Part 6

Over and over again has this criminal Law, when caught sneaking about, denied his real name. Like a fatal birthmark, which no power can eradicate, so this abomination has its birthmark, which, when seen, fixes the identity beyond all question. That birthmark is _the compulsory examination of women_. This cannot be made to serve the desired purpose without all the essential features of the C. D. Acts. It makes not the slightest difference whether the law is called the Health Act, as in Australia, Getz's _Projet de Loi_, as in Norway, the Women's and Girls' Protection Ordinance, as at Singapore, the Cantonment Acts or the Cantonments Act, or what not--the test of the law, as to its identity with the old infamous C. D. Acts, is, whether women are obliged to submit to compulsory examination. "In fact, the compulsory examination of women _is_ the C. D. Acts." Let this one point be put into law, and all the rest goes without saying. The battle has always raged around this one central point.

To prove that the compulsory examination of women necessitates the regulations that always attend it, let us suppose that in a community this one point is provided for by law, and that the officers of the law are left to enforce the measure, by whatever regulations are necessary:--

The law demands merely that impure women must be examined regularly for the protection of the public health.

But the police officer sees at once that to secure this point a list must be kept of the women, when examined, that notice of requirement can be sent to those not coming voluntarily. Thus _registration_ of prostitutes comes to pass.

But after examination, those found diseased must be placed by themselves for treatment. Thus a hospital for prostitutes is established.

Then provision must be made to compel those who are unwilling to attend the examinations to do so, for it has been the invariable experience that few women will go regularly for examination unless compelled to do so, and also there must be means of enforcing them to remain in hospital. Thus the hospital becomes a _Lock Hospital_, and _fines and imprisonments_ are imposed on delinquents.

But compulsion cannot be secured without the aid of the police and the magistrate, and it is most difficult to follow up women, prove their identity, hale them to examination and to Lock Hospital without being able to keep them located in one tolerated quarter or house where they may be found--hence _segregation_ is introduced; and this is also done to keep women with whom association is supposed to be safe--because under constant medical and police surveillance--separate from those with whom it is supposed to be a risk to associate.

Now we discover that the compulsory periodical examination of women of impure life, when carried out in actual operation, creates a necessity for all the essential features of every C. D. Act that has ever been known, namely: _Compulsory examination_; _Registration_; _Lock Hospitals_; _Fines and Imprisonments_; _Police Surveillance_; _Segregation_.

Yet another thing is needful for the operation of this law requiring compulsory periodical examination, namely, measures for extending the operation of the law, so that, as new women are likely to become a source of contamination, they also may be brought under its operation, and for the practical and easy operation of the measure, compelled to take up their residence in segregated quarters. _This is the special field of activity in the operation of the law_, and is a deadly menace to the most ordinary liberties of women. People will loudly advocate that "something must be done" to confine the houses of ill-fame to certain quarters of a city, without the slightest care as to how it is done, so long as they need not become intimately acquainted with a disagreeable subject; they will advocate measures of the most deadly consequences to others more defenceless than themselves, and to the ultimate moral tone of the very society in which they move, and yet heartlessly refuse to consider the responsibility that rests upon them for their conduct. "Something must be done," they say, and the police force must attend to the details; they are too loathsome even to be considered, yet they refuse to understand that these very loathsome details which they require the police to work out _must utterly ruin the character of the police_ into whose hands they have betrayed all the decent rights of womanhood.

What does it mean to women for men to assume the right to arrest all suspicious characters and oblige them to live in a certain house or street, and to appear at the examinations at the Lock Hospitals? Let the banker sitting in his bank, or the merchant in his shop, consider what it would mean for him to be accosted in his own place of business, taken off immediately to the Lock Hospital, examined, and if the doctor so ordered, sent immediately into exile in a hospital for libertines, with no chance to set his house in order or to defend his character from the charge of being a libertine! And even if the charge were true would he not think the punishment too severe? And then, suppose it were the case that, at the end of the imprisonment in the hospital, he were required to reside for the rest of his days in a certain street? This is _exactly_ what is done with women when once the principle is set up that compulsory periodical examinations must take place. But the reply is, No women of property or consequence would ever be so treated. Very true; yet are not these often utterly profligate? Certainly. So this is a law which will be operated only in the case of the lowly. Yes, it is a piece of legislation on the part of the mighty to degrade and rob the daughters of the poor of their most ordinary rights, and it deserves the _most extreme execration_ that human language is capable of, on that very account. The day has passed by when it is safe to try to enunciate such sentiments among a free people. "What are the women making all this row about?" said one of the daily journals of London, during our India work; "no _high-born_ ladies will ever be put to inconvenience by such a law." Ah! that was one of the principal reasons why such a row was made.

