Now the first quotation given effectually contradicts the second, at the point of the compulsory examination of women; and such instructions were, in fact, a virtual order to repeal the Amendment Act of 1895, very covertly expressed, and so it was recognised immediately by the British Committee for the Abolition of State Regulated Vice, which promptly issued a memorial on the subject addressed to Lord George Hamilton, Secretary of State for India.[9]
On April 21, 1897, there appeared in the London Times part of a letter from Lady Henry Somerset to Lord George Hamilton, in which she “expresses gratification at finding incorporated in a document of such importance a statement of inspiring and controlling principles.” She notes with satisfaction the “inclusion of this disease among other contagious diseases,” as the “only rational and scientific principle on which its eradication can be attempted.” “It is not however, proposed to carry out this principle to its full logical result; and herein lies the point on which she finds herself at issue with Lord George Hamilton.” At the end of the letter is affixed the system of legislation best suited to the end, in the opinion of Lady Henry Somerset, and it will be seen at a glance that her propositions would indeed carry out the principle to its full, logical end. A special importance attaches itself to these propositions, because of the strategic position held by Lady Henry Somerset as president of the British Women’s Temperance Association of England, and first vice-president of the World’s W.C.T.U., and her action put her in absolute opposition to the purity department of both those societies.
The scheme proposed by Lady Henry Somerset is here given in her own words:
“1. A quarter of each Cantonment should be reserved for such women as are permitted to remain in camp, and all such women should be compelled to remain in houses or rooms specifically reserved to each by a registered number. The admission of men to this quarter should be strictly supervised.
“2. No woman should be allowed to remain in this quarter unless periodically examined by properly qualified women doctors.
“3. No soldier should be allowed to enter this quarter without having undergone a like examination and having the same report.
“4. A register should be kept recording the name of each soldier entering the quarter, the number of the house to which he goes, and the date of such entry.
“5. On any woman being found to be diseased in this quarter, or on any soldier found to be suffering in like manner, all such persons that the registered visits show to have rendered themselves liable to contagion should be put in quarantine until such time as their immunity can be verified.
“6. All consorting with women outside this quarter should render the offender liable to severe penalty.”[10]
The Shield, official organ of the British Committee for the Abolition of State Regulated Vice, in its issue of May, 1897, comments as follows upon this scheme:
“The suggestions above quoted embody the most complete State Regulation of prostitution which we have ever seen described, in its baldest and most absolute form, and imply the most complete identification of the State with the purely animal side of the matter which has ever been proposed. They seem to emanate from a mind influenced for the time solely by the idea of equality between man and woman, to the exclusion of other considerations. Such proposals seem indeed to make the sexes equal, but it is an equality of unspeakable degradation for both.”
On May 14 and 17 occurred a debate in the House of Lords on the question of a return to legalized prostitution in India, in which reference was made to Lady Henry Somerset’s letter in The Times, and to another memorial which was shortly “to be made public,” and which was signed by a very large number of ladies, as an indication that women were no longer, as formerly, opposed to the system of State Regulation of Vice.[11]
On May 25 The Times published the text of this Memorial, which is signed by ladies of the aristocracy, together with a few other prominent women, numbering in all one hundred and twenty-three.
The Government of India proceeded at once to repeal the Cantonments Act Amendment Act of 1895, in the Viceregal Council held at Simla July 8, which action had received the approval of Lord George Hamilton by telegram, July 6, 1897. Since that day, therefore, the military authorities have been set free to return to the establishment of brothel slavery, the registration and compulsory examination of women, the employment of procuresses, and all the infamies which we have described as existing when we visited India in 1892.
Meanwhile, the women of Great Britain have arisen in mighty protest, and a Memorial signed by 61,437 women of the United Kingdom, addressed to Lord George Hamilton, as representative of Her Majesty’s Government, was presented at the India Office on Saturday, July 31, 1897, as follows: