Glimpses of Britain. Reader - стр. 14

The phenomenon gave rise to endless scandalised discussion. At first, conventional opinion held that the prostitutes were corrupting the nation’s morals, whereas the men who patronised them were merely satisfying their natural inclinations while leaving respectable women unsullied. Gradually, however, the climate changed. Under the influence of evangelical reformers, the public began to see prostitutes as victims exploited by profligate males.

Rescuing “fallen women” became a national pastime. Reformers would seek out girls in the streets, give them improving tracts and plead with them to change their ways. The Liberal leader William Gladstone frequently took prostitutes home, where his wife gave them food and shelter.

But compassion was mixed with a morbid fear of venereal disease, which was especially rife among the Armed Forces. One in three cases of sickness in the Army was due to VD.

MPs responded by passing the Contagious Diseases Acts, which allowed police to arrest suspected prostitutes within a ten-mile radius of garrison towns, hold them for several days and order them to undergo an internal examination with a speculum.

The results were deeply unpleasant. Women, not always prostitutes, could have their most intimate privacy invaded, often brutally, on the say-so of a single policeman.

For many women, it crystallised the feeling that they and their kind were being victimised when the real fault lay with amoral men looking for sex. When doctors tried to extend the legislation nationwide in 1869, there was uproar.

Under the leadership of a charismatic clergyman’s wife, Josephine Butler, women across the country banded together to campaign for the law’s repeal. It was 16 years before they succeeded, but the crusade had far-reaching effects.

Butler and her colleagues saw their job as the reform of promiscuous men as much as the rescue of fallen women. In their eyes, it was men who funded prostitutes, and men who passed the laws degrading them.

The only solution was for women to enter public life and sort things out. “Male vice” would only end if women had the vote and the chance to purify politics.

It proved a popular rallying cry. Women’s emancipation became a crusade to save humanity from men’s corrupting influence. The battle for the vote became inextricably tangled up with a campaign for sexual purity.

The year 1886 saw the final repeal of the Contagious Diseases Act. It was a watershed in the women’s movement. Feminists redoubled their demands for the vote and became ever more outspoken in their attacks on men. To some extent, this was a natural reaction to the horrors they had uncovered. In part, however, it arose from a sense of moral superiority that was rapidly tipping over into puritanical self-righteousness.