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.

    332/524 (page 282)
    AMBALA, 7TH JUNE 1893.—CAPTAIN BAIRNSFATHEK, CANTONMENT MAGISTRATE— KOTWAL OP SADR BAZAR—INSPECTOR OP CANTONMENT POLICE. I have no knowledge or concern with the charges made by the women to soldiers. I have never had or heard of any complaints, either by women or by soldiers, regarding payment [nor has the Kotwal or the Inspector of Police]. I exercise no supervision nor do I make any inspection, either personally or through my subordinates, with regard to the chaklas, save such as is exercised over or made of all other cantonment premises. As a fact, I do not happen ever to have been inside the chakla here. 320 Cases are reported of women suspected of disease. I have had two or three cases? one of them a European woman, the wife of a corporal ia one of the British regiments. We keep no record of these cases, the original docket being usually sent back to the medical officers, as the matter is treated as confidential. The letter book of July to September 1890ishows that an English woman was reported by the medical officer, sent for inspection by the Cantonment Magistrate, and detained in the hospital as being diseased. She at first refused to remain in the hospital, but on being threatened with expulsion from cantonments, consented to do so. In another case an English woman was given the option of being examined or leaving cantonment?, and chose the latter. This was in November 1891. I can give no figures for the number of reports, but I can for 330 the number of expulsions from cantonments. There were no such cases in 1892. The medical officer does not give reasons for his suspicion—at least not since I have been acting as Cantonment Magistrate. I had no reports*of this sort during the four months during which I officiated Jast year. I have never expelled anybody from cantonments. I may, on the whole, have had three reports here, not more. I have had no reports against men ; but one of the women referred to above was not a public prostitute, but an English woman living with her husband, and I felt some hesitation in dealing with the matter. One of the women habitually leaves the station when summoned on sus- picion, and returns afterwards. I have issued orders that prostitutes are not to live in any regimental bazars. If they are so living, the chaudhris of the bazar should have reported them. [The Kotwal 340 says that since the last two or three years prostitutes have begun to live in the regimental bazars, but he cannot say where they live in the bazars.] There are women in every bazar whom we cannot say are actually prostitutes, but who do, without doubt, receive men. It is very difficult to draw the line where to interfere. No fine or imprisonment has been inflicted last year [nor, says the Inspector of Police, since the regimental chaklas were abolished] under Notification 617. The report goes to the police, who warn the woman to go to the hospital, and she goes. I had a case of small-pox reported under these rules—a male. The child had been taken to hospital when the report reached me. The man was punished for not reporting the case. In previous years other cases of small-pox have been reported under the rules. 350 I have never heard of any general examination of prostitutes in any one of the three cantonments in which I have acted. Certainly there is none here. There are a certain number of camp followers living in regimental bazars who move with the regiment ; but the population of the bazar consists mainly of permanent residents. It is like the Sadr Bazar on a small scale, and is controlled by the Commanding Officer of the regiment. [The Kotwal states that the Venereal Hospital was in old days the Lock Hospital. It was then known as such, and the common people still call it so, and it is generally known as such. There has been no alteration in the wall or gate since then.] I have not, nor ever have had, reason to think that the police practise oppression on 360 this class more than on any other. [The Inspector says the same.] There are no police now on the Lock Hospital. There used to be, I believe, before the inspection was abolished. After that they were removed. Then a policeman was put on again at the request of the medical officer for the protection of Government property in the building, and was finally removed last April. He used to patrol outside the wall in the front of the gate. There is a policeman on the church ; on no other public buildings, I think, except the guard on my office. We have no chaukidars on public buildings. The police gu ard was simply to preserve the property. He had orders not to interfere with the prostitutes in any way, but he might or might not have inter- fered with a soldier trying to go in. He had no orders to that effect. A soldier would not wish or try to go in. 370 _ I have never known prostitutes to apply to the Cantonment Magistrate for pecuniary assistance. The cantonment accounts are audited by the Accountant General, I'unjab. Questioned by Mauhi Sami Ullah.— [The Kotwal states that the alterations in the Sadr chakla, which were made to receive the regimental women in 1888, were made by the owners of the houses at their own expense, but at the instance of the cantonment authorities.]