(3
)
V.—Special Inspectors and constables are employed in the larger towns to look after
the registered women, and the general police take this among
their other duties in the smaller stations. The Civil Surgeon
of Thayetmyo reports that policemen are posted at the princi-
pal thoroughfares to prevent women coming into cantonment
after dark. It did not need the high per-centage of disease
among the men of the 67th to show the futility of such a mea-
sure. If the cantonment were surrounded by a high wall, like a jail, or could only be entered
by the principal thoroughfares, one could understand that placing a guard over these might
do some good ; but, even then, it seems the women would only have to present themselves
before dark to pass unquestioned.
At Toungoo the efforts of the Assistant Magistrate seem to have been rendered abortive
by the restriction of registration to the women who consort with Europeans. The opinion
of the Government Advocate, however, is that the Act under which the rules have been
framed is wide enough to allow of all women practising prostitution within the cantonment
being brought under registration. At Bassein another Police Inspector has been added,
who is posted to that part of the town where the loose women reside, but no increase to the
register has yet ensued.
In Rangoon the same machinery is in operation as in the previous year, but it has
been stimulated to greater activity by the complaints to which the great prevalence of
venereal disease among the troops and in the town gave rise in July and August. As
already mentioned, the Town Magistrate and the Civil Surgeon attribute this chiefly to the
remissness of the regimental authorities in not taking care to expel from their lines
unauthorized followers and women of low caste and loose character. The Civil Surgeon,
moreover, recommends that every soldier admitted with venereal disease " should be com-
pelled, or, if not compelled, induced or coaxed, to give up the name of the woman from whom
he contracted the disease." The advice is unexceptionable, and has often been given
before ; but the British soldier is not found to be very coaxable on this point, having a strong
objection to betray the woman with whom he has cohabited, even when he himself has
been betrayed, and is smarting under the effects of his misplaced confidence. Although,
occasionally, a man might be found free from this scruple, there are discouragements in
the way not dreamt of, apparently, by the Civil Surgeon. Not long ago, a zealous Medical
Officer, anticipating the above advice, induced a soldier to accompany a police sergeant to
point out the house in which, and the woman by whom, he had been diseased, and was
rewarded by a threat of legal proceedings being taken against him by the woman, who was
found on examination to be free from disease. The threat was kindly conveyed to him by
the Town Magistrate, as an encouragement to show less zeal and more discretion for the
future. Without questioning the propriety of the advice given to other departments, it
seemed to me that it would come with a better grace if the Medical Officers were able to
show that they had made use of the machinery for suppressing the evil, placed at their
own disposal, to the fullest extent of which it was capable ; and in accordance with this view
the weekly examinations of the women were ordered, as before stated. At the first of
these, which took place on the 23rd of August, and not on the 15th of September, as stated
by the Town Magistrate, 10 women were found to be diseased, who, under the previous
arrangement, would have been left at large for another week, with what results may easily be
imagined. The immediate effect of the change was to fill to overcrowding the lock-hos-
pital, and to cause almost a complete cessation of new admissions from venereal into the
regimental hospital. Yet this simple and obvious mode of checking a great evil was most
strenuously—but, thanks to the Chief Commissioner, ineffectually—opposed by the Town
Magistrate, who pronounced it unnecessary, as well as virtually impossible. The Civil Sur-
geon, although at first equally opposed to it, admitted to me, after some experience of its
working, that he had been mistaken, and that it was doing much good. I am surprised,
therefore, at the omission from his report of any acknowledgment of the good effected by it,
and to find, instead, only suggestions and inuendoes of its mischievous effects. The Town
Magistrate never professed to be a convert to the measure, and although I may be surprised
at the weakness of his arguments, I have no right to be so at his continued opposition.
But it was the clear duty of the Civil Surgeon to be impartial, and to report the good as well
as the bad that could be ascribed to the weekly examinations.
At Moulmein, an Inspector of Police is specially told off to look after the registered
women, and he succeeded in bringing 13 women before the Magistrate for unlicensed
prostitution during the year. It is impossible to collect any information under this head
from the report on Akyab Lock-hospital.
VI.—In only two stations—namely, Rangoon and Toungoo-
—have the numbers added to the register exceeded those removed
from it during the year. At Akyab and Moulmein there has
been a diminution of numbers.
At Thayetmyo, Prome, and Bassein the numbers at the close of the year were the same
as at the beginning. There are some inconsistencies in the returns of particular hospitals,
which imply careless registration or else ignorance of the mode of deducing averages. For
What special measures have
been taken for the control of pros-
titution, and especially for pre-
venting the danger arising from
unlicensed prostitutes frequenting
the lines.
How far the registration has
been efficient ; to what classes it
extends ; and over what area.