Paul McHugh - Prostitution and Victorian Social Reform

ROUTLEDGE LIBRARY EDITIONS:
WOMENS HISTORY

PROSTITUTION AND VICTORIAN
SOCIAL REFORM

Paul McHugh

Volume 26

First published in 1980

This edition first published in 2013
by Routledge
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1980 Paul McHugh

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ISBN: 978-0-415-53409-3 (Set)
eISBN: 978-0-203-10425-5 (Set)
ISBN: 978-0-415- 62360-5 (Volume 26)
eISBN: 978-0-203-10404-0 (Volume 26)

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Most repeal association titles ended with the suffix 'for the repeal of
the Contagious Diseases Acts', some with 'for the Abolition of State
Regulation of Vice'.

What makes the historian decide to work on a particular subject? In my case, I fear that I cannot claim that any elevated motive set me on the trail. In the Autumn of 1969, as a new postgraduate student in search of a suitable topic, I decided to read through the then standard work on the period of British history which most interested me Sir Robert Ensor's England, 1870-1914. Upon reaching page 171, promisingly titled 'sex questions', I came across a two paragraph reference to the Contagious Diseases Acts which were then a mystery to me. As a summary of an agitation it aroused my interest, while the glowing tributes to Josephine Butler and James Stansfeld provoked a degree of irreverent scepticism. I was 'hooked'. I cannot remember whether or not I continued to plough on through Ensor, but certainly I have found no other subject which has exercised the same fascination for me as the resurrection of this apparently obscure and forgotten campaign.

Over the years, less opportunistic motives have come to the fore. I speedily abandoned any idea of a Lytton Strachey type demolition of Ensor's hero and heroine. His verdict stands up remarkably well even if he tended to exaggerate the deliberateness of Stansfeld's self sacrifice. Instead, I have tried to go beyond the biographical approach and to breathe some life into the campaign as a whole. I hope that the result is a study which sees the agitation not merely as a contribution to women's history, nor as simply one aspect of a changing moral climate, nor even as a part of the political history of the period, but as a campaign which needs to be assessed in its own right. My aim has been to reach a balanced assessment of the struggle for repeal, looking at Mrs Butler and Stansfeld not as 'makers' of the movement (with all the moral overtones thereby implied) but as pressure group leaders with strengths and weaknesses. In the process I hope that I have brought out the significance of humbler repeal activists more forcefully.

In the course of my research I have incurred numerous debts of gratitude to the staffs of many libraries and archives. To acknowledge all would fill too many pages, but if some may be singled out, I should say that the Bodleian Library was a most congenial place in which to read one's way into the repeal campaign, and that I received a kindly welcome and much assistance at the library of the Society of Friends and at the Methodist Archives and Research Centre. My chief obligation, however, is to the Fawcett Library where I spent several summers working on repeal material. Its then librarian, Miss M. Surry ALA, and the archivists were extremely kind in answering my requests. In particular, the library was good enough to grant me access to the Josephine Butler Papers while they were still being arranged. I am most grateful for this privilege, and I should like to extend my thanks to the cataloguer of these papers, Miss M. Burton, for much assistance on Mrs Butler, about whom her knowledge is surely unrivalled. As the arrangement of these papers and of the H.J. Wilson Papers at the Fawcett Library was not completed when I was working on them, some of my references are necessarily provisional, though I have tried to give the fullest possible details in all cases. It is a matter of relief and a cause for celebration that this splendid library, the future of which seemed unclear a few years ago, has now been rehoused intact at the City of London Polytechnic, where scholars receive the same warm welcome as in the old days at Westminster. Professor John Vincent of Bristol University was good enough to set me on the track of the Stansfeld Papers whose present owner, Mr W.J. Stansfeld, readily granted me access. I am indeed grateful to him for doing so, and I should also like to offer my thanks to his brother, Mr A. Stansfeld, for providing me with a copy of a letter from William Lloyd Garrison to James Stansfeld's sister-in-law, Madame Venturi.