Report of the Committee appointed by the Secretary of State for India to inquire into the rules, regulations, and practice in the Indian cantonments and elsewhere in India, with regard to prostitution and to the treatment of venereal disease : together with minutes of evidence and appendices.
- Great Britain. India Office. Committee on Prostitution in India.
- Date:
- 1893
Licence: Public Domain Mark
Credit: Report of the Committee appointed by the Secretary of State for India to inquire into the rules, regulations, and practice in the Indian cantonments and elsewhere in India, with regard to prostitution and to the treatment of venereal disease : together with minutes of evidence and appendices. Source: Wellcome Collection.
Provider: This material has been provided by Royal College of Physicians, London. The original may be consulted at Royal College of Physicians, London.
329/524 (page 279)
![Statements and Notes. AMBALA, 7TH JUNE 1893.—CAPTAIN BAIRNS FATHER, CANTONMENT MAGISTRATE— KOTWAL OF SADR BAZAR—INSPECTOR OF CANTONMENT POLICE. The medicines and instruments were kept in a small room in the second storey of a detached building in the compound. This room is also used for examining patients when it is necessary to introduce the speculum. It is fairly well adapted for such examination. The room is perfectly private, and those examined could not be seen from the outside. Ambala, 7th June 1893. Captain Bairnsfather, Cantonment Magistrate, attended by Saraj ul Haqq, Kotwal of Sadr Bazar since 1881, and Mr. Meakins, Inspector of Cantonment Police for 18 years, and at Ambala since March 1884. I have been Cantonment Magistrate here since 1st March 1893. I officiated for four months at Rawal Pindi and Mian Mir during last hot weather. Captain R. F. Anderson 130 was Cantonment Magistrate during 1891 and 1892, and up to 28th February 1893. He is now Assistant Judge Advocate General at Pachmari, Central Provinces. Besides being Magistrate and Small Cause Court Judge, I am the Executive Officer of the Cantonment Committee and of the Officer Commanding the Station. As such I have very considerable powers. No building can be erected or altered in cantonments without permission con- veyed through me. The localities in which persons practising any trade or calling must reside for the purposes of such trade or calling may be specified, and such persons required to reside there. The Act gives power to frame rules authorising us to eject any person from cantonments without grounds specified ; but as yet no rules have been framed under that section so far as I am aware. The only power we have to exclude persons from 140 cantonments is under the rules regarding people suffering from infectious or contagious disorders (Military Notification, No. 617, of 4th July 1890). My power and duties extend alike to all bazars, regimental or otherwise; though the regimental bazars are, unlike the Sadr Bazar, under the immediate control of the Commanding Officer of the Regiment. We maintain two registers of houses in cantonments. The one is merely for the pur- poses of house-tax, and has only been kept since last September. The other is a general register of old standing, and shows each house in cantonments. This includes regimental bazars. I produce the register in five volumes. It is headed (in vernacular) Register of houses and persons, Ambala Cantonments, and its columns are— (i) Serial No.; (ii) Name of occupier; (iii) Parentage and caste of occupier; (iv) Occupation of occupier; (v) Date of registration ; (vi) Name of owner of house ; (vii) Parentage, caste, and residence of owner of house; (viii) Amount of rent; (ix) Number of residents, with detail of men, women, and children ; (x) Name of quarter or locality; (xi) Remarks. Column (i) is the serial number of the house, all houses having been numbered, and the last number being 5841. This is the Sadr Bazar Register only. The registers for the other parts of the cantonments are in the same form. The British chakla is entered at Nos. 2825 to 2920, these being the numbers of the houses in the chakla. Of these, nineteen houses are empty, one is occupied by a wrood and hay merchant, two by ginger- beer sellers, two by labourers, one by a servant, one by a cook, two by cloth sellers, one by a tailor, five by male owners whose occupation is not entered because the owner is the occupier, three by pimps, and the other fifty-eight by prostitutes. In only forty cases are two consecutive houses owned by the same person; and this includes two groups of seven and five houses respectively. The native chakla is entered in just the same way, Nos. 1693 to 1779, of which twenty-seven are occupied by prostitutes and two by pimps. Both chaklas have been used as such for very many years. I have no other register of prostitutes besides this, which has been maintained since 1885, the present copy being made in February 1892. We supply no copies or extracts to medical officers or others, nor do we communicate alterations in it. We treat the por- tion of the registers which refers to prostitutes, in every respect, in precisely the same 170 manner as we do the rest of the registers. I have no registration of prostitutes as such. I have had two or three applications from a woman wishing to practise as a prostitute, stating what chakla she wished to live in ; and I have given permission—at least, I have passed an order that there is no objection. If a woman settled without permission we should say nothing. [The Kotwal and Inspector say that, as a fact, women nowadays do not often give applications. When they do, a vacant house is found for them.] They are not sent to a doctor for examination, and have not been since inspection was abolished. There is no register of, or form of, permission. The petition is stamped and written by a petition writer like all other petitions, and Ave charge no fee. We now have two chaklas in cantonments, both in the Sadr Bazar, one for the use of 180 British troops, and the other for that of natives. There used to be three other chaklas, Royal Artillery, British Cavalry, and British Infantry, in their respective bazars. A letter from the Quartermaster General of 12th May 1888 directed that registered](https://iiif.wellcomecollection.org/image/b24758942_0331.jp2/full/800%2C/0/default.jpg)
