Trigger warning. This post includes a true description of severe sexualised violence.
Josephine Butler was a courageous activist who befriended prostitutes and called the men and women of England to listen to the cries of the oppressed and marginalized, using the Bible as her entry point.
She campaigned on behalf of prostitutes and abused and trafficked women from 1869 until her death in 1906. (source)
Butler rescued prostitutes from the Liverpool workhouse and cared for some of them at her home. Her blissfully happy marriage to her husband, George Butler, was an invaluable source of support. Prostitutes told her about their sufferings under the Contagious Diseases Acts, which allowed the police to arrest and forcibly examine them internally. The aim was to prevent the spread of sexually-transmitted disease by identifying and detaining infected women. Butler was horrified by the Acts, calling the examination ‘steel rape’. She started a campaign to repeal them – “a deadly fight on behalf of us women for our bodies”. The fight lasted 15 years, but against all the odds, it was successful. The Acts were suspended in 1884.
She was instrumental in raising the age of consent from 13 to 16 in 1885.
She led a campaign against the Contagious Diseases Acts in India (from 1887 until her death).
She exposed the trafficking of women to Europe and stood up to cruel and coldly calculating authority figures such as the Superintendent of the Morals Police in Paris.
If you’ve watched the series Call the Midwife, you will be familiar with Jennifer Worth’s midwifery experience. The TV series is based on Jennifer Worth’s books.
Jennifer Worth worked as a midwife at Nonnatus House in London’s East End, in the 1950s and ’60s. The Anglican nuns at Nonnatus House were all midwives, dedicated to providing midwifery and nursing care to the poorest of the poor.
Jennifer became a Christian during her time at Nonnatus House. The thing that most influenced her to consider Christianity seriously was Sister Julienne’s gentle and loving character. Sister Julienne answered Jennifer’s questions about Christianity sensitively and never pushed her. (You can read about that in Jennifer’s book Shadows of the Workhouse.)
Sister Monica Joan, the oldest nun at Nonnatus House, had rebelled against her aristocratic family’s expectations to train as a nurse/midwife. Her father was furious, but could do nothing about it.
In Farewell to the East End, Jennifer Worth recounts what Sister Monica Joan told her about Nancy.
Nancy’s family was poor. Her mother made a meagre living by taking in washing. At the age of thirteen, one of the ways Nancy assisted her mother was by returning the clean washing to customers, collecting the money and taking it back to her mother. On one of these routine errands, Nancy was arrested, taken to the police station and “surgically raped” (Josephine Butler’s term) by being made to undergo a vaginal examination. A police doctor, using a cold, rough and un-sterile speculum, examined her for signs of venereal disease. The police doctor was in cahoots with the police officer who had arrested Nancy. This was all quite legal under England’s Contagious Diseases Act of 1864.
I have transcribed excerpts from pp 67-68, 70-72 of Farewell to the East End by Jennifer Worth (2009, Weidenfeld and Nicolson, an imprint of Orion Books Ltd., London). Permission granted by Orion Books Ltd., London; their US agency WME didn’t respond to my request.
The Contagious Diseases Act was administered by a special unit of volunteers from the Metropolitan Police who were known as ‘the Spy Police’. These men had the power to arrest on suspicion only any woman found alone in the streets who they thought might be soliciting, confine her in a cell and call a doctor to examine her for evidence of venereal disease (Josephine Butler called this ‘surgical rape’). There were no female police officers or doctors in those days so the women were handled entirely by men who had volunteered for the job in the first place, and no witnesses were required. If evidence of venereal disease was found the woman would be confined to a lock hospital for treatment. If no evidence was found, she would be given a certificate saying she was ‘clean’, but her name would be kept on a special police register and she could be arrested and re-examined at any time. In theory the woman had to give written consent for the examination, but this was a cynical farce because the Act stated that a woman who refused to sign should be confined indefinitely until she did consent to be examined.
A woman of any age could be subject to this horrifying treatment. At the time the age of consent was thirteen, so a child of that age could legally be regarded as a woman. The Contagious Diseases Act affected only working-class women, because upper-class women never walked in the streets alone, but would be accompanied or in a carriage. Men of any age or class were exempt from arrest or examination, even if caught in the act of soliciting, because the Act of 1864 was specifically designed for the control of women.
