CHAPTER I

ORIGIN OF THE SYSTEM OF STATE REGULATION OF VICE

“Our fathers to their graves have gone, Their strife is past—their triumph won; But sterner trials wait the race Which rises in their honoured place— A moral warfare with the crime And folly of an evil time.”

“So let it be. In God’s own might We gird us for the coming fight, And, strong in Him whose cause is ours, In conflict with unholy powers, We grasp the weapons He has given— The light, and truth, and love of Heaven.”

The late Professor Emile de Laveleye, at our International Conference at the Hague, in September, 1883, gave some account of the inauguration of this system, which took its rise in France under the auspices of Napoleon I. The system was first suggested by Aulas in 1762, and by Restif de la Bretonne in 1790. It was brought into full operation on the eve of the establishment of the French Empire in 1802. “It could only have had its birth,” said Professor de Laveleye, “at a period of disturbance, when the rights of human dignity and individual liberty were forgotten or misunderstood. History, in recounting the saturnalia of vice in Asia Minor, in Greece, and especially in Imperial Rome, narrates horrors which cause us to shudder. But never, either in Rome, or in Athens, or even in Corinth, was the spectacle witnessed of public abodes of shame kept open by the State. Juvenal paints Messalina gliding thither under cover of night. But even Heliogabalus never constituted himself their patron as nowadays do the Municipal and State authorities of our Christian communities in the full sunshine of the 19th century.”

Then the same accomplished speaker, in a very forcible address, showed what the legalising of vice has been and has produced in all those nations which, following the example of France, have adopted it. “It has been the source of profound disorders, both moral and physical: of moral disorders, by destroying the aversion which vice should inspire, and thereby strengthening its power; of physical disorders, by exciting incontinence, and all its concurrent evils, with proffered facilities and promises of immunity.”

I shall have occasion later to draw attention to the different dates and methods in which this system was introduced into the several countries of Europe. England was the last country in which it found a foothold. When, in 1872, I was summoned to give evidence before a Royal Commission to inquire into this question, I stated on the authority of Mrs. Harriet Martineau and other venerable writers and politicians, a fact which has never been contradicted in any way, _i.e._, than an attempt was made during the Melbourne Ministry to introduce this Parisian system into England. It was deemed impossible, however, to place such an Act of Parliament in the hands of a young virgin Queen for signature, and the attempt was dropped. There was a renewed endeavour during the life of the Prince Consort, but this was also abandoned, from the knowledge that was obtained of the Prince’s distinct disapproval of this Continental system. Prince Albert died, and it was during the first year of Queen Victoria’s widowhood, when she was presumably absorbed in her private grief, that the promoters of this system in England succeeded in pushing an Act through Parliament, and obtaining for it the Royal signature.

There were four Acts; the first, tentative, in 1864. This was repealed when the Act of 1866 was passed, and this, after verbal amendment in 1868, was still further extended by the Act of 1869. This last Act was not allowed much peace, for it was in the autumn of the same year that the opposition arose; in fact, a powerful protest had been raised shortly before the passing of this complete Act. Mrs. Harriet Martineau, with all the shrewdness and enlightenment of a true woman and an able politician, had seen the tendency of a certain busy medical and military clique in this direction. The then editor of the _Daily News_, who was favourable to our views, asked Mrs. Martineau to write a series of letters in his paper. This she did, and her letters are extremely weighty, and wonderful to read at this day, when we have an immense accumulation of evidence to support her and our views, which she, of course, did not possess. Her advice on this matter concerning our army is admirable. Speaking of our poor soldiers, she says:—“But while favouring the element of brutality in him (the soldier), we had not need go further and assume in practice that his animalism is a necessity which must be provided for. This is the fatal step which it is now hoped that the English Parliament and the English people may be induced to take. If the soldier is more immoral than his contemporaries of the working class, it must be because the standard of morality is lower in the army than out of it. Shall we then raise it to what we clearly see it might be, or degrade it further by a practical avowal that vice is in the soldier’s case a necessity to be provided for, like his need of food and clothing? This admission of the necessity of vice is the point on which the whole argument turns, and on which irretrievable consequences depend. Once admitted, the necessity of a long series of fearful evils follows of course. There can be no resistance to seduction, procuration, disease, regulation, _when once the original necessity is granted_. Further, the admission involves civil as well as military society, and starts them together on the road which leads down to what moralists of all ages and nations have called the lowest hell.... It is a national disgrace that our people should have even been asked to regard and treat their soldiers and sailors as pre-destined fornicators.” And in another of her letters to the _Daily News_ Mrs. Martineau, writing of her experience of Continental cities, said: “There is evidence accessible to all that the Regulation System creates horrors worse than those which it is supposed to restrain. Vice once stimulated by such a system imagines and dares all unutterable things. And such things perplex with misery the lives of parents of missing children in Continental cities, and daunt the courage of rulers, and madden the moral sense, and gnaw the conscience of whole orders of sinners and sufferers, of whom we can form no conception here. We shall have entered upon our national decline whenever we agree to the introduction of such a system.”

