The Queen's Daughters in IndiaBushnell, Katharine C. (Katharine Caroline)
History
The Queen's Daughters in India
Bushnell, Katharine C. (Katharine Caroline)
Prostitution -- India; Women -- India -- Conduct of life; Women -- India -- Social conditions
With the acknowledgment from the Commander-in-Chief of the truth
of our statements, a most sweeping victory had been gained for the
cause; no under-official could very well dispute the word of the
Commander-in-Chief of the army. Lord Roberts' remark that "the ladies
themselves would have found their task considerably lightened" had
they been "commended to the care of the authorities in India," was the
source of a good deal of amusement on the part of our friends, and led
to many a sarcastic comment on the part of the public press; some of
which ran somewhat as follows: "As Lord Roberts freely admitted that
he did not know these things, certainly had the ladies appealed to him
they need not have come back so loaded with information; this would
have greatly lightened their task." "As there was a regulation which
allowed any suspicious characters to be expelled from the Cantonments
without assigning a reason therefor, the application of this regulation
would greatly have 'lightened their task,'" etc., etc.
What had been fully established by the evidence cannot be better
expressed than in the recent utterance of the British Committee for the
Abolition of State Regulation of Vice, _i.e._:--
"The fact was fully established that the so-called voluntary system had
been completely overridden by _extra-legal_ practices, of which the
provision placing, or interpreted to have placed, venereal diseases
under the same rule as 'cholera, small-pox, diphtheria, or typhoid
fever,' became the fulcrum or pivot." The thing which now remained to
be done was to embody the Resolution of the House of Commons of 1888 in
a law which must be passed by the Government of India, that could not
be longer evaded or disobeyed. After much discussion and consideration,
the Secretary of State for India directed that the Cantonment
regulations which related to the removal to hospital of those persons
suspected of contagious or infectious diseases, must be so altered
as to admit of the treatment of contagious diseases due to vice in a
manner that would not be liable to abuse of or injury to the reputation
of women.
Accordingly the Cantonments Act of 1889 in so far as it provided for
the compulsory examination of women suspected of contagious diseases
due to vice, and their forcible detention in hospital under penalty of
expulsion from the Cantonment, was altered to apply only to cholera,
smallpox, diphtheria, or typhoid fever. This was done to protect the
character and reputation of women, for it had been conceded on all
sides that hitherto the only method practicable for getting hold of
suspected women was on the information of male libertines, and that
such persons when questioned as to the source of their contagion,
generally sought to cover their own wrong-doing or protect their real
partner in sin by accusing some other woman, often a perfectly innocent
person.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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