A Woman’s Question.

White Ribbon, Volume 3, Issue 29, 1 November 1897, Page 1

A Woman’s Question.

At the annual meeting of the Gisborne Women’s Political Association, on Oct. 13th, the President, Mrs Seivwnght (who is also Vice-President of the Women’s National Council), gave the following address:— 44 Ladies and Gentlemen, —I earnestly trust this is the last time 1 shall have to bring liefore the Association the unsavoury subject which has dragged the purest men and women of England through its odious details, ard lung over them for more than a nuarter of a century—in Sir James Stan fields words— 4 a weight as much as any human being could bear.’ 1 have read that Mrs Jchn Stuart Mill’s young daughter used sometimes to exc.aim, when anything distressing was mentioned, 4 Oh ! mother, it is too dreadful to know of!’ 4 My child,’ she would calmly reply, 4 what others ha\e to bear you can at least endure to know of!’ It seems to me, further, that when we can endure to know, the pain such knowledge brings will usua'ly dri» e us to do what in us lies to resist the evil. The great trouble is (hat so few people know —so few people war.t to know - the seamy side of life. And this is emphatically the case v/ith the whole miserable story of the passing and repeal in England of a measure known as the C.D. Act I have no hesitation iq saying that did men and women in the least understand what this really

is, not a woman, no, nor righteous manwould be found in this land whose soul would not rise in open revolt at the awful cruelty and degradation involved. These laws, 4 which were deemed to be unjust in their dealings towards women indistinction from men, a direct incentive to profligacy, and A HVt.IFNIC FAILURE, were repealed at home :r. 1884. It was found, however that in India matters were going on as usual, and the friends of purity secured the passing ol a re:olution ir the House of Commons in 1888, and again in 1890, emphasising its former action. All this notwithstanding, it became knowm that under an»4Ur name the C.D. Acts were being enforced there, and two well-known American missionaries were induced to go to India, personally to investigate, and report. On their return to London in June, 1593, these ladies reported that the worst fears of the Al»olitionists had l*en realised. They had visited ten cantonments, every one of which contained a Lock Hospital, and. they found them by simply directing their cabman to drive them to the Lock Hospital, and he knew exactly which they wanted. In five of these cantonments the women were all gathered uoder one roof, only a few living outside. In others they were scattered in different parts of the cantonment, or again all gathered into oLe bazaar —long street or lane, but under different roofs. Each house was numbered with huge

n urn tiers 15 inches in diameter. I t>csi num<xnc<rri>f<»;d.J to tkeir rtf tarred numbers on the Lock Hospital list. The 4 Chaklas,* as they are called, are closelv guarded. The lady visitors asked some of the women 4 Why do you submit to these regulations that yv, j hate so much ?’ They said, 4 W hat can we do ? Where can we go ? We t innot cut our throats. •oh! that wi could Dll’ Having broken their caste by the life they had led, their friends would not receive them, and no one would give them work. I am inform«d on good authority that these women are for the most part recruited from the illegitimate daughters of our British officers, and that they have 1 horror of the life; hundreds of them committing suicide to be rid of it. From a London paper of June 22, I clipped the following:4 l’undita Ramabai, whose training, home for Indian girl widows is well known, writes a sad accot nt of the temptations of want and loneliness by which the poor Indian gul children, dt prived by the famine of their natural protectors, or driven from home by want of food, are being decoyed. Crowds of these unhappy orphans, or devrt'd children, are wandering about naif* stared. They go to the relief camps for the mea *s to sustain life, and on the road she says, wicked men and women entice them by offering sweetmeats and other kinds of food, clothing, and promises to take them to nice

places and make them happy. So hundreds of girls, young widows, and deserted wives, are waylaid as they go to the relief camps and poor-houses in search of food and work, and are taken away before they can place themselves in the custody of the Government. A wholesale trade is thus being carried on in girls. Ramabai says that after seeing these girls in the famine districts — “ some fallen into the hands of wicked people; some ruined for life and turned out by their cruel masters to die a miserable death in a hopeless, helpless, ma..’:er; some in hospitals, only to be taken back to the pits of sin, there to await a cruel death,’ —hell has become a horrible reality to her.’ When Mrs Andrew and Dr. Kate Bushnell were back in London addressing crowded meetings and generally arousing public indignation,

