Contagious Diseases Acts

The Contagious Diseases Acts were originally passed by the Parliament of the United Kingdom in 1864, with further alterations and editions made to it in 1866 and 1869. In 1862, a committee was established to inquire into venereal disease in the armed forces; on its recommendation the first Contagious Diseases Act was passed. The legislation allowed police officers to arrest prostitutes in certain ports and army towns, and the women were then subjected to compulsory checks for venereal disease. If a woman was declared to be infected, she would be confined in what was known as a ‘Lock Hospital’ until ‘cured’. The original act was only lawful in a few selected naval ports and army towns, but by 1869 the acts had been extended to be in operation in eighteen ‘subjected districts’^[1]

The Act of 1864 stated that women found to be infected could be interned in locked hospitals for up to three months, a period gradually extended to one year with the 1869 Act. These measures were justified by medical and military officials as the most effective method to shield men from venereal disease. As military men were discouraged from marriage and homosexual behaviour was criminal, prostitution was considered a necessary evil. However, no provision was made for the examination of prostitutes' clientèle, which became one of the many points of contention in a campaign to repeal the Acts.

After 1866, proposals were introduced to extend the acts to the north of England and to the civilian population. It was suggested that this extension would regulate prostitution and stop street disorders caused by it in large cities.

The issue of the Contagious Diseases Act and venereal disease created significant controversy within Victorian Society. Known as the ‘Social Disease’, the acts themselves affected thousands of people's lives, from campaigners to prostitutes themselves. It exploded the debate over the double standards between men and women. It was one of the first political issues that led to women organizing themselves and actively campaigning for their rights.

The acts demonstrated the degree of double standards between men and women in Victorian society. Men were responsible for the demand for prostitutes, yet only women had to endure humiliating personal medical examinations and be contained in locked hospitals if found to be infected; women's reputations were threatened but not men's. The double standards of men were a key part in Josephine Butler's campaigns for the repeal of the acts. In one of her public letters, she allowed a prostitute to deliver her own account of her personal encounters with men:

“It is men, only men, from the first to the last that we have to do with! To please a man I did wrong at first, then I was flung about from man to man. Men police lay hands on us. By men we are examined, handled, doctored. In the hospital it is a man again who makes prayer and reads the Bible for us. We are had up before magistrates who are men, and we never get out of the hands of men till we die!”

Background of prostitution in Victorian England

The level of prostitution was high in Victorian England. The acts themselves would have affected a large proportion of the female workforce in Britain. For several reasons prostitution was predominantly a working class profession. For many working class women their journey into prostitution was one of circumstance. During the nineteenth century the public began to concern itself with particular social problems, an increasing view of the "ideal woman" was beginning to emerge and the "angel of the home" was becoming a popular stereotype. This rise of the middle class domestic morality made it increasingly harder for women to obtain work in certain professions, causing an increase in such areas as needle-trades, shop girls, agricultural gangs, factory work, and domestic servants^[2], all occupations with long hours and little pay. Low earnings, it is argued, meant that women had to resort to prostitution to be able to provide for themselves and their families, particularly in households where the main breadwinner was no longer around. In fact, a study from the late – Victorian period showed that most remained prostitutes; over 50% of these women had either been servants or working in dead end jobs such as laundering, charing, and street selling^[3]. Prostitution is also an unskilled occupation; a woman does not need to go through any sort of training or apprenticeship.

The nature of the occupation makes it difficult to establish the exact amount of prostitutes in operation during the Victorian Period. Judicial reports of the years 1857 to 1869 show that prostitutes were more common in commercial ports and pleasure resorts and less so in hardware towns, cotton and linen manufacturing centres and woollen and worsted centres.^[4] The Westminster Review placed the figure between 50,000 and 368,000^[5]. This would make prostitution the fourth largest female occupation. However, the police estimates of known prostitutes portray an entirely different estimate:

Police estimates of known prostitutes^[6]

Date	London	England and Wales
1839	6,371	-
1841	9,404	-
1856	8,600	-
1858	7,194	27,113
1859	6,649	28,743
1861	7,124	29,572
1862	5,795	28,449
1863	5,581	27,411
1864	5,689	26,802
1865	5,911	26,213
1866	5,544	24,717
1867	5,628	24,999
1888	5,678	24,311

However, this table relates only prostitutes known to the police. The unreliability of statistics during the nineteenth century prevents one form knowng if prostitution was increasing or decreasing during this period, but it is clear that Victorians during the 1840s and 1850s thought that prostitution and venereal disease were increasing .^[7]

Regulating prostitution was the government's attempt to control the high level of venereal disease in its armed forces. By 1864, one out of three sick cases in the army were caused by venereal disease; admissions into hospitals for gonorrhoea and syphilis reached 290.7 per 1,000 of total troop strength.^[8]

Prostitutes found work within the armed forces, mainly due to servicemen's forced celibacy and the conditions of the barracks the men were forced to endure.^[9] The barracks were overcrowded and had a lack of ventilation and defective sanitation. Very few servicemen were permitted to marry, and even those were not given an allowance to support their wives, which often forced them to become prostitutes as well.^[10]

Extension and repeal

In 1866, the Association for the Extension of the Contagious Diseases Acts was established and was just as prominent in the publishing of pamphlets and articles as the Ladies National Association for the Repeal of the Contagious Diseases Acts was. The Association for the Extension of the Contagious Diseases Acts strongly campaigned for the extension of the Contagious Diseases Acts to be extended outside of the naval and army barracks and be made effective to the whole of the country, as they believed this was the best way of regulating prostitution.

