Josephine Butler - Contagious Diseases Act

Contagious Diseases Act

The Contagious Diseases Acts had been introduced during the 1860s (1864, 1866, 1869) as a form of state regulation of prostitution, in order to control the spread of venereal diseases, especially in the British Army and Royal Navy. This gave magistrates the power to order a genital examination of prostitutes for symptoms of VD, and detain infected women in a lock hospital for three months to be cured. Refusal to consent to the examination led to imprisonment. An accusation of prostitution by a police officer was sufficient to order an examination; women so accused often lost their livelihoods, and notoriously, one woman committed suicide.

Butler's description of this at a public meeting - she had been known to refer to the procedure as "surgical rape" - caused Hugh Price Hughes, Superintendent of the West London Mission, who was thanking her formally on the platform, to leave the stage in tears — something most unusual in those days and commented upon widely at the time.

The various Acts only applied to certain specified areas such as ports and garrison towns — but in 1869 the "Association for the Extension of the Contagious Diseases Acts" was formed to campaign to extend their operation over the whole of the United Kingdom. This led to vehement opposition from Christians, feminists and supporters of civil liberty and to the setting up of the Ladies National Association for the Repeal of the Contagious Diseases Acts; soon afterwards the scope of the campaign was broadened to include male supporters. Josephine threw all her energies into the campaign despite vilification and occasional physical assault, and the Acts were finally repealed in 1886.

In 1885 she was drawn into another related campaign led by the campaigning editor of the Pall Mall Gazette, William Thomas Stead. He had published a series of articles entitled The Maiden Tribute of Modern Babylon exposing the extent of child prostitution in London. As a result of this campaign, the age of consent in the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Ireland was raised from 13 to 16 that same year.

Josephine was also very active in spreading the campaign internationally, and travelled to the French Third Republic and Switzerland where she met with hostility from the authorities, and strong support from feminist groups. As a result of her efforts, international organisations including the International Abolitionist Federation that she was a founder of, were set up to campaign against state regulation of prostitution and the traffic in women and children. Also, in 1897 in British Raj India, new Contagious Diseases Acts were imposed by the British government, and she led a new campaign against this.

Meanwhile George had retired from Liverpool College and been made a Canon of Winchester Cathedral, and he died 14 March 1890. Josephine continued campaigning until the early 1900s, and died in 1906.