They reached the police station, and he pushed the terrified girl into a cell. “Wait there,” he ordered, going out and locking the door.
The Act required that a doctor should carry out the examination, so the police officer sent a message boy to call the doctor, who came quickly. They were hand in glove: two men, lustful and eager to discharge their duties according to the letter of the law, and well beyond it, if they were sufficiently aroused. There were no witnesses, and none were required.
The doctor barked at Nancy, “Can you write your name?” She nodded, too terrified to speak. “Then write it here.” She signed. Unknowingly, she had consented to be examined.
Swiftly the policeman picked her up and laid her on the half-length couch, pulling her skirts above her head and tying the ends under the table, effectively blinding and gagging her. The doctor grabbed her legs, pushed her knees towards her chest, and fixed her heels in the leather straps that were attached to metal stirrups. Her thighs were forced wide apart, and her bloomers were ripped off. Nancy thrashed around in terror, and, even though her legs were secured, she succeeded in throwing the upper half of her body off the table.
As she fell backwards, hanging by her legs, one of her lower vertebrae was crushed against the metal edge of the couch. It was an injury from which she never recovered. The policeman swore and yanked her back on the couch, securing her arms and body with a leather strap, so that she was unable to move at all.
Then the examination began. The Act required that the examining surgeon should first assess if a gonorrheal discharge or warts, or a syphilitic chancre was present on the external labia. If necessary he could explore the vagina with his fingers, to feel for a chancre or other signs of venereal disease. If he was in any doubt he could use a vaginal speculum and forceps with which to examine the cervix. The doctor and the police officer took full advantage of all of their legal rights. It took them forty-five minutes to conduct an examination that should only have taken two or three minutes.
In the nineteenth century, the speculum would have been made of rough, unpolished metal, and I doubt if anyone would have taken the trouble to lubricate it.
The surgeon and policeman thrust the speculum repeatedly into Nancy, twisting and turning it. They thrust their hands into her young body. Then they introduced other instruments, including long-handled forceps, with which they were able to grab hold of the cervix, pulling and turning it, ostensibly to examine it for signs of venereal disease. Can you imagine the pain for a thirteen year old virgin? Whether they raped her phallically as well is not known. When they were satisfied they untied her. “She is clean. No sign of venereal disease. We can give her the certificate. Get up, girl. You can have your certificate to say that you are clean. Your mother will be pleased.”
The distraught mother was powerless. There was no one to complain to. If she had been so bold as to complain to the police, she would probably have been victimised herself. In any case the men had acted within the requirements of the law. If they had raped the girl it was of no consequence because the speculum had opened up the vagina. Josephine Butler coined the phrase ‘surgical rape’, and thousands of innocent women were subjected to it.
Nancy’s mother wrote to the Association for the Repeal of the Contagious Diseases (Women) Act and received a visit from Mrs Butler herself, who advised that Nancy must leave Southampton at once, because she could be seized again at any time and re-examined. Mrs Butler promised to find a position for the child, and that is how Nancy came to be the ladies maid for young Monica Joan, the rebel daughter of a baronet.
Sister [Monica Joan] said, “Her back was badly injured, she could hardly walk. She was cringing and terrified. She was with me for eleven years, and then she died of tuberculosis of the spine.”
She said no more about Nancy. Perhaps it would have been too poignant, too troubling, after all those years, for Sister Monica Joan to recall.
Josephine Butler – a nineteenth century Christian who advocated for the oppressed and outcast — by Barbara Roberts
When Courage Calls: Josephine Butler and the Radical Pursuit of Justice (Affiliate link) — by Sarah C Williams
Josephine Butler: Patron Saint of Prostitutes (Affiliate link) — by Helen Mathers
Josephine Butler: The Victorian feminist who campaigned for the rights of prostitutes — article by Helen Mathers (Internet archive link here)
Biography of Josephine Butler (Internet Archive link)
Josephine Butler’s writings (Internet Archive link)
Wikipedia page about Jennifer Worth
Discover more from Crying Out For Justice
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