We, the women of England, were not the first to arise in opposition to this iniquity. For at least fifteen years before our call to the work, warning lights had been held out from time to time by persons or societies who thoroughly knew the system, and dreaded the disastrous effects for our country of its establishment in our midst.

A group of Baptist and other Nonconformist Ministers, in which my relative, the late Charles Birrell, took a leading part, early went to the Government, conveying an earnest warning and protest on the subject. I cannot fix the exact date of this event; but I have a vivid recollection of the account of it given to me by Mr. Birrell. I believe it was during the Administration of Lord John Russell.

In 1860 a Committee of the House of Lords sat to consider the question of introducing the Acts for the regulation of vice into India, or establishing a more complete form of Acts already existing there. The majority of the witnesses examined by that Committee were wholly opposed to the system. Miss Florence Nightingale was one of those witnesses. Her recorded evidence and expression of opinion are lengthy, and exactly what we might expect from a true-hearted and an experienced woman. Lord Frederick FitzClarence, Commander-in-Chief of the forces in India, said that “after giving the whole subject his best attention, he concurred with his predecessors in command of the army in believing that police measures of the kind in question could not be carried on without involving the certain degradation and oppression of many innocent women, and occasioning other evils which, in his opinion, would be very much greater than that which it was their object to remedy.” Dr. Grierson (of the Indian Army) said that when the natives of India saw the authorities making such careful provision for the protection of immoral persons, and at the same time doing little for the good of the other classes, they were “sorely perplexed.” General Jacob said: “The proper and only wise method of dealing with this question is to improve the condition and moral well-being of the army. Coercion of any kind always increases the evil. Moral forces alone are of any value.”

A third strong protest was that of the officers of the Rescue Society in London. They made a series of very strong efforts against the threatened introduction of the regulation system.

The late Mr. Daniel Cooper, the well-known and respected Secretary of the Rescue Society, wrote to me in 1870: “You ask me to tell you what the Rescue Society did to bring this infamous legislation under public notice. In 1868 we published a pamphlet and waited on the Home Secretary. With the pamphlet we presented a copy of a ‘Memorandum of Objections’ to this legislation. This Memorandum was circulated by thousands. We placed it in the hands of every member of both Houses of Parliament; we forwarded it to all the principal clergy of the Metropolis and other important towns in England, and also to the leading Nonconformist ministers. We spent more than £100 in the circulation of our papers, and with what result? I am ashamed to say that very little effect was produced. The utmost apathy prevailed; people would not believe our words and would not stir. The infamous Act of 1869 was passed in spite of all our efforts.

“At this crisis we learned that the _Women_ of England were taking this question in hand. We were rejoiced beyond measure when we saw the announcement of your Ladies’ National Association.

