A critical summary of the evidence before the Royal Commission upon the Contagious Diseases Acts, 1866-1869 / prepared for the National Association for the Repeal of the Contagious Diseases Acts, by Douglas Kingsford.

Kingsford, D. P. W. (Douglas P. W.)

Date:: [1869]

Credit: A critical summary of the evidence before the Royal Commission upon the Contagious Diseases Acts, 1866-1869 / prepared for the National Association for the Repeal of the Contagious Diseases Acts, by Douglas Kingsford. 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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$7616-81 183 : 7849; 8197-9 7975-6 3-5; 80,064 provision consists in the appointment of a chaplain> who visits the women and holds services in the hospital. The Eev. ]\Ir. Hawker, after considerable experience, was convinced that the advice and conversation of the chaplain were of small ad- vantage to the women, “because of its compulsory character; they were bound to listen to it, simply because they were under restraint, whereas, if it were outside the hospital, it would be a •voluntary act of their own.” The appointment of a chaplain may be proper enough, but other machinery is needed for useful reclamatory work ; e. g. suitable training for women who do not know how to work, employment for those who are fit for it, funds to maintain women in homes, to send women to their friends, to provide them with clothing, &c. The Acts do not provide for any of these things. At Devonport women are sent to homes and provided with clothes at the charge of the Samaritan Fund of the hospital. This fund was in existence and maintained by voluntary contributions before the Acts came into operation. A House of Commons Committee reported— (Ho. Com. Paper, April 20, 1866, No. 200)—on a reference to them of the bill of 1866,—“ Your Committee have reason to believe that much good has resulted from the efforts of an Asso- ciation formed at Devonport for the purpose of reclaiming persons placed in the Eoyal Albert Hospital of that town, towards which some pecuniary assistance has been furnished by the Admiralty,” and the Committee recommended Government to afford aid to similar associations. But the subsidizing of such associations by the Admiralty and the War Office does not justify these offices in attributing reclamatory work done by these Associations to the Contagious Diseases Acts. Subsistence, training, and employment found for the women in homes to which they may be sent from hospital is at the expense of the patrons of those homes. Sect. 27 of the Act of 1866, enacting that “ every woman shall, on her discharge from hospital, be sent to the place of her resi- dence, if she so desires, without expense to herself,” has regard merely to the case of women in hospitals at a considerable distance from the districts where they hve, and from which they were sent to hospital. The Contagious Diseases Acts do not empower the expenditure of a penny on the work of reclaiming fallen women, beyond the salary of a hospital chaplain to give them “ moral and religious instruction.” It is at least obvious that no good influence which could be$