page_title: Josephine Butler
section_title: First attempt to repeal of the Contagious Diseases Acts; 1869–1874
hierarchical_section_title: Josephine Butler / Biography / First attempt to repeal of the Contagious Diseases Acts; 1869–1874
caption_attribution_description: English: Notice of a public meeting issued by Josephine Butler during the Pontefract by-election, 1872
context_page_description: Josephine Elizabeth Butler was an English feminist and social reformer in the Victorian era. She campaigned for women's suffrage, the right of women to better education, the end of coverture in British law, the abolition of child prostitution, and an end to human trafficking of young women and children into European prostitution.
  Grey grew up in a well-to-do and politically connected progressive family which helped develop in her a strong social conscience and firmly held religious ideals. She married George Butler, an Anglican divine and schoolmaster, and the couple had four children, the last of whom, Eva, died falling from a banister. The death was a turning point for Butler, and she focused her feelings on helping others, starting with the inhabitants of a local workhouse. She began to campaign for women's rights in British law. In 1869 she became involved in the campaign to repeal the Contagious Diseases Acts, legislation that attempted to control the spread of venereal diseases—particularly in the British Army and Royal Navy—through the forced medical examination of prostitutes, a process she described as surgical or steel rape.
context_section_description: In 1869 Butler became aware of the Contagious Diseases Acts. They had been introduced in 1864, 1866 and 1869 to regulate  prostitution in an attempt to control the spread of venereal diseases, particularly in the British Army and Royal Navy. The Acts authorised the police to detain women in specific areas considered to be prostitutes—no evidence was needed, other than the police officer's word. If a magistrate agreed, women were given genital examinations. If women were suffering from sexually transmitted diseases, they were held in a lock hospital until the condition was cured. If they refused to be examined or hospitalised they could be imprisoned, often with hard labour.
  Units of plain-clothed policemen specialised in arresting suspected prostitutes; according to Jordan, the officers were "hated for their surveillance and harassment of prostitutes and working-class women ... who they treated with little regard for their legal rights". Women who were subjected to the examination found their names and reputations affected and, according to the historian Hilary Cashman,  "the Acts had the effect of turning them to prostitution by barring respectable ways of life to them".
  In September 1869 Wolstenholme met Butler in Bristol to discuss what could be done about the Acts. The National Association for the Repeal of the Contagious Diseases Acts was founded that October, but excluded women from its membership. In response, Wolstenholme and Butler formed the Ladies National Association for the Repeal of the Contagious Diseases Acts (LNA) before the end of the year. The organisation published a Ladies Manifesto, which stated that the Acts were discriminatory on grounds of both sex and class; the Acts, it was claimed:
  not only deprived poor women of their constitutional rights and forced them to submit to a degrading internal examination, but they officially sanctioned a double standard of sexual morality, which justified male sexual access to a class of 'fallen' women and penalised women for engaging in the same vice as men.
  On 31 December 1869 the Ladies National Association published a statement in The Daily News that  it had "been formed for the purposes of obtaining the repeal of these obnoxious Acts". Among the 124 signatories  were the social theorist Harriet Martineau and the social reformer Florence Nightingale.
  Butler toured Britain in 1870, travelling 3,700 miles to attend 99 meetings in the course of the year. She focused her attention on working-class family men, the majority of whom were outraged at the description Butler gave of the examination women were forced to undergo; she called the process surgical or steel rape. Although she persuaded many members of her audiences, she faced significant opposition, which put her in danger. At one meeting pimps threw cow dung at her; at another, the windows of her hotel were smashed, while at a third, threats were made to burn down the building where she was hosting a meeting.
  At the 1870 Colchester parliamentary by-election the LNA fielded a candidate against the Liberal Party candidate Sir Henry Storks, a supporter of the Acts, who had implemented a similar regime when he commanded the British army in Malta. Butler held several local meetings during the campaign; during one, she was chased by a group of brothel owners. The presence of the LNA candidate split the Liberal vote and allowed the Conservative Party candidate to win the seat; Butler considered that "it proved to be somewhat of a turning-point in the history of our crusade". Because of Stork's loss at the by-election the Home Secretary, Henry Bruce, announced a Royal Commission to examine the situation. One MP told Butler that
  Your manifesto has shaken us very badly in the House of Commons; a leading man in the House remarked to me, "We know how to manage any other opposition in the House or in the country, but this is very awkward for us—this revolt of the women. It is quite a new thing; what are we to do with such an opposition as this?"
  The commission began work in early January 1871 and spent six months taking
caption: Handbill issued prior to a talk during the 1872 Pontefract by-election
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