Address to the Women of Portsmouth, July 1870
In the second half of the nineteenth century, British feminists expressed concern about the sexual double standard. One of their greatest victories was the repeal of the Contagious Diseases Acts (CDAs) in 1886. The first Act was passed in 1864, followed by others in 1866 and 1869. These laws gave police in a number of garrison towns and naval ports the right to arrest women suspected of being common prostitutes and require them to be medically examined for venereal disease in a Lock Hospital or Ward – the “rape of the speculum”. If a woman did not want to submit to examination, she could be sent to prison. If found infected, women could be detained for treatment for about 2 months. When cured, they were released and given a certificate. According to feminists, the Acts were unfair because they blamed prostitutes for the spread of venereal disease, but not the men who used their services. Under the leadership of Josephine Butler, the Ladies’ National Association for Repeal of the Contagious Diseases Acts led a campaign to repeal these laws. They eventually succeeded in 1886, 22 years after the first Act was introduced.
As a naval base, Portsmouth was at the heart of the controversy over the CDAs, and naturally attracted the attention of Josephine Butler (1828-1906, née Grey). She was a feminist and social reformer with a wide variety of interests. On Thursday 7 July 1870, Butler addressed the women of Portsmouth at the Beneficial Hall in Portsea. The event was reported in The Hampshire Telegraph on Saturday 9 July 1870.
Speaking to the crowd, Butler set out to explain ‘why they opposed these Acts, and why they intended to go on opposing them until, by God’s help, they were repealed, because they were deeply convinced that they were immoral, unjust, and unconstitutional.’
She expressed sympathy for prostitutes who had, according to Butler ‘fallen into sin, and become the slaves of vice.’ While those who supported the Acts claimed that prostitution was necessary and unavoidable, Butler and the other members of the Ladies’ National Association for Repeal of the Contagious Diseases Acts disagreed. Butler claimed that prostitution:
was a sin against God and man, and a huge evil which comprised here, all other sins within its own bosom; and though they might labour for the women, let them never seek to render the commission of the sin convenient and comfortable. To this great blunder on the part of the Government they were indebted for the awakening of the public to this great evil; and now that many were roused to action, the first thing they found in the way was the law relating to the regulation of these women.
Butler did not deny that venereal disease was a problem, and she acknowledged that official statistics showed that there had been ‘a considerable decrease in those diseases which followed unchastity amongst the soldiers and sailors’ since the laws had been introduced. However, the newspaper reported that Butler argued, ‘But if health were to be purchased at the expense of immorality, they declined to argue the question on that ground; and she believed she should be unfaithful to God if she descended to that level.’
The newspaper’s comments on this event are very revealing of contemporary attitudes:
Prostitution is not a necessity, but it is unpreventable, and were a thousand Mrs Butlers to preach till doomsday, we fear they would fail to subdue these vicious propensities which are so much to be deplored; but if the torrent cannot be stopped, it may be dammed, and its progress so checked as to shield the community from the overwhelming flood. This is the sole object which the Legislature had in view; and they can with no more fairness be charged with winking at immorality, than a physician prescribing for a patient suffering from delirium tremens can be accused of a connivance at drunkenness.
It reveals that many people did feel that prostitution was inevitable and therefore the Acts were the best way to keep such ‘evils’ in check. So it was that, although the campaign for repeal of the CDAs attracted the vigorous support of moralists and feminists and also of those more generally concerned with civil liberties, their efforts were not rewarded with success until 1886.
By Pat O’Mahoney, a U3A Shared Learning Project researcher for the Citizens Project
Sources:
Judith R. Walkowitz, Prostitution and Victorian Society: Women, Class, and the State (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1983).
E. M. Sigsworth and T. J. Wyke, ‘A Study of Victorian Prostitution and Venereal Disease’ in M. Vicinus (ed), Suffer and Be Still: Women in the Victorian Age (London: Methuen & Co., 1980), pp. 77-99.
Louise Moon, ‘“Sailorhoods”: Sailortown and Sailors in the Port of Portsmouth circa 1850-1900,’ PhD Thesis (University of Portsmouth, 2015).