What does it mean to arrest a suspected case and send her to the segregated quarter for residence, where any man can assume the right to insult her and demand entrance at her door at any hour? It means that the law takes hold of a woman who may have occasionally done wrong and forces her to do wrong habitually; for after segregation no one will give her honest work. That law is radically wicked which confirms a human being into a habitual breaker of one of God's ten commandments.

And supposing the girl has not actually done wrong, but has conducted herself imprudently, and brought just suspicion on herself? To put her under the ban of such a law means to create a prostitute by law. That law is radically wrong which can be operated with such deadly effect on society as to actually create evil. Yet everywhere that the C. D. Acts have been operated such cases have occurred. The mayor of a city in South Africa told us that when a proposition for the introduction of these regulations was being entertained by the City Council of that place, and every effort was made to secure his approval, he was one day accosted by an alderman on the street, who plucked him by the sleeve, and pointing out a perfectly respectable-looking woman who was passing by, said, "Now, if we could get our law we could get that woman." He started back in horror, thinking to himself, "And if he could get his clutches on that woman by such a law, why not on any woman?"

Policemen are not supposed to be infallibly virtuous; and supposing they could be bribed or blackmailed? A policeman in Queensland confessed that he had taken a bribe to deliver a pretty girl over to the power of a libertine by having her registered as a common prostitute, and that he carried out the dastardly crime. A Christian woman in Cape Colony heard of the arrest as a common prostitute of a virtuous girl of her acquaintance, and went to the court to secure her release. There was a keeper of a house of ill-fame whom she recognised, who came to make accusation against the girl. The Christian worker appealed to a policeman, whom she knew as a church-member and a man of good repute, to stand with her for the girl's defence; but the evil woman took him to one side and she distinctly overheard her threaten to blast his reputation if he interfered. The magistrate took the word of this evil woman, which was corroborated by the falsehoods of the policeman, and in spite of her protestations, the girl was registered.

Another case was told us by a Wesleyan minister's wife; it occurred in England, before the repeal of the Acts. Her most intimate early friend, a lovely young Christian girl, had a brother who quarrelled with a policeman who threatened revenge. He watched his opportunity, arrested the sister, and gave his oath that she was a common prostitute; she was forced through the examination and registered, and when at last found by her brother, was a raving maniac as a result of the day's awful experience, and died shortly afterward in a madhouse. We might multiply the instances we have ourselves personally heard on good authority, and relate some of the many cases known to the history of the movement for repeal, but there is no space for further enlargement.

Again we say there is something radically wrong with this law, when women can be so fearfully wronged in its operation, should the police officers and magistrates be either wicked or weak. Practically such a law delivers the reputation of women wholly over to the power of the police. But, some one says, let no case be settled on suspicion; let proof be brought. The question arises, How secure the proof? In India it was considered sufficient by Lord Roberts to teach the soldiers that it was "a point of honour" to save other soldiers from disease by informing against women; but it has frequently been observed that the soldier will usually point out another woman rather than the one he has actually associated with, and women are haled to the examinations who may never have seen the informant before. It detracts nothing from the peril of girls and women when the uncorroborated testimony of a self-confessed libertine can be used against them, and the frequency with which evil men will combine to utterly break down the testimony of a young woman in case of seduction, and the unblushing testimony of these men to their own shameful conduct, which is often treated as a joke by the magistrate, shows that the reputation of a woman is no safer in the hands of a combination of libertines. Nothing is much more difficult than to actually _prove_ a woman a prostitute, and short of absolute proof, the thought of registration, segregation, imprisonment in a Lock Hospital, etc., is intolerable.

Again, a single act of fornication does not prove prostitution, and how many acts shall constitute proof? Practically, these are things that the law never has considered at all; but wherever the compulsory examination has been established, secret information from libertines is received and acted upon with little question as to its veracity, and the whole system has immediately degenerated into a costly effort on the part of the State, paid for by the taxes of respectable people, to pander to the wishes of libertines, and keep the houses of ill-fame filled with attractive and healthy inmates, and thus the State becomes itself the great purveyor of vice. We have said before repeatedly, and say again, that there is no real evidence that prostitution has been made safer by the periodical examination of women, because the false security in vice greatly increases the amount of vice, which is itself the cause of the diseases in question. Not only does correct reason testify to this, but also statistics uphold this statement.

We have now shown that the compulsory examination of women brings into existence, of necessity, every feature of what is commonly called the C. D. Acts; and that, as that compulsory examination is of itself a sin, so every feature of the enactments necessary to carry out that law is at each step liable to fearful abuse, and the system as a whole is ruinous to the morals of any community.

