-----------------+------------------------------------------------------
Number and Date | PURPORT.
of Circular. |
-----------------+------------------------------------------------------
|
No. 69, dated |3. Such Dhais should be well paid if the fund can
26th November | afford it, and they should be held responsible
1883 | that:--
--_continued._ |
| I. The women under their charge consort with none
| but Europeans.
|
| II. That they do not entertain a man in any house
| but the one allotted them as quarters;
|
| III. That a woman is sent to hospital immediately
| she is found to be diseased;
|
| IV. To ensure the latter, the Dhai should examine
| the women daily between the periodical inspections
| of the medical officer.
|
| 4. Soldiers who have been diseased by registered
| women, have been frequently known to attribute it
| to women met in their walks outside the bazaar,
| and the diseased woman has thus been allowed to
| practise her trade in this state for sometime
| without detection.
|
| 5. Every house should therefore be numbered outside,
| or in some conspicuous spot inside, and a soldier on
| reporting himself sick should not be required to
| personally point out the woman from whom he
| contracted the disease, but merely to give the
| number of her house.
|
| 6. If the Dhai does her duty, these measures should
| lead to the early detection of disease amongst
| registered women.
|
| 7. Each house should be provided with a urinal and
| means of ablution, and such other preventive
| measures, within the means of the Cantonment Fund,
| as suggest themselves to local committees should be
| freely resorted to.
|
| 8. His Excellency will be prepared to sanction any
| reasonable expenditure from cantonment funds on the
| measures therein suggested.
|
No. 42, dated | Requests that the attention of Officers Commanding
12th July | Stations may be drawn to the desirability when
1884. | constructing free quarters for registered women,
| of providing houses that will meet the wishes of
| the women.
|
| 2. Unless their comfort and the convenience of those
| who consort with them is considered, the results
| will not be satisfactory.
|
-----------------+------------------------------------------------------
Appendix B.
[Transcriber's Note: The following text is the transcription of
a two-part document. In this first part, text surrounded by the
tilde ("~") character indicates it is handwritten in this document.]
FAC-SIMILE OF A REGISTRATION TICKET OF EXAMINATION
Issued to a Prostitute in India, in 1892, notwithstanding the
Resolution of the House of Commons of June 5, 1888, condemning such
registration. The form employed is the one authorized by the East India
Contagious Diseases Act of 1866, which was repealed in 1888.
* * * * *
~1892~
Ticket of Registered Prostitutes in the Cantonment of Meean Meer,--
Name, _________~Begum 1st~_________________________________________
Caste ______~Mohamedun~____________________________________________
Registered number, ____~1~_________________________________________
Place of residence in Cantonment, ___~Sudder Bazar~________________
Date of Registry, ______~4-3-90~___________________________________
Personal appearance, ______________________________________________
_________________________________________________________________
~signature~
~offs.~ Cantonment Magistrate,
Meean Meer,
A. B. P., S. B., M. M.
~DMM~
[Transcriber's Note: In this second part, text surrounded by the
tilde ("~") character indicates it is handwritten in this document.
The string "~initial~" represents the undecipherable initials or
signature of an examining Medical Officer.]
----------+---------------------------------------------------+---------
| _Date of Medical Examination and_ |
| _Signature of Medical Officer._ |
Year +------------+-----------+--------------+-----------+
and | Date of | | Date of | |Remarks.
Month. | inspection | Signature | inspection | Signature |
| in the 1st | of Medical| in the second| of Medical|
| half month.| Officer. | half month. | Officer. |
----------+------------+-----------+--------------+-----------+---------
18~92~ | | | | |
| | | ~15./92~ | |
January | ~1st~ | | ~23./92~ | |
| | | ~27 /92~ | |
| | | | |
February | ~1st~ | ~initial~ | ~15 /92~ | ~initial~ |
| | | | |
| | | | |
March | | | | |
| | | | |
| | | | |
April | | | | |
| | | | |
| | | | |
May | | | | |
| | | | |
| | | | |
June | | | | |
| | | | |
| | | | |
July | | | | |
| | | | |
| | | | |
August | | | | |
| | | | |
| | | | |
September | | | | |
| | | | |
| | | | |
October | | | | |
| | | | |
| | | | |
November | | | | |
| | | | |
| | | | |
December | | | | |
| | | | |
| | | | |
----------+------------+-----------+--------------+-----------+---------
Appendix C.
