Wrong and Right Methods of Dealing with Social Evil/Appendix
APPENDIX I.
The preceding pages have been devoted solely to the consideration of civil laws and regulations. The Contagious Diseases Acts are military acts, designed exclusively for the physical benefit of soldiers and sailors. A full discussion of the conditions of a celibate army, or of the duty of the military authorities toward the women whom they consider it necessary to regulate for its service, would be out of place in the present work. Military law, however, must be sternly rejected outside the camp. Great civil populations such as Plymouth, Southampton, Portsmouth, must be freed from military subjection. Any attempt to impose military regulations upon a civil population will be resisted to the death by any country which values its civil freedom.
All that has been here shown, therefore, is the proof that the principle upon which the timid English acts are based, is the identical principle which, boldly and logically carried out, produces the Brussels system. The only check which prevents the development of the English acts into the Brussels system (a development now loudly called for by a portion of the public press), is the determined opposition of the just, or religious men and women of the nation. Let that opposition cease, and London will become a Brussels or Hong-Kong.
The following analysis will show the error of supposing that there is any moral intention in the English acts.
PRINCIPAL ACT, 1866.
Heading.—An Act for the better Prevention of Contagious Diseases at certain naval and military stations.
There are forty-two clauses.
The first fourteen relate to the establishment of hospitals for diseased prostitutes, with the way in which they shall be instituted, and paid for by the Parliamentary grants to the military and naval services.
The next eighteen clauses refer to the compulsory and periodical examination of any woman, sick or well (within a radius of fifteen miles), whom the police believe to be a prostitute. These eighteen clauses refer to the details by which each woman is required to subject herself to examination for one year; the time and place for the examinations; the surgeons to carry them on; the hospital where any one found to be sick shall be detained in legal custody; the punishment and imprisonment of every woman, well or ill, who refuses to be examined.
The next three clauses refer to the various formalities by which a woman may endeavor to prove that she is not a prostitute and be relieved from inspection.
The next six clauses announce penalties for harboring a diseased woman, and the method of serving notices.
The last clause, No. 42, virtually prevents any woman from obtaining redress, if she has been unjustly accused or dealt with by persons under the Acts. Any woman must commence an action within three months, giving one month's notice to defendant (no matter whether she be detained in hospital or prison). She must place sufficient money to defray defendant's costs in court beforehand, and the defendant may always plead in defence, that he intended to execute the provisions of the Act.
The sole object of the Act, in all its provisions for prostitutes, is to keep them healthy. They are in no way interfered with if they show that they are physically healthy, as is the case with the large majority. The only reference to moral or religious instruction is in clause 12, where the chaplain appointed to all State institutions is as usual provided.
It is an axiom in legislation, that a law is false in principle which is open to great abuses, unless excessive care is exercised in its application.
APPENDIX II
Correspondence relating to the working of the Contagious Diseases Ordinances of the Colony of Hong-Kong.
Price 9d. August, 1881.
The correspondence relating to the abuses committed under the Contagious Diseases Acts in Hong-Kong, illustrates as forcibly the demoralization produced on high officials, as on subordinates, when the State undertakes to organize prostitution.
Sir J. Pope Hennessy, Governor of Hong-Kong, shocked at the death of two women, produced by cruelty and immorality exercised under the ordinances, which were forced on the Chinese by Sir Richard MacDonnell in 1868, writes to Earl Carnarvon November, 1877, and the investigations and correspondence continue under Sir Michael Hicks Beach and Lord Kimberley.
It is painful to observe in this correspondence, that blame, not praise, is the tone assumed in the dispatches forwarded by English statesmen, to the humane Governor who is endeavoring to protect poor heathen women subjected to British rule. There is blame for exposing the wrong-doing of the Hong-Kong agents; blame for the publication of intolerable evils; blame for referring to the sale of children; and there is refusal to believe the evidence of residents or natives, if it tells against the Government regulations.
As the Hong-Kong Acts were established for the physical benefit of "Her Majesty's naval and military forces stationed at, or visiting Hong-Kong," Sir Michael Hicks Beach (Colonial), on learning the infamies perpetrated under these Acts, writes, in 1879, to the Lords Commissioners of the Admiralty for advice. He tells them of such evils as employing paid informers to discover prostitutes; seizing marked money in unlicensed houses; illegal practice of arresting, instead of issuing summonses to, inmates of bad houses; the medical examination of women not prostitutes, etc. To this appeal the Lords of the Admiralty reply that "they decline to criticise the Hong-Kong ordinances, but trust the Act will be continued in that Colony, where it has proved of much benefit to Her Majesty's Navy."
The Admiralty being again urged to act, throw the whole matter into the hands of an official working the Acts.
The correspondence continues during 1881. Through the whole of it, not a word is said about restraining men, not a hint of appeal to the manliness of British seamen to show pity, or an English sense of justice as from a superior race, to these poor heathen women. No suggestion of a law to prevent young girls being sold into brothel slavery. No warning that fines must not be imposed upon women whose only way of paying them is to prostitute themselves or sell their children.
Lord Kimberley, in his final instructions for the guidance of the Government of Hong-Kong, sanctions the following principles:
1. The legalization of houses of ill-fame in consideration of fees paid to the Government, naively remarking: "If the word license is thought objectionable, it can be called a certificate of registration" (p. 59). 2. The systematic medical examination of women. 3. A great extension of the Act to poor women, boatwomen, and washerwomen, to be considered as prostitutes (p. 56). In order to force this corrupt system upon a weak, ignorant race, unable to protect themselves against the crushing domination of a stronger race, the employment of paid informers going about in plain clothes is justified; and marked money may be paid to a woman for prostituting herself, in order that it may be used in evidence against her (p. 57).
The words of Lord Kimberley, a statesman and Cabinet Minister of a Liberal Government, are as follows: "The detection of unlicensed houses was a duty cast upon the Registrar-General and the officers of the Department, and the obloquy cast on them for their efforts appears to me not to be entirely merited. The use of plain clothes seems proper and natural; the use of marked money is not necessarily reprehensible. The acceptance of money in consideration of a request for sexual intercourse is evidence of the character of the recipient; and if the detective or informer, after giving the money, leaves the house, its discovery in the possession of the alleged recipient might be given in proof of the charge." (These are the words of an English Cabinet Minister !) Finally: "Men carefully selected for the work should receive sufficient emolument from the funds raised under the ordinance to ensure trustworthy and competent men, who must be looked for in this country if there is any difficulty in finding them in the Colony."
That is, that a system which is proved by long experience in Hong-Kong, and in every country that has adopted it, to demoralize the agents who enforce it, can only be carried out safely by agents who are not demoralized!