FOOTNOTES:

[6] A term applied to British residents in India.

[7] When Lieut-General Lord Sandhurst was questioned before the Royal Commission of 1871 as to the advisability of soldiers being periodically examined by male physicians, he replied that he preferred to treat his soldiers "as reasonable men, not as brutes." Let women show at least equal consideration for women.

[8] Perhaps they had in mind such a case as the woman we interviewed at Cantonment Bareilly. Her father was Scotch, she said--her mother, Portuguese; she had been trained by Dr. C----. She went every day to the brothels and examined the women. _She owned the brothels_, and resided with an official to whom she was not married. (See page 133, Departmental Committee Report, 1893.)

V.

Pleading for the Oppressed.

MANY times in the course of our conversations with the little women of India we had promised before leaving them to do what we could to secure relief and help for them. In the simplicity of their faith and lack of practical knowledge, several of them had ventured to intimate that we might go to England and see the Queen, and tell her their troubles. "For," they said, "the Queen does not countenance it; for she has daughters of her own, and she cares for her daughters in India." "The Queen is a woman, and we also are women, and our shame is the Queen's shame; and for us to be exposed is as though the Queen were exposed; it is a shame for women to be so treated when a woman is Queen."

At Peshawar, at Lucknow, and at Meerut, the girls had held us at parting until they had solemnly lifted their eyes to heaven and asked God's blessing on us, and asked Him to help us to help them to get deliverance from their oppression. God heard the prayer, although their knowledge of Him was probably very obscure. The sacred promises we gave them and gave Him to help them, can never be set aside without bringing guilt on our own souls. They depend upon us to voice their sorrows and plead their cause, by solemn compact with them and God. May He keep us faithful to the trust!

We carefully prepared the report of our investigations and forwarded this to Miss Forsaith, of London, Secretary of the British Committee of the Federation for the Abolition of State Regulation of Vice. Then as the summer was too far advanced to hold any meetings in India, we proceeded to Australia, New Zealand, and Tasmania, in the interests of our regular work. But in the early part of the year 1893 we were summoned to England to give evidence in person concerning the condition of things in the Cantonments of India, which went to prove that, although the C. D. Acts had been ordered to be repealed, the same state of things was being maintained, under the Cantonments Act of 1889, and that the resolution of the House of Commons of 1888 had been disregarded.

A Departmental Committee was appointed by the Government to receive our evidence. This Committee was composed of Mr. George W. E. Russell, M.P., Under-Secretary of State for India (Chairman); The late Right Hon. Sir James Stansfeld, M.P.; General Sir Donald M. Stewart, Bart., G.C.B., Commander of the Forces in India, before Lord Roberts; Sir James Peile, K.C.S.I.; Mr. H. J. Wilson, M.P., with Major-General O. R. Newmarch, C.S.I., as Secretary. The first sitting of the Committee, at the India Office, London, was April 11, 1893. Before this Departmental Committee we appeared day after day until the full report of our statements had been made. In the course of the giving of this evidence, we described with accuracy the records which we had seen in the various Lock Hospitals of the ten Cantonments visited when in India, and a telegram was sent by the chairman of the Committee, Mr. George Russell, giving our description and requesting that these records be impounded by the India Government and forwarded to London for reference. Then our full statement was despatched to India for reply.

Meanwhile, Lord Roberts, who had returned to England, had been interviewed by a reporter of _The Christian Commonwealth_, who placed before him some of our statements regarding the Cantonments of India. Lord Roberts pronounced them "simply untrue," and declared that he had recently made a tour of investigation through the Cantonments, and knew that our statements were false. His open charges of falsehood against us were heralded throughout the Empire, and freely discussed by the Press from the time they were made in April to the time of our second appearance before the Committee in August.

Upon the receipt of our evidence in India there was a Special Commission appointed by the Indian Government, to collect evidence in refutation of our charges, two members of it being instructed to proceed to England therewith, and to give personal testimony in behalf of the Indian Government.

The Special Commission did not come before the Committee until August, and we spent much of the interim in addressing public meetings throughout Great Britain, and arousing interest in the subject. Many large and important meetings were also addressed by such well-known leaders as Mrs. Josephine Butler, the late Sir James Stansfeld, M.P., Mr. Henry J. Wilson, M.P., and Mrs. H. J. Wilson, Mr. James Stuart, M.P., and many other Members of Parliament. At the annual conferences and assemblies of the various denominations, the subject was taken up; many ladies of the Women's Liberal Federation and of the British Women's Temperance Association, and of other bodies, presented the matter in their meetings, and ministers of all denominations lent their help. At all these meetings resolutions were passed condemning legalized vice, and from all of them memorials were sent to the Government, protesting against the condition of things prevalent in the Cantonments of India. It was truly touching to witness the intense interest manifested in the subject by the common people, the class from whom the soldiers are so largely drawn, and for whose sake military officials claimed that it was necessary to establish the chakla system. The mothers and fathers of British lads had their own opinion as to what was necessary for their boys.

