compulsory periodical examination, namely, measures for extending the
operation of the law, so that, as new women are likely to become a
source of contamination, they also may be brought under its operation,
and for the practical and easy operation of the measure, compelled to
take up their residence in segregated quarters. _This is the special
field of activity in the operation of the law_, and is a deadly menace
to the most ordinary liberties of women. People will loudly advocate
that "something must be done" to confine the houses of ill-fame to
certain quarters of a city, without the slightest care as to how it
is done, so long as they need not become intimately acquainted with a
disagreeable subject; they will advocate measures of the most deadly
consequences to others more defenceless than themselves, and to the
ultimate moral tone of the very society in which they move, and yet
heartlessly refuse to consider the responsibility that rests upon them
for their conduct. "Something must be done," they say, and the police
force must attend to the details; they are too loathsome even to be
considered, yet they refuse to understand that these very loathsome
details which they require the police to work out _must utterly ruin
the character of the police_ into whose hands they have betrayed all
the decent rights of womanhood.
What does it mean to women for men to assume the right to arrest all
suspicious characters and oblige them to live in a certain house or
street, and to appear at the examinations at the Lock Hospitals? Let
the banker sitting in his bank, or the merchant in his shop, consider
what it would mean for him to be accosted in his own place of business,
taken off immediately to the Lock Hospital, examined, and if the doctor
so ordered, sent immediately into exile in a hospital for libertines,
with no chance to set his house in order or to defend his character
from the charge of being a libertine! And even if the charge were true
would he not think the punishment too severe? And then, suppose it were
the case that, at the end of the imprisonment in the hospital, he were
required to reside for the rest of his days in a certain street? This
is _exactly_ what is done with women when once the principle is set up
that compulsory periodical examinations must take place. But the reply
is, No women of property or consequence would ever be so treated. Very
true; yet are not these often utterly profligate? Certainly. So this
is a law which will be operated only in the case of the lowly. Yes,
it is a piece of legislation on the part of the mighty to degrade and
rob the daughters of the poor of their most ordinary rights, and it
deserves the _most extreme execration_ that human language is capable
of, on that very account. The day has passed by when it is safe to try
to enunciate such sentiments among a free people. "What are the women
making all this row about?" said one of the daily journals of London,
during our India work; "no _high-born_ ladies will ever be put to
inconvenience by such a law." Ah! that was one of the principal reasons
why such a row was made.
What does it mean to arrest a suspected case and send her to the
segregated quarter for residence, where any man can assume the right to
insult her and demand entrance at her door at any hour? It means that
the law takes hold of a woman who may have occasionally done wrong and
forces her to do wrong habitually; for after segregation no one will
give her honest work. That law is radically wicked which confirms a
human being into a habitual breaker of one of God's ten commandments.
And supposing the girl has not actually done wrong, but has conducted
herself imprudently, and brought just suspicion on herself? To put her
under the ban of such a law means to create a prostitute by law. That
law is radically wrong which can be operated with such deadly effect
on society as to actually create evil. Yet everywhere that the C. D.
Acts have been operated such cases have occurred. The mayor of a city
in South Africa told us that when a proposition for the introduction
of these regulations was being entertained by the City Council of that
place, and every effort was made to secure his approval, he was one day
accosted by an alderman on the street, who plucked him by the sleeve,
and pointing out a perfectly respectable-looking woman who was passing
by, said, "Now, if we could get our law we could get that woman." He
started back in horror, thinking to himself, "And if he could get his
clutches on that woman by such a law, why not on any woman?"
Policemen are not supposed to be infallibly virtuous; and supposing
they could be bribed or blackmailed? A policeman in Queensland
confessed that he had taken a bribe to deliver a pretty girl over
to the power of a libertine by having her registered as a common
prostitute, and that he carried out the dastardly crime. A Christian
woman in Cape Colony heard of the arrest as a common prostitute of a
virtuous girl of her acquaintance, and went to the court to secure her
release. There was a keeper of a house of ill-fame whom she recognised,
who came to make accusation against the girl. The Christian worker
appealed to a policeman, whom she knew as a church-member and a man of
good repute, to stand with her for the girl's defence; but the evil
woman took him to one side and she distinctly overheard her threaten
to blast his reputation if he interfered. The magistrate took the word
of this evil woman, which was corroborated by the falsehoods of the
policeman, and in spite of her protestations, the girl was registered.
