History Prostitution by Scott

Author:Scott [Scott]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: Social Science, Anthropology, General
ISBN: 9781317845843
Google: oP-sAgAAQBAJ
Publisher: Routledge
Published: 2014-01-21T05:12:25+00:00

WHIPPING A WOMAN IN THE STREETSFROM PIERRE DUFOUR, “HISTOIRE DE LA PROSTITUTION.”

From Pierre Dufour, “Histoire de la Prostitution.”

There can be no question whatever but that the Acts led to wholesale injustice, as anyone with experience of the workings of officialdom in any part of the world can very well imagine. The police bullied the girls and women into signing the form, and, as they never explained the nature of its contents, and as, further, in those days, the bulk of women of the servant and peasant class were unable to read, in very many instances they had not the slightest conception of what they were signing. In this connection Benjamin Scott, who has written a detailed and documented history of the long struggle which culminated in the repeal of one of the most notoriously unjust and tyrannical pieces of legislation that has ever blackened the English statute book, says:

“Mr. Ryder, a Justice of the Peace for Devonport, and friendly to the system, said to the Royal Commission in 1871, ‘I believe that almost every woman who has been brought before the Justices has complained that she has signed the submission without being aware of what she was doing!’ The House Surgeon at the Royal Albert Hospital, Devonport, said, ‘The women have often told me that they did not know what they were signing. … I think the greater number of these women who signed the voluntary submission were induced to do so by pressure, and that many of them were ignorant of the character of the document which they signed. Mere children were induced to sign it.‘”1

Certainly many women, and especially young girls, who were not prostitutes at all were placed on the register, and the fear of these disguised police and the powers they wielded made life for decent women in the towns covered by the Acts a matter of some anxiety. In his official report for the year 1873, Colonel Henderson, the Chief of the Metropolitan Police, said: “The presence of the officers employed is well known to the class of girls most likely to go astray, and the dread of detection is very salutary. In proof of this, young women in the position of domestic servants and others, after nightfall, leave their male acquaintances directly the police employed under the Acts appear in sight.” A more blatant and shameful admission of official bullying and intimidation from the lips of a responsible public servant cannot well be imagined. Actually the women in the garrison towns were terrorised by the police officials and by others who impersonated them for the purpose of levying blackmail.

Naturally enough the Acts and the manner of carrying out their provisions came in for a considerable amount of criticism, and gradually there sprang up in the country a good deal of hostile feeling, especially as those responsible for and in favour of these Acts and their administration were anxious to extend their zone of application so as to embrace towns in all parts of the kingdom.

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