Act 1868 was especially passed for the sole reason of substituting in

Ireland “any policeman duly authorized,” instead of “the superintendent of police.”

Footnote 24:

20. If in any such examination the woman examined is found to be affected with a contagious disease, she shall thereupon be liable to be detained in a certified hospital, subject and according to the provisions of this Act, and the visiting surgeon shall sign a certificate to the effect that she is affected with a contagious disease, naming the certified hospital in which she is to be placed, and he shall sign that certificate in triplicate, and shall cause one of the originals to be delivered to the woman, and the others to the superintendent of police.

21. Any woman to whom any such certificate of the visiting surgeon relates may, if she thinks fit, proceed to the certified hospital named in that certificate, and place herself there for medical treatment; but if, after the certificate is delivered to her, she neglects or refuses to do so, the superintendent of police, or a constable acting under his orders, shall apprehend her and convey her with all practicable speed to that hospital, and place her there for medical treatment, and the certificate of the visiting surgeon shall be sufficient authority to him for so doing.

22. Where a woman certified by the visiting surgeon to be affected with a contagious disease places herself, or is placed as aforesaid, in a certified hospital for medical treatment, she shall be detained there for that purpose by the chief medical officer of the hospital until discharged by him by writing under his hand.

The certificate of the visiting surgeon, one of the three originals whereof shall be delivered by the superintendent of police to the chief medical officer, shall, when so delivered, notwithstanding that she is for that purpose removed out of one into or through another jurisdiction, or is detained in a jurisdiction other than that in which the certificate of the visiting surgeon was made, shall be sufficient authority for such detention.

26. Every woman conveyed or transferred under this Act to a certified hospital, shall, while being so conveyed or transferred thither, and also while detained there, be deemed to be legally in the custody of the person conveying, transferring, or detaining her.

Footnote 25:

_De laudibus legum Angliæ_, p. 53.

Footnote 26:

Blackstone, Bk. iii. p. 38.

Footnote 27:

The Act upon this point was very clearly defined by Mr. Bennett, an eminent solicitor, in a case tried at the Duke of Cornwall Hotel, Plymouth, which entirely turned on the fact that _suspicion_ alone in the policeman’s mind justified his action, and that, further, he was not bound, when called on, to give the reasons of this suspicion.

Footnote 28:

Blackstone, Book iii.

Footnote 29:

M. Le Cour says that in Paris false accusations, by anonymous letters and otherwise, amount to several hundreds a week.

In the case at Plymouth already alluded to, Inspector Annis of Plymouth being asked by Mr. Rooker, a magistrate, “Have you ever got anonymous letters accusing women?” replied, “We get lots of them.”

Footnote 30:

On the occasion of the trial of a young girl under these Acts in a certain town of Kent, a full bench of magistrates was assembled. She was condemned to a month’s imprisonment, and on leaving the court remarked, “I did find it rather hard that the gentleman on the bench who gave the casting vote for my imprisonment had paid me five shillings the day before to go with him!”

Footnote 31:

Creasy’s _Constitution_, pp. 225 and 227.

Footnote 32:

De Lolme, p. 171.

Footnote 33:

Blackstone, Book iii. p. 378.

Footnote 34:

Blackstone, Book iii. p. 379.

Footnote 35:

See Appendix A, p. 179.

Footnote 36:

Lieber in his work on Civil Liberty remarks that lawyers have rarely been the promoters of reform in the laws: he excepts “the immortal Sir Samuel Romilly” and a few others.

Footnote 37:

It is thus worded in the Charter of Henry III.

Footnote 38:

_English Constitution_, p. 204.

Footnote 39:

Blackstone, vol. i. p. 145.

Footnote 40:

Blackstone, Book iv. chap. 20.

Footnote 41:

Professor Sheldom Amos writes on this subject:—“The proceedings contemplated by the Contagious Diseases Acts have been placed among a large and rapidly growing class of proceedings only technically criminal, and instituted for quasi-moral, sanitary, fiscal, or general police purposes. To this class belong cab-regulations, regulations in respect of the cattle-plague, regulations for preventing nuisances in the way of obstructions in the street or on the pavement, regulations in the way of railway bye-laws for securing the safety of passengers, etc. The actions endeavoured to be prevented by the class of laws here involved are not crimes in the sense of being in themselves morally reprehensible, still less abominable, but they are crimes so far as they are absolutely forbidden by the State, and the punishment and prevention of them is undertaken by the State through its own officers. This class of Acts has been very much multiplied of late years, and the proceedings with respect to them are always in the first instance before one or two magistrates. Some of the proceedings are ‘summary;’ that is, the magistrate can assign the punishment at once without appeal; others are summary only in the sense that the magistrate can, if the accused consent, assign the punishment at once, but the case can be reserved for Quarter Sessions and for jury trial in the event of the accused being able to find securities for his appearance. Thus, you see that the claim to jury trial is already practically obsolete for all offences not of such kind as theft, robbery from the person, murder, assaults, treason, forgery, and such like atrocious forms of wrong-doing. The proceedings under the Contagious Diseases Acts are placed among the first of the classes above described, that is, summary proceedings without appeal. I think with you that the extension and multiplication of such Acts and proceedings is a grave constitutional peril, as I have said elsewhere.” Let the reader compare the grave cases tried under the Contagious Diseases Acts with the quasi-moral, sanitary, and fiscal cases adverted to above, and let him mark the conclusions to which the framers of these Acts are inevitably driven through having placed these cases on this category. On the one hand, if, as some of our opponents say, these Acts are directed against vice, and are for the discouragement of the sin of prostitution, then, as we have seen, their framers are guilty of a violation of the constitution by placing cases of real criminality, involving severe penalties, on the list of summary proceedings in which there is no appeal. But if, as by far the greater number of our opponents affirm, these Acts do not treat prostitution as criminal, and these cases properly belong to the category above cited, then to what an awful moral conclusion are they driven on the other hand! To exact an exorbitant fare or to drive recklessly in the streets is a legal offence in a cabman; but to take a fare within prescribed limits and to drive in the streets is no moral offence at all. The same kind of argument holds true of all the technical offences created by the Acts of Parliament above alluded to. It is the exceeding of a certain limit (thereby causing inconvenience to society) which constitutes the legal offence under these economic regulations. But in the Contagious Diseases Acts the case is wholly different. Prostitution itself is morally criminal. The State—placing the Contagious Diseases Acts on the category of merely economical regulations—makes the crime dealt with under them to consist in acting as a prostitute _when out of health_. It says to the trader in sin, “You are guilty, unless you pursue this trade under certain conditions prescribed by Act of Parliament,” thus plainly implying, “You are not guilty so long as you ply your trade in compliance with the conditions imposed by our Act,”—hence the fearfully immoral influence of such a law upon the people at large! Whatever may be said, on the ground of expediency, against certain recent Acts of Parliament, it can never be said that their influence is _directly_ immoral, for the technical definition by the State of the crime treated in these cases does not involve the recognition of the lawful and innocent character of actions in themselves vicious, condemned by God’s Word, and ruinous to society; finally, it is clear that little or no injury to character is incurred by a false accusation under these economical Acts, whereas a false accusation under the Contagious Diseases Acts is ruinous.

Footnote 42:

The practical working of this Act turns upon the voluntary submission. The clauses which refer to this are as follows:—