Another case was told us by a Wesleyan minister's wife; it occurred in
England, before the repeal of the Acts. Her most intimate early friend,
a lovely young Christian girl, had a brother who quarrelled with a
policeman who threatened revenge. He watched his opportunity, arrested
the sister, and gave his oath that she was a common prostitute; she was
forced through the examination and registered, and when at last found
by her brother, was a raving maniac as a result of the day's awful
experience, and died shortly afterward in a madhouse. We might multiply
the instances we have ourselves personally heard on good authority, and
relate some of the many cases known to the history of the movement for
repeal, but there is no space for further enlargement.
Again we say there is something radically wrong with this law, when
women can be so fearfully wronged in its operation, should the police
officers and magistrates be either wicked or weak. Practically such a
law delivers the reputation of women wholly over to the power of the
police. But, some one says, let no case be settled on suspicion; let
proof be brought. The question arises, How secure the proof? In India
it was considered sufficient by Lord Roberts to teach the soldiers
that it was "a point of honour" to save other soldiers from disease by
informing against women; but it has frequently been observed that the
soldier will usually point out another woman rather than the one he
has actually associated with, and women are haled to the examinations
who may never have seen the informant before. It detracts nothing from
the peril of girls and women when the uncorroborated testimony of a
self-confessed libertine can be used against them, and the frequency
with which evil men will combine to utterly break down the testimony
of a young woman in case of seduction, and the unblushing testimony
of these men to their own shameful conduct, which is often treated as
a joke by the magistrate, shows that the reputation of a woman is no
safer in the hands of a combination of libertines. Nothing is much more
difficult than to actually _prove_ a woman a prostitute, and short of
absolute proof, the thought of registration, segregation, imprisonment
in a Lock Hospital, etc., is intolerable.
Again, a single act of fornication does not prove prostitution, and
how many acts shall constitute proof? Practically, these are things
that the law never has considered at all; but wherever the compulsory
examination has been established, secret information from libertines
is received and acted upon with little question as to its veracity,
and the whole system has immediately degenerated into a costly effort
on the part of the State, paid for by the taxes of respectable people,
to pander to the wishes of libertines, and keep the houses of ill-fame
filled with attractive and healthy inmates, and thus the State becomes
itself the great purveyor of vice. We have said before repeatedly, and
say again, that there is no real evidence that prostitution has been
made safer by the periodical examination of women, because the false
security in vice greatly increases the amount of vice, which is itself
the cause of the diseases in question. Not only does correct reason
testify to this, but also statistics uphold this statement.
We have now shown that the compulsory examination of women brings into
existence, of necessity, every feature of what is commonly called the
C. D. Acts; and that, as that compulsory examination is of itself a
sin, so every feature of the enactments necessary to carry out that law
is at each step liable to fearful abuse, and the system as a whole is
ruinous to the morals of any community.
FOOTNOTES:
[6] A term applied to British residents in India.
[7] When Lieut-General Lord Sandhurst was questioned before the
Royal Commission of 1871 as to the advisability of soldiers being
periodically examined by male physicians, he replied that he preferred
to treat his soldiers "as reasonable men, not as brutes." Let women
show at least equal consideration for women.
[8] Perhaps they had in mind such a case as the woman we interviewed
at Cantonment Bareilly. Her father was Scotch, she said--her mother,
Portuguese; she had been trained by Dr. C----. She went every day to
the brothels and examined the women. _She owned the brothels_, and
resided with an official to whom she was not married. (See page 133,
Departmental Committee Report, 1893.)
V.
Pleading for the Oppressed.
MANY times in the course of our conversations with the little women of
India we had promised before leaving them to do what we could to secure
relief and help for them. In the simplicity of their faith and lack of
practical knowledge, several of them had ventured to intimate that we
might go to England and see the Queen, and tell her their troubles.
