Prostitution : considered in its moral, social, and sanitary aspects, in London and other large cities and garrison towns : with proposals for the control and prevention of its attendant evils / by William Acton.

  • Acton, William, 1813-1875.
Date:
1870
Catalogue details

Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: Prostitution : considered in its moral, social, and sanitary aspects, in London and other large cities and garrison towns : with proposals for the control and prevention of its attendant evils / by William Acton. Source: Wellcome Collection.

Provider: This material has been provided by King’s College London. The original may be consulted at King’s College London.

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    much so, that we read in the report of the above-mentioned Committee of the House of Commons :— “ 4. Although the Act has only been in operation two years and a half, and at some stations only seven months, strong testimony is borne to the benefits, both in a moral and sanitary point of view, which have already resulted from it. “ 5. Prostitution appears to have diminished, its worst features to have been softened, and its physical evils abated.”—P. iii. This Act, however, is something more than a means of imparting health both physical and moral, it forms the commencement of a new legislative era, being a departure from that neutral posi- tion previously held by English law with respect to venereal diseases, and admits that there is nothing in the nature of pros- titution to exclude it from legislative action; but that, on the contrary, it may be necessaiy to recognise its existence, and to provide for its regulation, and for the repression, so far as pos- sible, of its attendant evils; it is, in fact, the adoption—so far as it goes—of the principle for which I have always contended, that prostitution ought to be an object of legislation. I believe I may claim, without vanity, to have in some measure paved the way for, and guided the progress of this change, and I hail with satisfaction the advent of the time which has at length arrived when we may contemplate work accomplished, and, guided by the experience gained from results attained, consider what more remains to be achieved. Although the benefits that have resulted from the recent legislation — as regards this special class of disease — are un- doubted, there is great unwillingness in certain quarters to extend them from a class to the nation, and a l’adical dis- tinction is sought to be drawn between the case of the army and navy and that of the civil population. Strange as it may appear, the same arguments that were ui'ged against inter- ference by the legislature with venereal maladies previously to the passing of the Contagious Diseases Bill—of whose futility that measure is the strongest possible acknowledgment are still put forward with as much* confidence as though they had never received such authoritative refutation, and must still be met and answered, so far as the civil population is concerned. Opposition to legislative interference is still based mainly on