The reader must try to imagine us sitting in one of the spacious rooms of the India Office. At the head of an oval polished table sat Mr. Russell, the chairman; to his left sat General Newmarch, Sir Donald Stewart, and Sir James Peile. To the chairman’s right sat the late Sir James Stansfeld, whose prerogative it was to conduct the examination; next to him were Mr. Casserley, Q.C., counsel for our side, and Henry J. Wilson, M.P. At the opposite end of the table from the chairman sat the stenographer and ourselves. It is to be understood that Mr. Stansfeld asks the questions and we answer:
Question—We will pass to the book of requisition for tickets. [This was a book from which many leaves were torn, leaving counterfoils on which were memoranda signifying that the extracted leaves were given to the Cantonment Magistrate, calling for tickets for women, who were thereby certified as under the charge of the physician, and licensed to practise prostitution.]
Answer—I have it.
Q.—And you can number the counterfoils; how many requisitions to the Cantonment Magistrate for licensed tickets does it say on the 1st of May, 1892?
A.—Twenty-one.
Q.—Does it say on counterfoils of tickets in respect of the nineteen new requisitions on 15th June, 1892?
A.—It does.
Q.—Therefore that is evidence that the issue of tickets at any rate endured longer than May?
A.—Yes, longer than the 1st of May; it shows that it continued until the 15th of June, 1892.
Q.—At any rate, on the 15th of June a requisition was made for nineteen tickets?
A.—Nineteen tickets.
Q.—According to the Military Reports before us, page 18, on line 940: “Women were registered, tickets issued, and bi-monthly inspections made between March, 1890, and May, 1892; it was brought to my notice in May, 1892 that tickets were being issued to prostitutes in Meean Meer; I ordered the discontinuance of the practice at once, and it was reported to me on the 17th of May, 1892, that no registration of prostitutes in any form whatever then continued;” and it appears from what you have now produced, that at any rate requisitions were made as late as the 15th of June; that is so, is it not?
A.—Yes.
Q.—Of those requisitions on that date, the 15th of June, as well as on several other dates, do you find some, and how many, issued for the Royal Artillery Bazaar?
A.—I counted twenty that were for the Royal Artillery Bazaar women.
Q.—Have you seen the Report of the Commanding Officer for the regiment dated 19th June, 1893, and does it state that no tickets had been issued for the regiment since February, 1891?
A.—Yes, I saw that statement; it is page 2 of the supplementary sheet, line 95, under Meean Meer. The statement of Captain Goff, commanding the Royal Artillery. That note says, “No registration of prostitutes or issue of tickets in any form whatever has ever been carried out by the Royal Artillery since the present battery came to the station, February, 1891.”
Q.—What you find is that twenty tickets were issued?
A.—It is since February, 1891, according to this book some twenty tickets have been issued for the Royal Artillery.
Q.—Up to what date?
A.—Up to June 15th, 1892.
Q.—You produce a ticket here which you obtained from one of the women; what was the date of that ticket; was not the date of the year 1892?
A.—It was dated 1892; that we procured at the Artillery Bazaar.
Q.—Did I understand you to say that you found twenty tickets were issued to the women of the Artillery?
A.—Yes, twenty counterfoils left are of the Royal Artillery.
Mr. Stansfeld to the Committee—That fact, which is testified to by the counterfoils of this book, is inconsistent with the statement of the Commanding Officer in his Report.
These are but a few of the many instances in which the official records sent to London for inspection, contradicted the testimony of military officers.
The first sitting of the Departmental Committee was April 11, its last sitting August 15, and its report was circulated in Parliament September 11, 1893.
With the acknowledgment from the Commander-in-Chief of the truth of our statements, a most sweeping victory had been gained for the cause; no under-official could very well dispute the word of the Commander-in-Chief of the army. Lord Roberts’ remark that “the ladies themselves would have found their task considerably lightened” had they been “commended to the care of the authorities in India,” was the source of a good deal of amusement on the part of our friends, and led to many a sarcastic comment on the part of the public press; some of which ran somewhat as follows: “As Lord Roberts freely admitted that he did not know these things, certainly had the ladies appealed to him they need not have come back so loaded with information; this would have greatly lightened their task.” “As there was a regulation which allowed any suspicious characters to be expelled from the Cantonments without assigning a reason therefor, the application of this regulation would greatly have ‘lightened their task,’” etc., etc.
What had been fully established by the evidence cannot be better expressed than in the recent utterance of the British Committee for the Abolition of State Regulation of Vice, i.e.:—
“The fact was fully established that the so-called voluntary system had been completely overridden by extra-legal practices, of which the provision placing, or interpreted to have placed, venereal diseases under the same rule as ‘cholera, small-pox, diphtheria, or typhoid fever,’ became the fulcrum or pivot.” The thing which now remained to be done was to embody the Resolution of the House of Commons of 1888 in a law which must be passed by the Government of India, that could not be longer evaded or disobeyed. After much discussion and consideration, the Secretary of State for India directed that the Cantonment regulations which related to the removal to hospital of those persons suspected of contagious or infectious diseases, must be so altered as to admit of the treatment of contagious diseases due to vice in a manner that would not be liable to abuse of or injury to the reputation of women.
Accordingly the Cantonments Act of 1889 in so far as it provided for the compulsory examination of women suspected of contagious diseases due to vice, and their forcible detention in hospital under penalty of expulsion from the Cantonment, was altered to apply only to cholera, smallpox, diphtheria, or typhoid fever. This was done to protect the character and reputation of women, for it had been conceded on all sides that hitherto the only method practicable for getting hold of suspected women was on the information of male libertines, and that such persons when questioned as to the source of their contagion, generally sought to cover their own wrong-doing or protect their real partner in sin by accusing some other woman, often a perfectly innocent person.
This new Act, called the Cantonments Act Amendment Act, was passed on February 8, 1895. The point which was gained by the passage of this new Act was one of great importance, namely, that there were moral and social questions involved in the treatment of contagious diseases due to vice which could not be overlooked in the medical management of such disorders without serious consequences. It was, in the nature of the case, impossible to place these diseases on the same footing as other contagious disorders. The reasons for this position have been recently expressed very concisely and forcibly by the British Committee, in the following language:—