"For," they said, "the Queen does not countenance it; for she has
daughters of her own, and she cares for her daughters in India." "The
Queen is a woman, and we also are women, and our shame is the Queen's
shame; and for us to be exposed is as though the Queen were exposed; it
is a shame for women to be so treated when a woman is Queen."
At Peshawar, at Lucknow, and at Meerut, the girls had held us at
parting until they had solemnly lifted their eyes to heaven and asked
God's blessing on us, and asked Him to help us to help them to get
deliverance from their oppression. God heard the prayer, although their
knowledge of Him was probably very obscure. The sacred promises we gave
them and gave Him to help them, can never be set aside without bringing
guilt on our own souls. They depend upon us to voice their sorrows and
plead their cause, by solemn compact with them and God. May He keep us
faithful to the trust!
We carefully prepared the report of our investigations and forwarded
this to Miss Forsaith, of London, Secretary of the British Committee
of the Federation for the Abolition of State Regulation of Vice. Then
as the summer was too far advanced to hold any meetings in India, we
proceeded to Australia, New Zealand, and Tasmania, in the interests
of our regular work. But in the early part of the year 1893 we were
summoned to England to give evidence in person concerning the condition
of things in the Cantonments of India, which went to prove that,
although the C. D. Acts had been ordered to be repealed, the same state
of things was being maintained, under the Cantonments Act of 1889,
and that the resolution of the House of Commons of 1888 had been
disregarded.
A Departmental Committee was appointed by the Government to receive
our evidence. This Committee was composed of Mr. George W. E. Russell,
M.P., Under-Secretary of State for India (Chairman); The late Right
Hon. Sir James Stansfeld, M.P.; General Sir Donald M. Stewart, Bart.,
G.C.B., Commander of the Forces in India, before Lord Roberts; Sir
James Peile, K.C.S.I.; Mr. H. J. Wilson, M.P., with Major-General O. R.
Newmarch, C.S.I., as Secretary. The first sitting of the Committee, at
the India Office, London, was April 11, 1893. Before this Departmental
Committee we appeared day after day until the full report of our
statements had been made. In the course of the giving of this evidence,
we described with accuracy the records which we had seen in the various
Lock Hospitals of the ten Cantonments visited when in India, and a
telegram was sent by the chairman of the Committee, Mr. George Russell,
giving our description and requesting that these records be impounded
by the India Government and forwarded to London for reference. Then our
full statement was despatched to India for reply.
Meanwhile, Lord Roberts, who had returned to England, had been
interviewed by a reporter of _The Christian Commonwealth_, who placed
before him some of our statements regarding the Cantonments of India.
Lord Roberts pronounced them "simply untrue," and declared that he had
recently made a tour of investigation through the Cantonments, and knew
that our statements were false. His open charges of falsehood against
us were heralded throughout the Empire, and freely discussed by the
Press from the time they were made in April to the time of our second
appearance before the Committee in August.
Upon the receipt of our evidence in India there was a Special
Commission appointed by the Indian Government, to collect evidence
in refutation of our charges, two members of it being instructed to
proceed to England therewith, and to give personal testimony in behalf
of the Indian Government.
The Special Commission did not come before the Committee until August,
and we spent much of the interim in addressing public meetings
throughout Great Britain, and arousing interest in the subject. Many
large and important meetings were also addressed by such well-known
leaders as Mrs. Josephine Butler, the late Sir James Stansfeld, M.P.,
Mr. Henry J. Wilson, M.P., and Mrs. H. J. Wilson, Mr. James Stuart,
M.P., and many other Members of Parliament. At the annual conferences
and assemblies of the various denominations, the subject was taken
up; many ladies of the Women's Liberal Federation and of the British
Women's Temperance Association, and of other bodies, presented the
matter in their meetings, and ministers of all denominations lent
their help. At all these meetings resolutions were passed condemning
legalized vice, and from all of them memorials were sent to the
Government, protesting against the condition of things prevalent in
the Cantonments of India. It was truly touching to witness the intense
interest manifested in the subject by the common people, the class from
whom the soldiers are so largely drawn, and for whose sake military
officials claimed that it was necessary to establish the chakla system.