LETTER TO LORD GEORGE HAMILTON.
The following is the full text of the letter of retractation which Lady
Henry Somerset addressed to Lord George Hamilton, January 27, as it
appeared in the London daily papers of February 8, 1898:--
EASTNOR CASTLE, LEDBURY, _Jan. 27, 1898_.
DEAR LORD GEORGE HAMILTON,--Your lordship invited me ten months
ago to give you my view of the dispatch that has been addressed to
the Government of India on the health of the army, and in a letter
in which I did so I ventured to suggest some methods, moral and
disciplinary, which seemed to me the only ones likely to succeed,
because they had at least the merit of being logical.
I was led to do so by two considerations: first, the dispatch in
question seemed to imply that the Government would give every
encouragement to every form of elevating agency, and so emphasize the
altered spirit in which the subject was approached, and that such
suggested supervision would only affect an incorrigible minimum;
and second, that the system I had in mind would be so drastic and
penal in its nature as to make State interference odious and finally
impossible. That was ten months ago; and in that time nothing has
been done of which the public has heard to strengthen the forces that
make for moral improvement.
What has been done, viz., the repeal of the Indian Acts of 1895,
which prohibited inspection, has been in a direction exactly
opposite. It seems to have been the object of the Government to
obtain the maximum of impunity, with the minimum of protest, from
those who desire to see the State shape its actions according to
Christian views of ethics. I need not tell your lordship I am not
writing to say how strongly I am still opposed to the course which
the Government has taken; but I find that my letter to your lordship
of last year has been taken by many to mean that I am on the side of
the accepted view of State regulation, and I am from time to time
quoted as a sympathizer with such views. I am therefore writing to
withdraw any proposals made in that letter for this reason--that the
events of the past year have convinced me of the inadvisability and
extreme danger of the system that in April last I thought might be
instituted.
The absence of any serious effort by the Government to bring about
a higher standard in the army is a final proof to me that, as long
as regulation of any kind can be resorted to as a remedy, it will
always be regarded as the one and only panacea. My view was that it
would be instituted as an odious but possibly effective auxiliary
to moral efforts. I find it will always be accepted as a convenient
substitute. I take the liberty of addressing this explicit withdrawal
of an endorsement in whatever form of the principle of regulation;
because it was in a letter to your lordship that I originally
incurred the responsibility. I trust, therefore, to your lordship's
indulgence to forgive me for troubling you further in the matter.--I
remain, my lord, yours very truly,
(Signed) ISABEL SOMERSET.
* * * * *
The following comments on the above letter appeared in _The Christian_
(London), February 17, 1898:
REGULATION NO REMEDY.
In our last issue we inserted in full the letter of Lady Henry
Somerset, in which she withdrew from her unfortunate position in
relation to the State regulation of vice in India. We refrained, for
the time being, from comment, that her retractation might speak for
itself. We feel, therefore, the more free to remark upon it now.
We rejoice, in the first place, that it has come at all, for it
justifies the principles for which we and other repealers have
contended all these years. Lady Henry is convinced of "the
inadvisability and extreme danger" of her former proposals, and
recognises now that "as long as regulation of any kind can be resorted
to as a remedy, it will be regarded as the one and only panacea ...
[and] will always be accepted as a convenient substitute [for moral
reform]."
It is therefore with thankfulness that we note her ladyship's
"explicit withdrawal of an endorsement in whatever form of the
principle of regulation."
This is all good so far as it goes, but it does not go far enough;
and, alas! it comes too late, for it can never undo the fearful harm
her action last year was the means of doing.
A public retractation is a hard and painful process, and we sympathize
with Lady Henry in the mental strain which it must have cost her. But
she has not been the only sufferer. It were no small thing to cause
division and discord in so gigantic an organization as that over which
she presided, so that at the present time the movement is crippled and
its machinery out of gear. This might well have elicited an expression
of regret, which we hope may yet be forthcoming in some communication
to the Association she has so grievously wronged.
