Extract from eighteenth Annual report of the Rescue Society : the Contagious Diseases Acts.

  • Rescue Society.
Date:
1872
Catalogue details

Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: Extract from eighteenth Annual report of the Rescue Society : the Contagious Diseases Acts. Source: Wellcome Collection.

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

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    trade in loathing and heart-sickness because some “ gentle- man’s” bastard babe in the garret-lodging seeks in vain that nutriment from “ Nature’s great Nile,” which the starving and deserted mother cannot replenish without eating the bread of shame ? Are there no seductions, no illusions of fond and misplaced affections, no wakings up to bitterness, despair, the river, or the street ? Do these women, as a class, sin for “ gain” or for “ bread ?” Are they solely the tempters, and men the reluctant, the shrinking, the beguiled partners of their sin ? The Committee turn sickened from the cynical heartless- ness of these Boyal Commissioners, and ask others, more .capable of justice and humanity, whether their “ natural im- pulses” might not be found to be more “ resistible” if men were publicly pilloried for their sexual “irregularities”—if the seducer, by a just public sentiment, were made to feel himself, like Cain, “ a vagabond on the earth”—if unfaithful husbands, murdering the health and happiness of “ innocent wives and children,’’were hounded, like dangerous animals, from society’s highways and byeways—and if Royal Commissioners espe- cially, by the universal condemnation of all virtuous and ho- nourable minds, were brought to sit low on the stool of repent- ance, and made to do public penance for uttering partial, offensive, and immoral sentiments ! THE ADMINISTRATION OF THE ACTS AND THEIR ALLEGED DETERRENT EFFECTS. The Committee having had under their care a large num- ber of young women and girls from the various districts subjected to the Acts, and having visited those districts repeatedly, and watched very closely the operation of these laws, are able to speak authoritatively of the mode in which they are carried out. It must ever be borne in mind that this legislation is of the severest character, overriding, as it does, the common ordinary law of the land under which any woman, however degraded her state or position, may claim protection from insult and assault, alike with the most reputable of her sex. It may by some be remembered, that when in a case of rape, which occurred some years ago, the accused preferred in extenuation of his offence, or as a reason for exemption from its penalties, that the woman was a person of ill-fame, the Judge intimated that the crime was the same in the view of the law, whether committed on a virtuous woman or on a prostitute, and sentenced the man to a very severe punish- ment.