The mothers and fathers of British lads had their own opinion as to
what was necessary for their boys.
"I'll buy him off! I'll buy him off!" exclaimed one woman to us, with
streaming eyes, at the close of one of our meetings. "My boy enlisted
to go to India without my consent and then repented, and I thought it
would teach him a lesson to compel him to abide by his word. He has
already got as far as Gibraltar, I think; but I'll send the money and
buy him off. I cannot consent to let him go out under officers who
will teach him that vice is necessary." Another mother expressed great
indignation at our statements regarding the temptations put in the way
of young soldiers by their superiors, and declared she would write to
her boy and obtain his contradiction of them. The reply came back,
and the almost broken-hearted mother caused it to be conveyed to us,
together with an exhortation that we should "cry aloud and spare not."
It was to the following effect:
"Yes, mother, all those ladies say is true, and much more that they do
not know, and you would hardly believe. I have been so harassed and
persecuted that sometimes I have gone to the chakla, pretending to sin,
but God knows I have not; it was the only way to escape their merciless
persecution."
We have been informed many times that there were military officers who
sneered at virtuous soldiers as lacking proper fighting qualities, and
who deliberately fostered in their soldiers animal propensities, for
the sake of the ferocity of disposition that attends licentiousness.
The names of the special Commissioners were: Mr. Denzil Ibbetson and
Surgeon-Colonel J. Cleghorn, M.D., Inspector-General of Civil Hospitals
throughout the Punjab. In addition to these witnesses from India and
ourselves, Lord Roberts, Quartermaster-General Chapman, and Mr. Hyslop
Bell, of Darlington, were called before the Departmental Committee to
give evidence.
The statements of Lord Roberts and of General Chapman, who were called
before the Departmental Committee in August, proved to be matters of
intense interest, especially as regarded their disagreement as to Lord
Roberts' knowledge of the Infamous Memorandum. Lord Roberts testified
that, when the Resolution of 1888 was carried in the House of Commons
not permitting the compulsory examination of women or the licensing
of prostitution, he understood those measures to mean _abolition_,
not modification, of measures for the regulation of prostitution, and
proceeded accordingly. The Resolution meant the abolishing of the
periodical examination, of licensing, of compulsion, of regulation,
etc. He declared that he knew nothing of the Infamous Memorandum which
had been issued in his name, and that he "entirely disapproved" of
some of the contents of that circular, saying, "I certainly would not
have approved of that part of the Circular which referred to providing
them with pretty young women." Lord Roberts was confronted with a
mass of evidence which he little expected. After his own sweeping
contradictions of our statements, he was shown the report from the
Cantonment of Meean Meer which the Special Commission had brought from
India, and in which nearly every statement we had made was "admitted."
Other _prima facie_ evidence of the truth of our statements convinced
him that our testimony was not to be broken down. As he left the
Committee it was with the conviction that General Chapman was next
to be called, and would give most disagreeable evidence against him
as regarded the Infamous Memorandum and its authorship. Lord Roberts
proceeded immediately to Scotland, and from thence wrote the following
letter of apology:--
DUNBAR, Scotland, 11 August, 1893.
Having read the reports of Mr. Ibbetson's Committee, in regard to the
working of the Rules dealing with the abolition of Lock Hospitals,
etc., in Cantonments in India, and also the reports of the officers
commanding the seven stations which the Committee did not visit, I
frankly admit that the statements of the two American missionary
ladies, who made a tour through Upper India in the cold weather of
1891-92, for the purpose of inquiring into the matter, are in the main
correct.
I hoped and believed that the orders issued to give effect to the
Resolution of the House of Commons had been everywhere obeyed. In some
stations the Rules have been strictly enforced, but in others it now
turns out this has not been completely the case.
I deeply regret this, and I feel that an apology is due from me to the
ladies concerned. This apology I offer unreservedly.