But more than this. Encouraged by her act, the Government claimed
the women of England as its supporters, defied moral sentiment, and,
on the crest of the wave of this unhappy dissension, carried the
re-enactment of the infamous C. D. Acts among our sisters in India.
It will take long and weary years of uphill work to undo the mischief
that her ill-advised and hasty action wrought. Meantime, how many
Indian women will have succumbed to a shameful life and gone down to a
dishonoured grave?
The weakest point of Lady Henry's letter is the erroneous assumption
on which it is based: that her proposals themselves were moral,
and that if the Government had instituted reforms they might have
successfully co-existed with regulation. But how can regulation under
any circumstances be a remedy? The very terms are self-contradictory.
What is morally wrong can never be experimentally right, and this
proposition neither casuistry nor expediency can set aside. The only
remedy is obedience to the law of God; and if material aids be needed,
let them be found in some active measures for the mental, moral, and
spiritual improvement of our soldiers in their leisure hours. This is
where reform is needed.
* * * * *
The foregoing Letter, together with the article from _The Christian_,
were printed in full in _The Shield_ (the official organ of the British
Committee of the Federation for the Abolition of the State Regulation
of Vice) of March, 1898, with the following
NOTE BY THE EDITOR.
"We are glad to see that Lady Henry Somerset has now withdrawn from
the proposals for the Regulation of Vice with which her name has
become connected. At the same time we regret that she still appears
to think that her scheme could possibly have done good if side by
side with it had been some moralizing agency. Our position is and has
uniformly been that Regulation is essentially under all circumstances
a demoralizing agency, and must be so from the very nature of the
case; and that the provision of women certified fit for immoral
purposes is necessarily disastrous whatever be the concomitants of
such a proposition."
* * * * *
Transcriber's Notes
The old-fashioned English names of towns and cities in South Asia that
are used in the text have been retained. Variations in the spelling of
other words are unchanged unless noted in the following.
* Corrections to the Original Text
The following misprints and other errors have been corrected:
Page 23 - the word "prostitutues" changed to "prostitutes" ("a system
of compulsory examination of prostitutes").
Page 42 - the text "to be longer" changed to "to be any longer" ("when
too old to be any longer 'sufficiently attractive' to the soldier").
Page 101 - the word "analagous" changed to "analogous" ("are closely
analogous to the conditions").
* Other Changes
The following changes to the original text have been made for clarity
or consistency:
The title "Commander-in-chief" changed to "Commander-in-Chief"
throughout to match the formal title used in original documents.
Page xi - "Anglo Indian" changed to "Anglo-Indian" in CONTENTS.
Page 42 - the word "unbiassed" changed to "unbiased".
Page 87 - "the C.D. Acts" changed to "the C. D. Acts".
Page 103 - "prized C.D. Acts" changed to "prized C. D. Acts".
Page 107 - the text "World's W. C. T. U." changed to "World's W.C.T.U."
* Notes
The words "bazar" and "bazaar" appear throughout the text. The authors
normally use "bazaar" in their narrative while the facsimile copies of
Army documents in Appendix A show both spellings being used.
Appendix A (pages 114-121) is a transcription of the facsimiles of
original documents. The resulting text has been slightly reformatted
to fit within a page width of 72 characters but retains the general
layout of the original documents along with their inconsistent spelling.
In regard to this latter point the following issues are noted:
Page 117 - "his Excellency" is inconsistent with other references
to "His Excellency" in the same document.
Page 118 - the word "insistance" rather than "insistence" is used.
Appendix C (pages 124-127) uses the word "retractation". This is
correct in the context in which it is used. It is a rarely used
noun, defined in the GNU version of the Collaborative International
Dictionary of English as meaning "the act of retracting what has been
said; recantation."
* Changes to Footnotes
The footnotes have been re-indexed using numbers and collected
together at the end of each chapter.
* Variations in Spelling
The following variations of a word, rank or descriptive term are
present in the original text and have been retained. The variations
occur because the authors use one spelling in their narrative but
retain any different spelling which occurs in text that they quote:
"bazaar" and "bazar"
"Hindoo" and "Hindus"
"Lieut-General" and "Lieut.-Gen."
"memoranda", "memorandums" and "memorandum"
"Mohammedan" and "Mohamedun"
"smallpox" and "small-pox"
"today" and "to-day"