Contagious Diseases Acts

Series of laws passed by British Parliament to introduce measures against the increased spreading of venereal disease. With rising levels of prostitution in 19th-century Britain, sexually transmitted diseases (STDs) became an increasingly serious health problem. As especially members of the military, who were not allowed to marry, associated with prostitutes and consequently ran the risk of getting infected, the situation became a direct concern of the government.

It was decided that the easiest way to prevent the further proliferation of STDs would be to detain women who were suspected of being infected with venereal disease. This was subsequently legalized in the Contagious Diseases Acts of 1864, 1866, and 1869.

The law stated that infected women should be interred in so-called Lock Hospitals from a few months to up to one year. The medical and hygienic conditions in these hospitals were, however, not suitable to treat women who were infected effectively.

More importantly, though, the law served as an incentive for the women’s rights movement. Female activists argued that the law not only lead to uninfected women being subjected to humiliating examinations and injustices by the male authorities, but also added to the unjust sexual double standards that prevailed in Victorian society as the law did not affect infected males.

The Acts were repealed in 1886.

Sources:

Hughes, Linda K. 1870. A Companion to Victorian Literature and Culture. Ed. Herbert F. Tucker. Oxford: Blackwell, 1999.

Walkowitz, Judith. Prostitution and Victorian Society: Women, Class, and the State. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1980.