“I tell you candidly I had felt an almost utter despair in seeing that, after putting forth our pamphlet, and writing thousands of letters, imploring our legislators, clergy, principal public men and philanthropists to look into the question, such a stoical indifference remained. We felt, on hearing of your Association, that Providence had well chosen the means for the defeat of these wicked Acts. The ladies of England will save the country from this fearful curse; for I fully believe that through them it has even now had its death blow. The men who charge the ladies foremost in the struggle with indelicacy are not worthy the name of men. As to our Members of Parliament, pray do not excuse their ignorance; do not try to palliate their error by saying the Act was passed at the fag end of the session. The papers placed in their hands by ourselves, the letters of warning we addressed to them, leave them no excuse. Knowing, as none but ourselves can know, what was done to arouse them, I cannot but conclude that, with a few honourable exceptions, our Members of Parliament cared nothing about the matter until public opinion forced them to look into it. But for the Ladies’ National Association we should have had no discussion, and the Acts would by this date have probably been extended throughout the country. I say this solemnly, and from an intimate knowledge of all the plans of the Association formed to extend these Acts. Go on; give the country no rest till this law is abolished.—Yours truly, DANIEL COOPER.”

The names of Dr. Charles Bell Taylor and Dr. Worth, of Nottingham, must be gratefully remembered, for it was to those gentlemen that we, the women of England, owed our first clear information of the nature and the passing of the Act of 1869. I had been on the Continent with my family in that year, and had been learning much there concerning the disastrous effects of this system. On the journey home I found a telegram awaiting me at Dover, begging an interview, and this was followed by a somewhat mysterious appeal from these alert friends at Nottingham to “haste to the rescue.” In a few days the whole state of the case was put before me and a small group of friends. No organised action, however, was taken by us until the close of December of that year. In fact, there was much preparation of heart, nerve, and mind necessary for such a task as was now opening out before us. It was not a thing to be taken up hastily.

Meanwhile, in September of this same year (1869), some other watchful friends had taken occasion of the Social Science Congress meeting at Bristol to introduce again a strong warning note, or rather now a protest, against the legislation in question. The Rev. Dr. Hooppell, of Northumberland, Mr. George Charleton, of the Society of Friends, and Mr. Banks, afterwards for so many years the able and indefatigable secretary of the National Association, proved themselves on this occasion already well-armed and staunch advocates of the abolition movement, of which they themselves were amongst the earliest initiators. They formed there a local association, which was afterwards merged into the National Association, which had its office in London.

I have already, in the “Recollections of George Butler,” recorded sufficiently my own and my husband’s first call to this great work, the inward preparation for which had been going on for many years previously. I have spoken there of the horror, the dismay we felt on the first full knowledge that this iniquity had been established by law in England, of the weeks of self-questioning and hesitation which followed for myself, of the tardy but firm resolution at last formed to imitate, if I may use the simile, the example of Quintus Curtius of old Roman fame, and to leap into this yawning gulf in order that the nation’s wound might close again. But this Roman hero, I had read, met his fate fully equipped, armed from head to foot, fearless, and in the perfection of self-renunciation. I felt that, for such an enterprise, I should require nothing less than “the whole armour of God.” I have recorded also in that hook the noble and unselfish part which my husband took from the beginning in this warfare; and to some extent I there also indicated the sacrifices he made, and the anxieties he silently endured for many years, after he had spoken to me that momentous word (to me a consecration for the work), “Go, and the Lord be with you.”

This word was spoken after we had conferred fully together on the action we should adopt, and after our conclusion that we must make an immediate appeal to the great public.