LORD ROBERTS, late Commander-in-Chief of the Indian Army, returned, and at first gave emphatic and indignant denial to their statements. The registration of the women he declared to be ‘ purely imaginary.’ He said the Lock Hospitals were non existent, and so on. Subsequently, however, he admitted that

HE HAD BEEN DECEIVED, and apologised to the American ladies for having impugned their accuracy. In consequence of an alleged increase in venereal disease among our soldiers in India, and also in England, there has lately arisen an outcry in certain quarters for the re-introduction of those cruel, unjurt. and at p r esent throughout most of ILr Majesty’s dominions, repealed statutes. A sensational paragraph has going the round of the newspapers that these diseases have now reached 4 tne enormous total of 522 venereal cases per thousand troops.’ Lord George Hamilton was questioned in the House of Commons last January on this point, and, in reply, stated that ‘it is calculated on the lates* returns that an average permanent deduction of 46 per 1000 is the loss entailed by these diseases.’ There is a slight difference between 522 and 46 per 1000. Then as regards England herself. Earl Fortescue asserted that in 1893 400 deaths from syphilis were registered in England, and in the next year no fewer than four times that number. A reference to the official documents showed the smaller figures belonged to London only, the larger to the whole of England ; thus, instead of increase in England, a slight reduction was indicated. * Our conflict for the moment,’ writes Mrs J. Butler to a friend, in a letter dated last May, 4 is mainly ranged

around the Government despatch to India. But friends will be fully enlightened concerning that despatch, and our view of it, by reading the memorial to Lord George Hamilton issued by our Committee, which contains a most searching analysis of the despatch of March 30.’ This memorial, I find, points out that the proposals of the despatch are not new; that they are simply a return to the rules of 1890, which 4 history conclusively proves not only permitted but facilitated the practices you condemn.’ The despatch also proposed to place venereal diseases on the same footing as other contagious disorders. The memorial points out that this is IN THE NATURE OF THE CASE, IMPOSSIBLE. There is no stigma attached to those affected with cholera, small-pox, diphtheria, or typhoid fever. The opposite is the case with venereal disease. As regards the one, no conceivable measure could have any moral bearing, whereas in the latter compulsory treatment has the gravest moral consequences, both to the individual and the community. The memorial appeals to the Secretary of State * to look beyond the horrible statistics of disease to the still more terrible facts of which it is

at once the index and the inevitable outcome,’ and concludes in these words, 4 We submit that the only statesmanlike attitude—the only one that offers a hope of permanently lessening the deplorable physical effects of debauchery—is that of making well-devised, continuous, and resolute efforts to remove temptations to that debauchery: to apply disciplinary provisions and restraints to check disease and discourage vice; and to place the soldier in an environment tending to develop his best physical, moral, intellectual, and religious faculties.’ • The memorial recommends to the notice of the Secretary of State a memorandum drawn up by the memorialists, from which we quote the following : that can be done all come under one head. An honest attempt must be made to diminish the vice which is the cause of the disease. To do anything else while neglecting this will be vain. We demand, therefore, that there shall be no reversion to AN IMMORAL AND DISCREDITED SYSTEM, but that practical steps shall be taken, which, while supplying adequate means for the voluntary treatment of disease, should be based on (1) a positive discouragement of sexual vice; (2) and a positive recognition, of the merits of abstinence from vice.’ Thirteen years ago England repealed these intamous

