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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    ening in the sources of their supply the clandestine fallen. Nor is this reform surprising when we recollect the human- izing and religious influences under which these unfortunates are brought; for you will recollect that the Act per- mits no hospital to be certified, till ample provision has been made for the moral and spiritual instruction of the inmates. From the unattractive sensa- tional literature, which has been, with more zeal than discretion, put upon our tables for the last few months, one would be inclined to believe that the hospitals under these Acts are prisons and places of torture. Well, in former periods of history, when an excited and false public opinion on such subjects was al- lowed to prevail, Lock hospitals de- served this description, but now the hospitals are conducted with kindness and consideration to the fallen. Medical men, chaplains, and nurses gladly aid them in their attempts at reform. So little are these poor creatures accustomed to such humanizing influences, that their hearts become touched, and, in enforced leisure, they are awakened to the shame and misery of their lives. If you will not credit the Return of the police, at least let us believe the chaplains who testify to these results. Were it not that I am unwilling to detain the House, I should read to you the strongest letters in support of this, from clergymen of all persuasions in the protected stations, none of whom have official connection with the Acts. What do the opponents say in reply to such united testimony ? They simply murmur their fears that the inspection of such women must have a tendency to degrade and not to elevate them. Well, I would treat those fears with the respect which is due to all sin- cere convictions, especially as they are the offspring of virtuous minds, who cannot conceive the degradation of the fallen. Unquestionably, modesty in a woman is at once her glory and protec- tion, and I hope it is not wholly ex- tinguished among unfortunates. But traders in immorality, whose bodies are the subject of commerce, have not those feelings of delicate susceptibility which are claimed for them. I admit that it would be a terrible thing if any inno- cent woman could, by a miscarriage of law, fall under the operation of the Acts. But women, as a class, are as much out- side legislative interference, as their vir- tue and goodness are outside and far re- moved from the sins of the fallen of their sex. In the operation of all laws there have been isolated cases of mis- carriage of justice. I shall leave to the Home Secretary the defence of the police, who seem to me to have exercised a really marvellous tact and discretion in carrying out these Acts, and I will admit, for the sake of argument, though I do not believe it, that there may have been one or two cases of mistakes in the cha- racter of the women who have been summoned. But even for robbery or murder, innocent persons have been tried and convicted. When a misadventure occurs in the application of a law, it is a subject of deep regret, and a warning that our safeguards against such contin- gencies should be multiplied; but it forms no argument for the abolition of. a salutary law. The law, as it stands, is singularly careful. It takes no notice of individual immorality, but only of the immoral trader who plies her trade to the detriment of the public forces. It does not allow a common policeman to be an indicator of the trader; but re- serves that power to a skilled and respon- sible superintendent or inspector. No such woman need come under the Acts, if she choose to abandon her courses, or even to leave the district, and in no case need she, without being brought before a magistrate, in public or private as she prefers. So that the constant statements made that any woman can be arrested, detained, or inspected, at the mere will of the police, are utterly without foun- dation. In conclusion, I trust that I have treated this delicate subject as little of- fensively to the House as its nature per- mits. I have tried to show dispassion- ately that these Acts, viewed as sanitary measures, have been successful, and are becoming progressively still more effec- tive. I have endeavoured to show that they are not unjust, inasmuch as they deal only with traders in a vicious and injurious traffic; and, so viewed, that they are consistent with our usual habits of legislation. So far from degrading the unfortunates subject to them, they have largely ameliorated both the physi- cal and moral condition of the women who have been brought under their ope- ration, abke out of mercy to our forces and of mercy to themselves. For three centuries and a-half these diseases have been the scandal of civilization, and nei-