Seven reasons for the repeal of the Contagious Diseases (Women's) Acts 1866-1869 / issued by the City of London Committee for obtaining the repeal of those Acts.

Date:
1878
Catalogue details

Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: Seven reasons for the repeal of the Contagious Diseases (Women's) Acts 1866-1869 / issued by the City of London Committee for obtaining the repeal of those Acts. 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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    witnessed and heard for themselves, at the close of the [Franco-German War, as to the condition of the French army, which had been <cpro- tected 99 for a century by State-regulated and licensed vice, but which wras so decimated by venereal disease as, in some instances, to render the regiments all but useless. To a like condition will the services of Great Britain be brought, if the present system be persisted in of attempting to make an odious vice reputable, facile, and innocuous. It is an experiment wdiich cannot succeed; for it is to fight against nature, or rather against the Divine law, physical as well as moral. The example of France, as testified by the officials of immorality in Paris, ought to have deterred our Legislators from so fruitless an attempt.* That of Brussels, wFere the system has been tried for thirty years, utters the “Increased Severity of the Disease.—Hot only lias the number of cases of gonorrhoea increased, but their severity also, as is shown by the increased length of their duration, as recorded in the Navy Reports, year by year :— “Average duration of each Case. 1866— 18 days. 1867— 17 to 18 days. 1868— 17 „ 18 „ 1869— 18 „ 19 „ 1870— 20 „ 21 „ 1871— * Over 3 weeks.’ 1872— 21 to 22 days. 1873— 24 „ 25 „ 1874— 26 „ 27 „ 1875— 25 „ 26 „ 1876— 26 „ 27 „ Cases lasted on the average 18 days before Acts and 27 days after 10 years of Acts.” —From “ Health of the Navy,” by Dr. Birkbeck Nevins. F. C. Hanks, No. 2, Westminister Chambers, Victoria Street, S.W. The increased virulence of disease since the Acts were put in operation is also shown by the following lamentable facts :— “ If the deaths among the prostitutes in the subjected districts are considered, it is found, that taking the average since the passing of the Acts these have more than doubled. In 1865, the year before the Acts, the deaths were 9'8 per 1000 women annually, but they had risen to 15 per 1,000 in 1875 ; in 1874 they had actually risen to 23 per 1,000.”—From “Have the Contagious Diseases Acts proved a Hygienic Success? Scottish National Association, 5, St. Andrew’s Square, Edinburgh. * On the Continent all pretence of good moral results from regulations of this kind has been recently openly disavowed. M. Lecour, the head of the “ Police des Mceurs ” (so-called) of Paris, in the second edition of his work on Prostitution in Paris and London (p. 255), said : “ the evil was a moral and social one, and could not be controlled by the police, who could neither restrain nor destroy it. The evil must be overcome by moral, not by legislative, means.” In the last edition of his work on Prostitution in Paris (p. 57), he says: “We may recognize amelioration as far as outward disorder is concerned; but we are none the less sensible that the ever rising tide of debauchery is due to causes which repression in detail cannot reach.”