Many persons, honestly judging the matter from the outside, have mistakenly imagined that the persecution which had to be endured, the ridicule by which we were constantly assailed in the Press, the social ostracism, the coldness of many who had before been friends and companions, the obloquy, false accusations, abuse and violence, continued for years, must have been the greatest of the trials incident to the part we were called to take in so dreadful an enterprise. So far as my own experience bears witness, those who judge so are mistaken. These things were for me light and easy to bear in comparison with the deep and silent sorrow, the bitterness of soul of the years which preceded. I recall those years of painful thinking, and of questionings which seemed to receive no answer and to be susceptible of no solution; those years in which I saw this great social iniquity (based on the shameful inequality of judgment concerning sexual sin in man and woman) devastating the world, contentedly acquiesced in, no great revolt proclaimed against it, a dead silence reigning concerning it, a voice feebly raised perhaps now and again, but quickly rebuked and silenced. The call to action, the field of battle entered, with all its perils and trials clearly set out before us, were a joyful relief, a place of free breathing, compared with the oppression and the heart-woe which went before.

Those alone who have trod the silent and secret “way of Calvary” will fully understand me. Those who have not may well think the discipline of being traduced, slandered, threatened, and “spitefully entreated” a very hard discipline. But one who has endured the deeper and keener spiritual discipline, when there seemed no escape, no ray of hope, must regard the outward persecution and violence only as a welcome sign that the battle is set in array, and that the enemy is roused to bitterest hatred because his claims are disputed and his sovereignty is about to be overthrown. The inward sorrow I believe to have been necessary for the vitalising of righteous action, and the insuring of depth, reality and constancy.

On the 1st January, 1870, was published the famous Women’s Protest, as follows:

“We, the undersigned, enter our solemn protest against these Acts.

“1st.—Because, involving as they do such a momentous change in the legal safeguards hitherto enjoyed by women in common with men, they have been passed, not only without the knowledge of the country, but unknown, in a great measure, to Parliament itself; and we hold that neither the Representatives of the People, nor the Press, fulfil the duties which are expected of them, when they allow such legislation to take place without the fullest discussion.

“2nd.—Because, so far as women are concerned, they remove every guarantee of personal security which the law has established and held sacred, and put their reputation, their freedom, and their persons absolutely in the power of the police.

“3rd.—Because the law is bound, in any country professing to give civil liberty to its subjects, to define clearly an offence which it punishes.

“4th.—Because it is unjust to punish the sex who are the victims of a vice, and leave unpunished the sex who are the main cause, both of the vice and its dreaded consequences; and we consider that liability to arrest, forced medical treatment, and (where this is resisted) imprisonment with hard labour, to which these Acts subject women, are punishments of the most degrading kind.

“5th.—Because, by such a system, the path of evil is made more easy to our sons, and to the whole of the youth of England; inasmuch as a moral restraint is withdrawn the moment the State recognises, and provides convenience for, the practice of a vice which it thereby declares to be necessary and venial.

“6th.—Because these measures are cruel to the women who come under their action—violating the feelings of those whose sense of shame is not wholly lost, and further brutalising even the most abandoned.

“7th.—Because the disease which these Acts seek to remove has never been removed by any such legislation. The advocates of the system have utterly failed to show, by statistics or otherwise, that these regulations have in any case, after several years’ trial, and when applied to one sex only, diminished disease, reclaimed the fallen, or improved the general morality of the country. We have, on the contrary, the strongest evidence to show that in Paris and other Continental cities where women have long been outraged by this system, the public health and morals are worse than at home.

“8th.—Because the conditions of this disease, in the first instance, are moral, not physical. The moral evil through which the disease makes its way separates the case entirely from that of the plague, or other scourges, which have been placed under police control or sanitary care. We hold that we are bound, before rushing into experiments of legalising a revolting vice, to try to deal with the _causes_ of the evil, and we dare to believe that with wiser teaching and more capable legislation, those causes would not be beyond control.”

This Protest was published in the _Daily News_, and the fact of its appearance was flashed by telegram to the remotest parts of the Kingdom. The local press largely reproduced it. Among the two thousand signatures which it obtained in a short time there were those of Florence Nightingale, Harriet Martineau, Mary Carpenter, the sisters and other relatives of the late Mr. John Bright, all the leading ladies of the Society of Friends, and many well-known in the literary and philanthropic world.