There was much action taken towards the repeal of the Contagious Diseases Acts. In 1869, the National Association for the Repeal of the Contagious Diseases Acts was established; initially restricting women from its meetings, causing the Ladies National Association for the Repeal of the Contagious Diseases Acts to be quickly established by Josephine Butler. These repeal organizations attracted the vigorous support of not only moralists and feminists but also those concerned with civil liberties, especially since the Acts were perceived as having violated basic human rights.

Both groups actively campaigned against the acts and between 1870 and 1885, 17,365 petitions against the acts bearing 2,606,429 signatures were presented to the House of Commons, and during the same period, more than 900 meetings were held.^[11] The repealists struck a chord with the public consensus on the issues surrounding prostitution and they highlighted the issue of double standards. It was the men and women of the National Association and the Ladies National Association who won the battle over the Contagious Diseases Acts, and, in 1886, the Acts were repealed.

Conditions in Lock hospitals

If a woman was declared diseased she would be confined in what were known as Lock hospitals. The Lock hospitals or Lock wards were designed specifically to treat those infected with a venereal disease. Conditions in Lock Hospitals were inadequate. An 1882 survey estimated that there were only 402 beds for female patients in all the voluntary lock hospitals in Great Britain, and out of this number only 232 were "funded for use".^[12] Female venereal patients generally had to resort to workhouse infirmaries.

Further reading

• J. Walkowitz, ‘Prostitution and Victorian Society’
• J. Walkowitz, ‘City of Dreadful Delight’
• E.M Sigworth and T.J Wyke ‘A study of Victorian Prostitution and Venereal Disease’ in M. Vicinus’ ‘Suffer and Be Still’.
• P. Levine ‘Victorian Feminism’ Chapter 6
• The Contagious Diseases Acts in Murray, J. Strong-Minded Women, 424-37 and Fisher, Trevor.
• Prostitution and The Victorians. 80-94. Jane Jordan
• The Contagious Diseases Acts Reconsidered F.B. Smith. Social History of Medicine 1990 3(2) pp. 197-215.
• Chapter 5: Syphilis between prostitution and promiscuity in Peter Baldwin. Contagion in the state of Europe, 1830-1930 (Cambridge & New York: Cambridge University Press, 1999)
• Chapter 7: VD & Society in Britain, From CDA to NHS Lesley A. Hall. in Sex, Sin and Suffering: Venereal Disease and European Society since 1870 Roger Davidson and Lesley A. Hall eds. (London & New York: Routledge, 2001)
• The Origins, Administration, and Impact of the Contagious Diseases Acts from a Military Perspective John Gill Gamble. (Ann Arbor: University Microfilms International, 1986)

References

1. ^ J. Walkowitz, Prostitution and Victorian Society (United States of America: Cambridge University Press, 1980)P.1
2. ^ E.M Sigworth and T.J Wyke ‘A Study of Victorian Prostitution and Venereal Disease’, in M. Vicnius, Suffer and be still. Women in the Victorian Age (London: Methuen & Co Ltd, 1980) P. 81
3. ^ J. Walkowitz, Prostitution and Victorian Society (United States of America: Cambridge University Press, 1980). P.16
4. ^ J. Walkowitz, Prostitution and Victorian Society (United States of America: Cambridge University Press, 1980). P.22
5. ^ E.M Sigworth and T.J Wyke ‘A Study of Victorian Prostitution and Venereal Disease’, in M. Vicnius, Suffer and be still. Women in the Victorian Age (London: Methuen & Co Ltd, 1980) P. 77
6. ^ E.M Sigworth and T.J Wyke ‘A Study of Victorian Prostitution and Venereal Disease’, in M. Vicnius, Suffer and be still. Women in the Victorian Age (London: Methuen & Co Ltd, 1980) P. 77
7. ^ E.M Sigworth and T.J Wyke ‘A Study of Victorian Prostitution and Venereal Disease’, in M. Vicnius, Suffer and be still. Women in the Victorian Age (London: Methuen & Co Ltd, 1980) P. 80.
8. ^ J. Walkowitz, Prostitution and Victorian Society (United States of America: Cambridge University Press, 1980).P.g 49
9. ^ E.M Sigworth and T.J Wyke ‘A Study of Victorian Prostitution and Venereal Disease’, in M. Vicnius, Suffer and be still. Women in the Victorian Age (London: Methuen & Co Ltd, 1980) P. 88
10. ^ E.M Sigworth and T.J Wyke ‘A Study of Victorian Prostitution and Venereal Disease’, in M. Vicnius, Suffer and be still. Women in the Victorian Age (London: Methuen & Co Ltd, 1980) P. 89
11. ^ E.M Sigworth and T.J Wyke ‘A Study of Victorian Prostitution and Venereal Disease’, in M. Vicnius, Suffer and be still. Women in the Victorian Age (London: Methuen & Co Ltd, 1980) P. 77
12. ^ J. Walkowitz, Prostitution and Victorian Society (United States of America: Cambridge University Press, 1980). P.58

See also

• Elizabeth Garrett Anderson
• Josephine Butler
• Millicent Fawcett
• Hugh Price Hughes
• John Stuart Mill
• History of feminism