eeturns, owing to an increase in the number of cases of the minor disease, Portsmouth has meat from military and naval stations and ordinary patients from London. It is pitiable to visit this hospital, and see the ravages of disease among the latter as compared with the former. Mr. J E. Lane, the surgeon to the hospital, has kindly given me the periods for cure on an average of three years. As regards the major disease, a Government patient ndttagaiued norlost by^AcE, aid is cured in 45 days, *7oC it mav. therefore V>« plaaC0rl 0* o ^ ri J. 7 uiuinaiy it may, therefore, be classed as a case of failure, though as regards the major disease this is not true. The Acts have been applied to the various stations at different dates, but if we take the mean ratio in the year preceding the appli- cation it was 22-8, and in the last quarter it was only 11-27, or less than half. This refers to all enthetic diseases. If we take two special cases, by way of illustration, the difference between a protected and unprotected station will be _ better understood. Last year a bat- talion of Guards left London for Windsor on the 1st of March. Windsor has only recently been brought under the Acts, but formerly was notorious for its un- healthiness. During their stay of four months, thirty cases of sickness occurred. The battalion then returned to London, which is unprotected, and in the corresponding period of four months there were 108 cases, or three and a-half times more. Again, the 5th Fusiliers were at Aldershot, a protected station, for the first eight months of last year, and their average daily roll from these diseases was 3£ ; they then went to the unprotected stations of Glasgow and Ayr, and in the last four months of the year the daily roll was 7£, or more than double. I have hitherto treated only of the quantity of the disease, but the qua- lity of it has been much changed in the protected stations. By this I mean that the severity and duration, both of the major and minor diseases, have been much lessened. Thus, in the first year of the Act, at Devonport, the duration of treatment of the major disease was 85£ days; in the second year, 66A- days; in the third year, 53 days; and in the last quarter of 1869, 37 days. So that, if the experience of Devonport is gene- ral, while the quantity of disease has been reduced by a little less than a-half, the actual duration of what remains has been also lessened by more than a-half. In the Metropolitan Female Lock Hos- pital there are patients sent by Govern- patient requires 56 days; and, as regards the minor disease, a Government patient is cured in 25 days, while an ordinary patient requires 39 days. Surely I have said enough to prove how successful these Acts have been. Since 1846, when I acted as a Eoyal Commissioner on Public Health, sanitary laws have been to me an incessant object of interest; but, with the exception of the compulsory Vaccination Acts, I know no such achievements of legislation as have been performed by the Acts under discussion. Before leav- ing this part of the subject, I ought to refer to the effects of the Acts in dimin- ishing disease among fallen women. For this object the statistics available to me are limited ; but I possess them for several stations. At Chatham, for in- stance, when the Act was first applied, 70 per cent were found to be diseased; last quarter only 6 per cent were in this condition. This is, no doubt, the most marked case; but we are assured that the amelioration at every station has been great. Perhaps we may get a fairer view if we compare the state of common women at Winchester, in which the Act came into force last January, with that of Devonport, where it has been in operation since 1866. In Win- chester, in the two first months of the year, 43 per cent of the unfortunates were found to be diseased; while, in the corresponding months, at Devonport, only 14 per cent were in that condition. In our foreign stations similar Acts are in operation. At Malta traders in vice have been inspected since the time of the Knights, though by custom merely, for a law enforcing it was passed only in 1859. That law made the custom efficient, and its results are stated in Mr. Inglott's evidence. He says— Tho operation of the law has had the effect of checking public prostitution to a great extent, besides of almost annihilating the disease. In almost like terms Sir Henry Storks describes its effects in the islands of Corfu, Zante, and Cephalonia, before