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Deposit Guide Contact: email 1 JAMES STANSFELD & the DEBATES ABOUT THE REPEAL OF THE CONTAGIOUS DISEASES ACTS IN BRITAIN AND BRITISH INDIA, 1860s – 1890s Thesis submitted for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy at Birkbeck College, University of London Christine July Ramsey 2 3 Abstract This thesis examines the life of James Stansfeld, (1820-1898), and in particular his contribution to the political reform of the Contagious Diseases Acts (CDAs) in England and in India. Stansfeld was a Liberal MP from a Unitarian (non-conformist) background who represented his native borough of Halifax during the Gladstone era. From the early 1870s onwards, eschewing high cabinet office, Stansfeld was a major force in the Commons parliamentary debates about the CDAs and their Indian equivalent. His political strategies included the building up and sustaining of popular support for repeal whilst simultaneously supporting repeal in the political arena. The thesis maps Stansfeld’s complex and radical arguments about women’s rights, particularly those of prostitutes, and his advocacy of, and practical support for, repeal of the CDAs both in England and India. It presents new archival research on Stansfeld and other materials relating to the Contagious Diseases Acts and their rescindment. The archival materials are read alongside nineteenth-century published sources including memoirs, political writings and newspaper articles, and analysed in dialogue with scholarship on nineteenth-century sexual debates in England and India. By focusing on James Stansfeld’s advocacy of the repeal effort in England, and his role in the subsequent shift of the debate to British India, then, the thesis adds new research on the complex issues at stake in debates about the repeal of the CDAs and Indian CDAs, and it considers what these debates tell us about the role of female sexuality in nineteenth-century political debates in England and the Indian empire. 4 Table of Contents Page Introduction 9 The Contagious Diseases Acts and Victorian Ideas about Prostitution 10 The British Repeal Debates and the Influence of Women Philanthropists 19 The Ladies National Association 21 The White Cross Army 25 The Focus on India 29 Excavating the Archives 32 Chapter Summaries 34 Chapter One. James Stansfeld & British Repeal of Contagious Diseases Regulation 38 Biographical Glimpses 38 Influences of Unitarianism in Stansfeld’s thinking & early politics of religion 43 Stansfeld’s Education & Politics 50 Stansfeld’s Political Career 57 Participation in Repeal of the CDAs 66 Equality & Women’s Rights 74 British, Continental & General Federation for the Abolition of Government Regulation of Prostitution 81 Conclusion 92 Chapter Two. James Stansfeld & the campaign against the Regulation of Prostitution in India 94 Government of India 95 History, Colonial Rule and the ‘Woman Question’ in India 99 Debates around the Introduction of the ICDAs 103 The Ilbert Bill and the India Office 107 Godley and the India Office 110 Military Department Report on Sexual Regulation 112 Stansfeld’s impact on the ‘Indian debates’ 114 Reception & Response to the 1888 Motion 121 British Committee for the Abolition of the State Regulation of Vice in India 126 5 Women as Witnesses 128 1893 Select Committee of Enquiry 135 Stansfeld’s Questioning 144 Final Moves 148 Conclusion: Stansfeld and the Education of Women 155 Chapter Three. Syphilitic Regulation in the Nineteenth-Century Indian Empire 157 Introduction of Sexual Regulation in India: Historical Context 158 Implementation of the CDAs in India: The British Soldier as ‘Victim’ of Indian women 168 Implementation of the CDAs in India: The Lock Hospital 173 Implementation of the CDAs in India: Medical Evaluation 179 British Assumptions about Indian Prostitutes and the Idea of Difference 186 Indian Women who worked as Prostitutes in Social and Critical Context 194 Voices of Indian Women who worked as Prostitutes 198 Parliament versus the Government of India 203 Reactions of British Repealers to events in India 208 Conclusion 211 Chapter Four. Bearing Witness in India 213 Bushnell, Andrew and the Nineteenth-Century American Women’s Movement 214 Willard’s Contribution to Social Purity and ‘A White Life for Two’ 221 The (Imperial) Profession of the Woman Missionary 227 Bushnell, Andrew and Butler: The International Dimensions of the Social Purity Movement 231 The Queen’s Daughters in India 