"I'll buy him off! I'll buy him off!" exclaimed one woman to us, with streaming eyes, at the close of one of our meetings. "My boy enlisted to go to India without my consent and then repented, and I thought it would teach him a lesson to compel him to abide by his word. He has already got as far as Gibraltar, I think; but I'll send the money and buy him off. I cannot consent to let him go out under officers who will teach him that vice is necessary." Another mother expressed great indignation at our statements regarding the temptations put in the way of young soldiers by their superiors, and declared she would write to her boy and obtain his contradiction of them. The reply came back, and the almost broken-hearted mother caused it to be conveyed to us, together with an exhortation that we should "cry aloud and spare not." It was to the following effect:

"Yes, mother, all those ladies say is true, and much more that they do not know, and you would hardly believe. I have been so harassed and persecuted that sometimes I have gone to the chakla, pretending to sin, but God knows I have not; it was the only way to escape their merciless persecution."

We have been informed many times that there were military officers who sneered at virtuous soldiers as lacking proper fighting qualities, and who deliberately fostered in their soldiers animal propensities, for the sake of the ferocity of disposition that attends licentiousness.

The names of the special Commissioners were: Mr. Denzil Ibbetson and Surgeon-Colonel J. Cleghorn, M.D., Inspector-General of Civil Hospitals throughout the Punjab. In addition to these witnesses from India and ourselves, Lord Roberts, Quartermaster-General Chapman, and Mr. Hyslop Bell, of Darlington, were called before the Departmental Committee to give evidence.

The statements of Lord Roberts and of General Chapman, who were called before the Departmental Committee in August, proved to be matters of intense interest, especially as regarded their disagreement as to Lord Roberts' knowledge of the Infamous Memorandum. Lord Roberts testified that, when the Resolution of 1888 was carried in the House of Commons not permitting the compulsory examination of women or the licensing of prostitution, he understood those measures to mean _abolition_, not modification, of measures for the regulation of prostitution, and proceeded accordingly. The Resolution meant the abolishing of the periodical examination, of licensing, of compulsion, of regulation, etc. He declared that he knew nothing of the Infamous Memorandum which had been issued in his name, and that he "entirely disapproved" of some of the contents of that circular, saying, "I certainly would not have approved of that part of the Circular which referred to providing them with pretty young women." Lord Roberts was confronted with a mass of evidence which he little expected. After his own sweeping contradictions of our statements, he was shown the report from the Cantonment of Meean Meer which the Special Commission had brought from India, and in which nearly every statement we had made was "admitted." Other _prima facie_ evidence of the truth of our statements convinced him that our testimony was not to be broken down. As he left the Committee it was with the conviction that General Chapman was next to be called, and would give most disagreeable evidence against him as regarded the Infamous Memorandum and its authorship. Lord Roberts proceeded immediately to Scotland, and from thence wrote the following letter of apology:--

DUNBAR, Scotland, 11 August, 1893.

Having read the reports of Mr. Ibbetson's Committee, in regard to the working of the Rules dealing with the abolition of Lock Hospitals, etc., in Cantonments in India, and also the reports of the officers commanding the seven stations which the Committee did not visit, I frankly admit that the statements of the two American missionary ladies, who made a tour through Upper India in the cold weather of 1891-92, for the purpose of inquiring into the matter, are in the main correct.

I hoped and believed that the orders issued to give effect to the Resolution of the House of Commons had been everywhere obeyed. In some stations the Rules have been strictly enforced, but in others it now turns out this has not been completely the case.

I deeply regret this, and I feel that an apology is due from me to the ladies concerned. This apology I offer unreservedly.

In doing so, I would remark that I think it would have been better if the missionary ladies had been commended to the care of the authorities in India. We could have assisted them to carry out the work on which they were engaged; omissions and shortcomings would have been remedied at the time; a great deal of unpleasantness would have been avoided; the ladies themselves would have found their task considerably lightened; and there would have been less chance of their drawing wrong deductions from some of the circumstances which came under their notice, as in sundry instances they would seem from Mr. Ibbetson's Committee Report to have done. This was owing, no doubt, to a want of knowledge of the language, and of the habits and customs of the people of India.

ROBERTS.