Acts, and India, though expected to follow England’s lead, has openly disregarded her orders, w*ith what miserable results we have seen. New Zealand—to her shame be it said—has allowed them to deface her Statute Book, though only on two occasions have they been put into operation. Speaking in Christchurch on the 7th February, 1896, the Premier promised that the following session the Government would insist on the 4 removal of an objectionable and shameful Statute.’ Mr Hall-Jones accordingly brought in a Bill for its repeal. Sir Robert Stout thought its repeal would not be enough, legislation must be made applicable to both sexes. Mr Seddon said the Act was 4 a dead letter, and a blot on our legislation, and was blocking the way of reform. They ought, therefore, to remove it at once. There being prepared a sensible Public Ilea th Act.' And exactly here is the keincl of what I would ask you to carry away with you in thought to-night. The C.D. Act is impossible in New Zealand as it is in England. Were that Act made ap. plicable to both sexes would it av ail ? 4 There would not be less vice,’ says one who has herself 4 been forced to fathom the depths of human corruption,’ 4 for the very publicity and shamelessness thus prescribed and enforced, would themselves reproduce, in a greater degree than ever before, that terror, that giant despair of ali regulationists — 4 illicit Prostitution .’ While on the one hand MEN WILL EVADE the State rules, they will yet see the State daily inviting them, by its organised machinery for vice, to unrestrained indulgence. There stands within the Indian cantonment, together with the place of worship to which the troops are marched once a week, the Chakla , the maison toleree of France, the Lupanar of the Romans, the house of debauchery, the place which is called in Scripture 44 an open sepulchre resting upon the tomb 44 and you wish,” says M. Ed.de Pressense, “that the State should hold the key to that chamber of death, that the State should be the doorkeeper to admit to it our youthful citizens.” This is not, ladies and gentlemen, the hysterical cry of the new women or of old women ; it is a cry of horror that New Zealand’s manhood can hear unmoved the astounding announcement that such vice is necessary —that New Zealand’s womanhood can hear unmoved that, such being the case, I must be saved at the expense of my sisters in the street, and that these poor scapegoats have for all reward but to be

■ despised and rejected of all men—vromen of sorrow, and acquainted with a grief greater than the Saviour of Mankind himself ever knew, for it includes the blackness and darkness of despair. The remedy lies NOT IN THE REGULATION OF VICE, but, as I have already shown, in purifying men and strengthening women. And this is emphatically mothers' work. TheC.D Repeal Bill \yas read a second time last year, and passed on to the Council. There it was thrown out, but reproduced to the House a month later by Mr Seddon, with the modifying proviso ‘ that if no steps were taken by any local body between this and ist January next, then the Act was repealed; but that if steps were taken by the local authorities, wherever those steps were taken the Act would be alive in that paiticular part of the colony.’ This was passed-a sort of referendum, as Mr Walker called it, on moving the second reading of the amended Bill in the Council. Although the evidence against the Acts throughout both debates in the Council must have seemed overwhelming to any unbiassed mind, the first division resulted in a majority of nine, the second in a majority of seven. And these men, our Legislative Councillors, are each of them sons, brothers, husbands, fathers, knowing that were the C.D. Acts not in abeyance at present here, the following tale might be applicable to any well-loved girl relative d:ev possess! The Hon. Mr Jones, on August 20th last year, read to the Council what Charles Bell Taylor, M.D., F.R.C.S.E., Fellow of *he Medical Society of London, htc President of the Parisian Medical Society, said in a speech in the House of Commons on the second reading of the Bill for the repeal of the C D. Acts, that he overheard a burly Frenchman remark ■ to a pretty, delicate-looking girl that if she did not accede to his wishes he would denounce her to the police, and have her registered as a prostitute. Mr Taylor asked, ‘ But can he do this ?’ and was assured ‘ that NOTHING WAS MORE SIMPLE, that an anonymous letter would suffice, and the police considered such information, either from man or woman, extremely valuable.’ Dr. Bell Taylor adds— 4 Subsequent experience in the streets, in the cafes, in the public saloons and hospitals of Paris, Berlin, Hamburg, and other continental cities, confirmed my original impression. I saw that women, who had as much

right to walk about as any lady or gentlemen in the land, were afraid to walk about—that, in point of fact, they were arrested or violated simply for walking about, and I came to understand what a foul thing the so-called purification of our streets really was.’ From personal experience in these very cities I can endorse everv word of the above, and could multiply instances ad nauscum to outvie the pretty, delicate-looking young girl with her burly French monster. But I prefer to close with these pregnant words from Mrs Butler—“ The most difficult days of our struggle may be yet to come. When the upholders of the vice-regulating system in various lands shall feel obliged to abandon their original position, and shall come to us with offered compromises, then our principle wrll be tested or our integrity severely tried. Attempts will be made to re-establish the evil principle in a misleading guise. Hence the supreme importance of clearness of discernment on our part in separating the old leaven to its last particle from every place for the future, and of firmness in rejecting, at the risk of being considered vexatious irreconcilables, every proposal which bears within it the theory that prostitution is a necessary evil, that men cannot be expected to practise self-restraint, and that, consequently, a certain number of God’s creatures are doomed by this same fatal law of necessity to be set apart or regulated as mere instruments for the basest and most unholy purpose.’ ” The meeting closed with a vote of thanks to the President for her address.