The Contagious Diseases Acts : the Contagious Diseases Acts, 1864, '66, '68 (Ireland), '69, from a sanitary and economic point of view : being a paper read before the Medical Society of University College, London, on Thursday, November 30th, 1871 / by C.W. Shirley Deakin.

  • Deakin, Charles Washington Shirley.
Date:
1872
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Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: The Contagious Diseases Acts : the Contagious Diseases Acts, 1864, '66, '68 (Ireland), '69, from a sanitary and economic point of view : being a paper read before the Medical Society of University College, London, on Thursday, November 30th, 1871 / by C.W. Shirley Deakin. 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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    Again, this much-maligned French system does something to reclaim women from a life of sin and misery. Of the 1,934 clandestines arrested in 1864, 1,125 were restored to their friends, others were detained (as the French law allows) for insub- ordination to parental authority, and only 250, little more than one eighth, were placed on the register. What Resoue Society in London can boast such a result ? Mr. Cooper, the secretary of the London Rescue Society, stated before the Royal Commission as follows :— (17,542.) (Mr. Applegarth). But if I understand, supposing you admit 500 a year, if you had the accommodation and means to support them, 500 more are willing to come ?—That is so. (17,543.) You say that you reclaim 70 per cent, of those you get?—■ That is it. It seems at first remarkable that the secretaires of most of the homes or refuges for fallen women, who, I believe, are persons really desirous of helping their fallen sisters, are opponents of these Acts, but the reason] is soon explained—one of the objects of The Association for the Extension of the ' Contagious Diseases Acts' to the civil population, ia to establish homes and refuges in connection with the Lock Hospitals. I cannot pass on to the subject of our own Acts without just reading a passage from the evidence of Dr. Armstrong, as to the results ob- tained from legislative measures in Malta, where, from the time of the Knights Templars up to 1859, the common women had been subject to inspection. In this latter year some persons of like mind with the mem- bers of the Anti-Contagious Diseases Acts' Associations incited the pros- titutes to refuse to be examined, as their inspection was not ordained by law. The questions to Dr. Armstrong are— (16,555.) Were there any regulations then in force for checking this disease?—No. When I was Deputy Inspector General of the Naval Hospital at Malta, and also Senior Medical Officer of the Fleet (I went out there in the middle of 1859), the island was comparatively free from disease. I should say there had been a sort of police regulation existing with regard to the examination of women which had been very fairly carried out, and they found towards the end of 1859 that they had no right to be examined, and the regulation fell into abeyance. We had a very large fleet in the Mediterranean, I fancy the largest that ever was thero, something like 15,000 or 16,000 men, and I found there was an increase of the disease after the abrogation of the law, and I made an official representation to the Commander-in-Chief on several occasions, and the result was the local government passed a very stringent law for the examination of the women. When it became law all the prostitutes were examined, about 145 in number, and all the diseased women were