In doing so, I would remark that I think it would have been better
if the missionary ladies had been commended to the care of the
authorities in India. We could have assisted them to carry out the
work on which they were engaged; omissions and shortcomings would
have been remedied at the time; a great deal of unpleasantness would
have been avoided; the ladies themselves would have found their task
considerably lightened; and there would have been less chance of their
drawing wrong deductions from some of the circumstances which came
under their notice, as in sundry instances they would seem from Mr.
Ibbetson's Committee Report to have done. This was owing, no doubt, to
a want of knowledge of the language, and of the habits and customs of
the people of India.
ROBERTS.
This letter was accompanied by a short note to the Chairman requesting
him to annex the letter of apology to the official report of the
proceedings of the Committee.
A few days later General Chapman came before the Committee and
testified with regard to the Circular Memorandum: "It was prepared
at Simla, after the Commander-in-Chief [Lord Roberts] had completed
his annual inspection, and had freely discussed with the officers in
command the various measures which it was proposed to adopt." General
Chapman described the manner in which it was done as follows: The
Commander-in-Chief gave the instruction that the Circular be prepared;
then it was drawn up by officials in the General's office under his
supervision. The Surgeon-General was consulted; then the Circular was
issued under the authority of the Commander-in-Chief. It was sent first
to the Military Department of the Government of India, and then sent
in every direction to all the authorities in India. He said he "could
not have issued" the Circular "unless Lord Roberts had seen it; that
would have been perfectly impossible." When questioned particularly
as to Lord Roberts' knowledge of that part of the document which,
as Lord Roberts expressed it, called for "pretty young women" to be
provided for the soldiers, General Chapman said of these sentences:
"He certainly did approve of them." When asked how it was that the
Secretary of State laid the blame on him (General Chapman), in the
House of Commons, he replied: "Sir John Gorst said it was necessary to
put the blame on somebody, therefore he put it on me."
In the meantime a box had arrived from India containing the hospital
records, which had been impounded by the Indian Government, on the
request of the Chairman of the Committee, and they furnished a large
quantity of _prima facie_ evidence, in the very handwriting of the
British officials. These books being placed in our hands, we were
able to verify the statements we had given in evidence concerning
these records, and were also able to place official documents before
the Committee which disproved some of the statements which had
been conveyed to England from India by the hand of the two Special
Commissioners. As this well illustrates the utter unreliability of
many Anglo-Indian official assertions, we will copy a condensed
and simplified extract from the proceedings of that session of the
Committee at which we placed official document against official
document, and pointed out irreconcilable differences.
The reader must try to imagine us sitting in one of the spacious rooms
of the India Office. At the head of an oval polished table sat Mr.
Russell, the chairman; to his left sat General Newmarch, Sir Donald
Stewart, and Sir James Peile. To the chairman's right sat the late Sir
James Stansfeld, whose prerogative it was to conduct the examination;
next to him were Mr. Casserley, Q.C., counsel for our side, and Henry
J. Wilson, M.P. At the opposite end of the table from the chairman
sat the stenographer and ourselves. It is to be understood that Mr.
Stansfeld asks the questions and we answer:
_Question_--We will pass to the book of requisition for tickets. [This
was a book from which many leaves were torn, leaving counterfoils on
which were memoranda signifying that the extracted leaves were given
to the Cantonment Magistrate, calling for tickets for women, who were
thereby certified as under the charge of the physician, and licensed
to practise prostitution.]
_Answer_--I have it.
_Q._--And you can number the counterfoils; how many requisitions to
the Cantonment Magistrate for licensed tickets does it say on the 1st
of May, 1892?
_A._--Twenty-one.
_Q._--Does it say on counterfoils of tickets in respect of the
nineteen new requisitions on 15th June, 1892?
_A._--It does.
_Q._--Therefore that is evidence that the issue of tickets at any rate
endured longer than May?
_A._--Yes, longer than the 1st of May; it shows that it continued
until the 15th of June, 1892.
_Q._--At any rate, on the 15th of June a requisition was made for
nineteen tickets?
_A._--Nineteen tickets.