Behind The Headlines
Campaigners celebrated this year when legislation brought in to reduce VD among soldiers and sailors was scrapped.
The major events of 1880–1889
The unmentionable subjects of prostitution and venereal disease (VD) were thrust into national prominence this year with the repeal of the Contagious Diseases Acts. Three Acts had been introduced in 1864, 1866 and 1869 to reduce the level of VD among soldiers and sailors, by controlling prostitutes. In certain garrison towns and ports women labelled as ‘common prostitutes’ could be forcibly examined and, if they were found to be suffering from gonorrhoea or syphilis, could be detained in a VD ward (a so-called ‘lock hospital’) for up to nine months.
The Acts addressed a genuine problem: in the 1860s almost one third of serving soldiers were treated for VD, while in the Navy it was an eighth.
Some reformers wanted the
Acts extended to all cities. Others objected because they felt that the Acts condoned prostitution.
What no one counted on was an increasingly powerful lobby of women who were angry at the blatant double standard that women could suffer examination and detention, while their male clients were subject to no restrictions at all.
The leading campaigner was Josephine Butler, daughter of a Northumberland landowner and leader of the Ladies’ National Association for the Repeal of the Contagious Diseases Acts. This coalition of reforming women and some radical men was set up after a previous campaign had excluded women from membership. Butler was a charismatic personality, and some people thought her saintly. These were valuable qualities to have when going before a public not used to hearing a woman on a platform, let alone one speaking of gynaecological examinations.
Butler would tell her audiences of the horrors of the forcible examination of women who were not even prostitutes. This was not, in fact, a common occurrence, but it was a powerful campaigning image. She sponsored new forms of women’s activism notably in the political sphere where women had not previously been evident, challenging Liberal candidates who had supported the Acts when they came up for election. Campaigners were sometimes attacked, but eventually prevailed when the Government was unable to sustain an argument against them and finally repealed the Acts.
It was the first campaign led by women, and was an inspiration to others who went on to agitate for women to have the vote.