Scandal & Society · Aldershot, Hampshire
Aldershot and the Contagious Diseases Acts
Spice 3/5 · Simmering
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.
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 The Acts were suspended in 1883 and repealed in 1886.
More stories at this spot
Visiting today
Aldershot is a town in Hampshire's Rushmoor district, on heathland in the county's north-east corner. It is known as the Home of the British Army, and Aldershot Garrison, a permanent army training camp, lies between Aldershot and Farnborough.
- Council
- Rushmoor, Hampshire
- Ward
- Wellington
- County
- Hampshire
- Region
- South East
- Nation
- England
- Constituency
- Aldershot
- OS grid reference
- SU 866 506
Landmarks nearby
- Royal Garrison Church · 1.4 km — Red brick Gothic Revival church, built 1863
- Aldershot Military Museum · 2.4 km — Army history in two 1890s barrack bungalows
- Farnham Castle · 4.4 km — 12th-century castle, residence of Winchester bishops
Sources
- Routledge Historical Resources, Josephine Butler and the Prostitution Campaigns
- HerStoria, Prostitution and the Contagious Diseases Acts
Nearby on the map
The country retreat where the King's affair with the twice-divorced Wallis Simpson deepened, and where he signed the Instrument of Abdication in December 1936 — love versus the crown.
Documented historyLiterary PassionJane Austen's House, ChawtonChawton, Hampshire · EnglandSpice 1/5 · ChilledThe cottage where Austen revised and wrote the six novels that taught the English how to fall in love — every drawing-room glance, every letter pressed into a gloved hand, composed at a twelve-sided walnut table small enough to hide when visitors called.
Fact & fictionBohemian & LibertineMedmenham Abbey (the Monks of Medmenham)Medmenham, Buckinghamshire · EnglandSpice 5/5 · ScorchingThe riverside sham-gothic abbey where Dashwood's order first met, its door inscribed with Rabelais's 'Fais ce que tu voudras'. Contemporaries whispered of mock rites and masked ladies arriving by barge; the truth was scandalous enough that every account since has struggled to separate orgy from embellishment — this entry says so plainly.
Documented historySpotted an error, or hold a better source? Write to marquis@marquisdemayfair.com — corrections are made, never defended. Our methodology.