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
At about the time of the report of the Departmental Committee, there
was formed in England an association with the object of securing the
re-establishment of legalized vice in India. The names of high British
military officials make up its membership list, in large part. The
association printed a pamphlet, based upon the Departmental Committee's
Report in favour of a return to the old conditions, a Report that was
calculated to frighten the public, if possible, into acceding to their
demands, on the supposition that a fearful scourge was upon them, and
that no time was to be lost in getting it under check. Then Lord George
Hamilton, on March 26, 1897, sent a dispatch to the Government of
India, calling attention to the Report of the Departmental Committee,
and ordering stricter measures for the suppression of diseases due
to vice, but adding: "There must be no provision of women, ... no
registration, ... no compulsory examination of women," etc., but urging
that it was "imperatively necessary that this disease should not be
exempted from the measures adopted to prevent the spread of other
contagious diseases." "If there be any compulsion, it is precisely of
the same kind as that which has been accepted as necessary and enforced
without any objection in the case of diphtheria or typhoid fever."
Now the first quotation given effectually contradicts the second, at
the point of the compulsory examination of women; and such instructions
were, in fact, a virtual order to repeal the Amendment Act of 1895,
very covertly expressed, and so it was recognised immediately by the
British Committee for the Abolition of State Regulated Vice, which
promptly issued a memorial on the subject addressed to Lord George
Hamilton, Secretary of State for India.[9]
On April 21, 1897, there appeared in the London _Times_ part of a
letter from Lady Henry Somerset to Lord George Hamilton, in which she
"expresses gratification at finding incorporated in a document of
such importance a statement of inspiring and controlling principles."
She notes with satisfaction the "inclusion of this disease among
other contagious diseases," as the "only rational and scientific
principle on which its eradication can be attempted." "It is not
however, proposed to carry out this principle to its full logical
result; and herein lies the point on which she finds herself at issue
with Lord George Hamilton." At the end of the letter is affixed the
system of legislation best suited to the end, in the opinion of Lady
Henry Somerset, and it will be seen at a glance that her propositions
would indeed carry out the principle to its full, logical end. A
special importance attaches itself to these propositions, because
of the strategic position held by Lady Henry Somerset as president
of the British Women's Temperance Association of England, and first
vice-president of the World's W.C.T.U., and her action put her in
absolute opposition to the purity department of both those societies.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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