238 Select Committee of Enquiry, 1893 247 John Hyslop Bell 254 Schism 263 Conclusion 272 6 Conclusion 274 Last Rites 274 Stansfeld’s Legacy 277 Bibliography 280 7 Acknowledgements The deepest thanks to my supervisor, Dr. Heike Bauer of Birkbeck College, London University, whose encouraging yet strong critique kept a wandering mind focused and to whom I owe an enormous debt. To the many archivists in London: at the British Library’s Oriental and Indian Collections, the Wellcome Library, the Women’s Library and the Royal Free Hospital Archive, and to those in West Yorkshire, including the Halifax Antiquarian Society, I say a huge thank you. The National Archive in New Delhi, whilst still assembling its collections, also proved useful in its overall portraiture of the British in nineteenth century India. I must express my particular gratitude to Janet Olson, archivist at the Frances Willard Memorial Library and Archive in Evanston, Illinois, who gave up so much of her own time to steer me through all the pertinent documents in a short weekend visit. The scholarly achievements of my sons, Matthew and Christopher Ramsey initiated valuable contribution and appraisal in both legal and medical aspects, and together with my young friend Kate Badcock, all three were great proof-readers. To Graham Drew, from a different but equally demanding discipline, I also say thank you for your core efforts to keep me on target. Not least to my dear partner Robert Mills who, despite the temper tantrums, kept faith throughout. Thank you all. 8 List of Abbreviations AMS Association for Moral & Social Hygiene BGF British, Continental & General Federation for the Abolition of Government Regulation of Prostitution CDA Contagious Diseases Acts FWMLA Frances Willard Memorial Library & Archive, Evanston, Illinois GOI Government of India HJW Papers of Henry Joseph Wilson ICA Indian Cantonment Act ICDA Indian Contagious Diseases Act JBL Josephine Butler Letters Collection JSM James Stansfeld Memorial Trust LNA Ladies National Association for the Repeal of the Contagious Diseases Acts LSMW London School of Medicine for Women MGF Millicent Garrett Fawcett Collection NAND National Archive of India, New Delhi NVA Records of the National Vigilance Association OIOC Oriental & Indian Collection, British Library WCTU Women’s Christian Temperance Union WL Women’s Library 9 Introduction This thesis examines the life and work of the Liberal MP for Halifax James Stansfeld (1820 – 1898) and some of his contemporaries with the aim of gaining a fuller understanding of the debates about the regulation of venereal disease in Britain and India in the late nineteenth century. The CDAs were introduced in Britain in 1864 with the aim of controlling the spread of venereal disease amongst soldiers and sailors. Further Acts followed in 1866 and 1869, each extending the jurisdiction of the first, the frequency of compulsory internal examinations and the term of imprisonment. As a member of Gladstone’s cabinet in the early 1870s, Stansfeld, whilst heavily involved in other political issues, became aware of the CDAs, and from 1874 he devoted the remainder of his life to the repeal campaigns both within Britain and then after the successful repeal of the British CDAs in India. The thesis explores Stansfeld’s influence on the repeal campaign including his links with other reformers, notably the feminist campaigner Josephine Butler, arguing that he lent political legitimacy to the repeal campaigns through his access to the House of Commons. It excavates and brings into dialogue new and little studied archival material that indicate Stansfeld’s crucial role at the time and in so doing deepens understanding of the complex allegiances between CDA repealers as well as turning fresh attention to the similarities and differences between debates about prostitution and sexuality in the British Parliament and the Government of India (GOI). Arguing that Stansfeld played a central if often overlooked role in campaigns for the repeal of sexual regulation in late-Victorian Britain, as well as in the subsequent shift of this debate to the Indian sub-continent, the thesis demonstrates that 10 attention to Stansfeld’s specific contribution to the repeal of the Contagious Diseases Acts in Britain and India also deepens understanding of how nineteenth-century debates about sexuality and its regulation were racialised and classed as well as gendered. The Introduction will contextualise Stansfeld’s