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Scandal & Society · Aldershot, Hampshire

Aldershot and the Contagious Diseases Acts

At Aldershot, the Contagious Diseases Acts let police identify women as prostitutes on suspicion and compel intimate examination—while imposing no equivalent sanction on servicemen.

StatusDocumented history
Date1864–1886
The peopleJosephine Butler, Elizabeth Wolstenholme
The siteVictorian garrison town and former military district
Coordinates51.24840, -0.75940 (confidence 2/5)

The story

The Contagious Diseases Acts of 1864, 1866 and 1869 applied to designated garrison and port districts including Aldershot. Police could identify a woman as a common prostitute and subject her to repeated internal examination; infection could mean confinement in a lock hospital. No matching regime examined or detained the servicemen whose health the legislation claimed to protect. Josephine Butler and the Ladies' National Association turned opposition into a major campaign against the sexual double standard. The Acts were suspended in 1883 and repealed in 1886.

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The spy police

Repeal campaigners called the plain-clothes officers the spy police. Their ability to label working-class women on suspicion, with consequences that were difficult to escape, became central to Josephine Butler's case against the Acts.

Sources

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