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W hat went through the mind of Josephine Butler in 1869 as she decided to throw herself into a stormy national debate? When she agreed to lead efforts to repeal the Contagious Diseases Acts – CD Acts for short – she was in her early 40s, had lost her only beloved daughter in a tragic accident and was already involved in what was known as “rescue work”; she had employed a woman freed from Newgate prison after serving a sentence for infanticide. In her memoir, Personal Reminiscences of a Great Crusade, Butler described her deliberations as filled with angst. She and her husband, a headteacher in Liverpool, knew it would harm his career.

But neither was in doubt that the acts had to be fought. They gave the police the power to carry out compulsory genital examinations of women they believed to be prostitutes – but not their male customers. If the women refused to be checked, they were sentenced to jail with hard labour.



If found to have a venereal disease, they were forcibly detained in a “lock hospital”. The point was to prevent venereal infections among soldiers and sailors, and initially the laws applied only in garrison and port towns. But reformers objected to measures they saw as illiberal, immoral and more likely to spread disease than inhibit it, since they did nothing to limit infected men’s sexual activity.

Even before 1864, when the first act was introduced, the political economist and anti-slavery writer Harriet Martineau had called on women to “lif.

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