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| It is men, only men, from the first to the last that we have to do with! To please a man I did wrong at first, then I was flung about from man to man. Men police lay hands on us. By men we are examined, handled, doctored. In the hospital it is a man again who makes prayer and reads the Bible for us. We are had up before magistrates who are men, and we never get out of the hands of men till we die! | | It is men, only men, from the first to the last that we have to do with! To please a man I did wrong at first, then I was flung about from man to man. Men police lay hands on us. By men we are examined, handled, doctored. In the hospital it is a man again who makes prayer and reads the Bible for us. We are had up before magistrates who are men, and we never get out of the hands of men till we die! |
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| The level of prostitution was high in Victorian England. The acts themselves would have affected a large proportion of the female workforce in Britain. For several reasons prostitution was predominantly a working class profession. For many working class women their journey into prostitution was one of circumstance. During the nineteenth century the public began to concern itself with particular social problems, an increasing view of the "ideal woman" was beginning to emerge and the "angel of the home" was becoming a popular stereotype. This rise of the middle class domestic morality made it increasingly harder for women to obtain work in certain professions, causing an increase in such areas as needle-trades, shop girls, agricultural gangs, factory work, and domestic servants,[4] all occupations with long hours and little pay. Low earnings, it is argued, meant that women had to resort to prostitution to be able to provide for themselves and their families, particularly in households where the main breadwinner was no longer around. A study from the late Victorian period showed that more than 90 per cent of prostitutes in Millbank prison were the daughters of "unskilled and semiskilled workingmen", more than 50 per cent of whom had been servants, the rest having worked in dead-end jobs such as laundering, charring, and street selling.[5] Prostitution is also an unskilled occupation; a woman does not need to go through any sort of training or apprenticeship.
| | Regulating prostitution was the government's attempt to control the high level of venereal disease in its armed forces. By 1864, one out of three sick cases in the army were caused by venereal disease; admissions into hospitals for gonorrhoea and syphilis reached 290.7 per 1,000 of total troop strength. |
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| The nature of the occupation makes it difficult to establish the exact number of prostitutes in operation during the Victorian Period. Judicial reports of the years 1857 to 1869 show that prostitutes were more common in commercial ports and pleasure resorts and less so in hardware towns, cotton and linen manufacturing centres and woollen and worsted centres.[6] The Westminster Review placed the figure between 50,000 and 368,000.[7] This would make prostitution the fourth-largest female occupation. However, the police estimates of known prostitutes portray an entirely different estimate:
| | In 1866, the Association for the Extension of the Contagious Diseases Acts was established. It argued for the extension into the whole country. |
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| Police estimates of known prostitutes[7]
| | There was much action taken towards the repeal of the Contagious Diseases Acts. In 1869, the National Association for the Repeal of the Contagious Diseases Acts was established; initially restricting women from its meetings, causing the Ladies National Association for the Repeal of the Contagious Diseases Acts to be quickly established by Josephine Butler. |
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| Date London England and Wales
| | hese repeal organizations attracted the vigorous support of not only moralists and feminists but also those concerned with civil liberties, especially since the Acts were perceived as having violated basic human rights. |
| 1839 6,371 –
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| 1841 9,404 –
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| 1856 8,600 –
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| 1858 7,194 27,113
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| 1859 6,649 28,743
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| 1861 7,124 29,572
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| 1862 5,795 28,449
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| 1863 5,581 27,411
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| 1864 5,689 26,802
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| 1865 5,911 26,213
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| 1866 5,544 24,717
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| 1867 5,628 24,999
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| 1888 5,678 24,311
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| However, this table relates only prostitutes known to the police. The unreliability of statistics during the nineteenth century prevents one from knowing if prostitution was increasing or decreasing during this period, but it is clear that Victorians during the 1840s and 1850s thought that prostitution and venereal disease were increasing .[8]
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| Regulating prostitution was the government's attempt to control the high level of venereal disease in its armed forces. By 1864, one out of three sick cases in the army were caused by venereal disease; admissions into hospitals for gonorrhoea and syphilis reached 290.7 per 1,000 of total troop strength.[9]
| | Both groups actively campaigned against the acts and between 1870 and 1885, 17,365 petitions against the acts bearing 2,606,429 signatures were presented to the House of Commons, and during the same period, more than 900 meetings were held. The repealists struck a chord with the public consensus on the issues surrounding prostitution and they highlighted the issue of double standards. |
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| Prostitutes found work within the armed forces, mainly due to servicemen's forced celibacy and the conditions of the barracks the men were forced to endure.[10] The barracks were overcrowded and had a lack of ventilation and defective sanitation. Very few servicemen were permitted to marry, and even those were not given an allowance to support their wives, which often forced them to become prostitutes as well.[11]
| | ==== Conditions in Lock hospitals ==== |
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| Extension and repeal
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| In 1866, the Association for the Extension of the Contagious Diseases Acts was established and was just as prominent in the publishing of pamphlets and articles as the Ladies National Association for the Repeal of the Contagious Diseases Acts was. The Association for the Extension of the Contagious Diseases Acts strongly campaigned for the extension of the Contagious Diseases Acts to be extended outside of the naval and army barracks and be made effective to the whole of the country, as they believed this was the best way of regulating prostitution.
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| There was much action taken towards the repeal of the Contagious Diseases Acts. In 1869, the National Association for the Repeal of the Contagious Diseases Acts was established; initially restricting women from its meetings, causing the Ladies National Association for the Repeal of the Contagious Diseases Acts to be quickly established by Josephine Butler. These repeal organizations attracted the vigorous support of not only moralists and feminists but also those concerned with civil liberties, especially since the Acts were perceived as having violated basic human rights.
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| Both groups actively campaigned against the acts and between 1870 and 1885, 17,365 petitions against the acts bearing 2,606,429 signatures were presented to the House of Commons, and during the same period, more than 900 meetings were held.[7] The repealists struck a chord with the public consensus on the issues surrounding prostitution and they highlighted the issue of double standards. It was the men and women of the National Association and the Ladies National Association who won the battle over the Contagious Diseases Acts, and, in 1886, the Acts were repealed.
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| Conditions in Lock hospitals | |
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| If a woman was declared diseased she would be confined in what were known as Lock hospitals. The Lock hospitals or Lock wards were designed specifically to treat those infected with a venereal disease. Conditions in Lock Hospitals were inadequate. An 1882 survey estimated that there were only 402 beds for female patients in all the voluntary lock hospitals in Great Britain, and out of this number only 232 were "funded for use".[12] Female venereal patients generally had to resort to workhouse infirmaries. | | If a woman was declared diseased she would be confined in what were known as Lock hospitals. The Lock hospitals or Lock wards were designed specifically to treat those infected with a venereal disease. Conditions in Lock Hospitals were inadequate. An 1882 survey estimated that there were only 402 beds for female patients in all the voluntary lock hospitals in Great Britain, and out of this number only 232 were "funded for use".[12] Female venereal patients generally had to resort to workhouse infirmaries. |