A pause ensued, a silence on the part of our opponents and undecided or critical lookers on, induced by the first shock of this unexpected and powerful manifesto. A member of Parliament, fully sympathetic with us, said to me: “Your manifesto has shaken us very badly in the House of Commons; a leading man in the House remarked to me, ‘We know how to manage any other opposition in the House or in the country, but this is very awkward for us—this revolt of the women. It is quite a new thing; what are we to do with such an opposition as this?’”

But this temporary pause was succeeded by signs of much agitation and business among our opponents in preparation for an organised stand against our attitude and claims; and simultaneously was inaugurated the great “Conspiracy of Silence” in the press, which continued unbroken until the autumn of 1874, when a well-known Ex-Cabinet Minister spoke powerfully at a public meeting on our behalf. After this one occasion, however, the press, as if by common consent, fell back into its old attitude of silence. This silence could not be in most cases attributed to a regard for the feelings of readers, for statements in favour of the Acts were continually admitted. We had, however, great encouragement from many and often unexpected parts of the world.

Many persons on the Continent, working for social reforms, were even then rejoicing in the trumpet-blast which had been sounded from England, in open opposition to this vicious system. We had inaugurated a line of action to the continuance of which we were pledged by sacred duty in regard to the hopes which it had awakened throughout Europe.

Amongst the reforms which, it was hoped, would be aided by the present agitation was one connected with the army, in the substitution of some better system of national defence than that of a military army of celibates, kept as a distinct class, and demoralized by unnatural provisions, supposed to be needful for their exceptional existence.

The purification of the medical profession was also hoped for, and the exposure and defeat of those deadly materialist doctrines respecting the necessity of unchastity, which had been secretly and widely promulgated, and which, together with the dogmatism and despotism of certain doctors, had begun to exercise so fatal an influence over our legislative counsels. The condition of the womanhood of our country for some time past we often compared with that of the afflicted woman of whom we read in the Gospels, of whom it was said, “She had endured many things of many physicians,” and that she grew no better, but rather worse. The afflicted woman alluded to, approaching the person of the great Spiritual Physician, was healed by the touch of faith. A similar faith was coming to the succour of the womanhood of the present day. Their hearts were lifted up to God, with whom are the issues of life and death, and they were taught to scorn the perversions of physicians who, in the supposed interests of the body, trampled under foot the claims of decency and the inalienable rights of every woman, chaste or unchaste, over her own person. God would henceforth, we trusted, place His gifts of healing in holy hands, and say to the poor afflicted womanhood of this day, “Daughter, be of good cheer.”

The purification we hoped for was already indicated by the fact that, among the men who gradually rallied around us in this cause, from all ranks and all professions, pure-hearted physicians were among the foremost, both in action and in indignant denunciation of the theories and practices which we abhorred.

Not many weeks after the publication of our Protest, Mr. Gladstone, then Prime Minister, received a Memorial from women of Geneva on the subject; a beautiful and distinct echo from afar of our own cry for justice.

Even earlier than this, more than one sympathetic voice reached us from Paris itself, the birthplace of the evil thing against which we were allied.

Victor Hugo wrote:—

“PARIS, _March 20, 1870_.

“I am with you, madame and ladies. I am with you to the fullest extent of my power. In reading your eloquent letter, I have felt a burning sympathy rise in me for the feeble, and a corresponding indignation against the oppressor. France is apparently about to borrow from England an evil institution, that of chamber executions—legal murders done behind closed doors; and, in her turn, England prepares to adopt from France a detestable system, that, namely, of a police dealing with women as outlaws. Protest! resist! show your indignation! All noble hearts and all lofty spirits will be on your side. The slavery of black women is abolished in America, but the slavery of white women continues in Europe; and laws are still made by men in order to tyrannise over women. Nothing more hateful could be seen than the sight to-day—France copying the feudalism of England, and England reproducing the medical tyranny of Paris. It is a rivalry of retrogression—a miserable spectacle. It disgraces justice in France, and the Executive power in England. Publish this letter if you think fit, and be assured of my earnest sympathy and respect.

“VICTOR HUGO.”

