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
Catalogue details

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.

    330/524 (page 280)
    AMBALA, 7TH JUNE 1893.—CAPTAIN BAIRNSFATHER, CANTONMENT MAGISTRATE— KOTWAL OF SADR BAZAR—INSPECTOR OF CANTONMENT POLICE. prostitutes be no longer permitted to reside in the bazars of British corps in cantonments, and that in future no public prostitutes were to be allowed to accompany regiments on the line of march, or to accompany them to standing camps as part of the ordinary bazar followers. These orders were communicated on 29th June 1888 by the Cantonment Magistrate to all Commanding Officers of British corps, with the request that the regis- tered women in the regimental chaklas might be directed to go to the Sadr Bazar chakla 190 for British troops and reside there. Additional accommodation was at once provided in the Sadr chakla, and the women moved there within a month. The regimental chaklas were then let to ordinary tenants, and are still so occupied, thougli they have been sold meanwhile by public auction. They were before that cantonment property. I believe I am safe in saying that no prostitutes are living in these chaklas. If they are it must be secretly; for since the orders of 1888 the regulation has been that no prostitutes may live in regimental bazars. When I came here I learned from the police that they sus- pected certain persons living in these bazars of being prostitutes, and I had them turned out. There were six or seven such persons in the regimental bazars. I believe their residence there was unknown to the regimental authorities, and that they were living there as private individuals. 200 If initials or words are entered in the Venereal Hospital Registers, showing that the patients live in regimental bazars, I believe that they must refer to these six or seven women, and that the entries must be of a date prior to my order, which was issued in the first half of May last. The two Highland Regiments have never been stationed here. In the cold weather, 1891-92, they were here for winter concentration, and were living in tents within canton- ment boundaries, but quite apart from all bazars. In such a camp I should not think of interfering, unless absolutely necessary on sanitary or other grounds. [The Kotwal states that before the transfer of 1888 from the regimental chakla to the Sadr chakla there were some 40 prostitutes in the latter. After the transfer the num- 210 bers were 80 or 90. There are now about 40 or 45. The difference is due to the women i having gone to the hills where the regiments have gone. But since the transfer, the ! chakla being insufficient, many of them live outside the chakla ; most of them close to it, but a considerable number at some distance from it. The chakla is by no means always full, as when women move out other women who have rented houses outside do not move in. I am trying to get them in as much as possible, as they are there better under control, or rather the soldiers who visit them are so ; for uisturbances occasionally occur. All land in cantonments belongs to Government; but the houses belong to their builders or their successors, subject to cantonment rules. No ground rent is charged. The 220 Sadr chakla belongs to private individuals, and it is believed has done so always. [The Kotwal speaks for 12 years past.] Nothing is or has been received by Government or by cantonment funds on account of the chakla except the house-tax, which is levied on all buildings alike. The rooms are rented by private arrangements, with which we have no concern. I am the head of the Cantonment Police, who wear the ordinary police uniform. We have no cantonment chaukidars, nor do we use badges with^ that inscription. There is no watch or guard of any sort over the chakla, though the chakla is, of course, included in one of our police beats. [The Kotwal states that there used to be a chaukidar placed over the chakla the day before the examination of prostitutes to prevent soldiers having access to them. But that has been discontinued since the examination was stopped four 230 or five years ago, at the time when the regimental chaklas were closed.] One of the Sadr chaklas is for British, and the other for native use—not for troops necessarily. I am not sure that if an Englishman, not a soldier, entered the former, the soldiers might not resent his intrusion; but there would be no objection on our part. Such a thing practically does not occur. The latter is used by natives indiscriminately. The British troops do not go, as a fact, to the native chakla, partly because some women object to entertain Europeans, and they might have difficulty in finding a woman there ; partly because they are used to their own women. But there is no rule forbidding them to go there, simply because there is no need for such a rule. If I found that they did go, then I should certainly suggest the framing of such a rule. No part of cantonments is out of 240 bounds for British soldiers, as far as we are concerned ; but there may be regimental rules with which I have no concern. There are four or five prostitutes not associated with either chakla, who are visited without objection by British soldiers. The women already described as living outside the chakla are still held to belong or to be attached to the chakla. There are probably plenty of other women who do receive men, but no others who can be said to he public prostitutes, in the Sadr Bazar at least. I know of no rule against a native going to the British chakla ; but there would probably be a disturbance by the soldiers if he did, and I should, 1 think, interfere to prevent it. The women attached to but living outside the British chakla may perhaps receive visits from natives.