From Mazzini, to a member of our Ladies’ Association:—

“ITALY, _February, 1870_.

“MY DEAR FRIEND,—

“Can you doubt me? Can you doubt how eagerly I watch from afar, and how heartily I bless the efforts of the brave, earnest British women who are striving for the extension of the suffrage to their sex and for the repeal of the vice-protecting Acts, which last question is but an incident in the great general question of justice to women?

“Is your question less sacred than that of the abolition of slavery in America, or of serfdom elsewhere? Ought it not to be even more sacred to us—in reverence for our mothers,—and if we remember that the most important period of human life—the first—is entrusted to women?

“Are not all questions of equality mere baseless rebellion, unless they are derived from an all-embracing religious principle? and is not that principle—(the oneness of the human family)—the soul of your country’s religion?

“Have the men who deny the righteousness of your claims abjured that religion, or forgotten the holy words of Jesus and of Paul:—

“‘Neither pray I for these alone, but for them also which shall believe on Me through the Word.’

“‘That they all may be one; as Thou, Father, art in Me, and I in Thee, that they also may be one in us.’—John xvii. 20, 21.

“‘For ye are all the children of God by faith in Christ Jesus.’

“‘There is neither Jew nor Greek, there is neither bond nor free, there is neither male nor female, for ye are all one in Christ Jesus.’—Epistle Galatians iii. 26, 28.

“Do they tell you these words apply to heaven? Ask them Who has taught them to pray that _God’s will be done on earth as it is in heaven_?

“No question such as yours ought to be solved without asking _how far does the proposed solution minister to the moral education of society_? The sense of self-dignity, the deep conviction that each of us has a task to fulfil on earth, for our own improvement and that of our fellow-creatures, is the first step in all education. We are bound to start by teaching all whom we seek to educate the words you quoted; _you are a human being: nothing that concerns mankind is alien to you_. If you crush in man his innate sense of self-respect, you decree the helot. If you sanction moral inequality to any extent, you either create rebellion, with all its evils, or indifference, hypocrisy and corruption. If you punish the accomplice, leaving the sinner untouched, you destroy, by arousing the sense of injustice, every beneficial result of punishment. If you assume the right to legislate for any class, without allowing that class voice or share in the work, you destroy the sacredness of law, and awaken hatred or contempt in the heart of the excluded class.

“In these simple obvious principles lies the justice of your claims.

“In this legislation lies—forget it not—the germ of a moral disease far more terrible than the physical evil they thus brutally and impotently endeavour to ‘stamp out’; this first step backwards, taken in selfish fear, will, if not speedily retraced, be followed by others, until the moral sore neglected will become a cancer infecting the very life-blood of your nation.

“In the moral principles I have stated you will conquer. Your cause is a religious one. Do not narrow it down to what is called a right or an interest. Let duty be your ground, both in protecting your unhappy sisters and in urging your political claims. You are children of God. You have the same duty to perform on earth—the progressive discovery and the progressive fulfilment of His law. You cannot renounce that task without sinning against the God who appointed it, and gave to you, as to us, faculties and powers for its accomplishment.

“You cannot fulfil your task without _liberty_, which is the source of responsibility. You cannot fulfil it without _equality_, which is liberty for each and all.

“Your claim to the suffrage is identical with that of the working men. Like them, you seek to bring a new element of progress to the common work; you feel that you, too, have something to say, not merely indirectly, but legally and officially, with regard to the great problems which stir and torture the soul of mankind.

“As for the special cause of which you write, the repeal of these hideous Acts, you will succeed. You have in your House of Commons men whom surely no giant despair of physical disease can turn aside from the straight path of principle and justice; but even if these should fail you, which I do not believe, you have your people. Your working men have shown us, during the Lancashire famine, how _they_ can feel for the down-trodden and oppressed. Appeal to them. I have lived long enough in England to know what their answer would be.

“_I am, Dear Friend, Yours_, “GIUSEPPE MAZZINI.”