Venereal disease and the politics of prostitution in the Irish Free State

Irish Historical Studies

Volumn 33, Issue 131, 2003, Pages 320-341

  Howell, Philip ^a  

^a EMMANUEL COLLEGE   (United Kingdom)

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[No Author keywords available]

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EID: 30844469613     PISSN: 00211214     EISSN: None     Source Type: Journal    
DOI: 10.1017/S0021121400015832     Document Type: Review

References (67)

1. For an excellent overview see Maryann Valiulis, 'Power, gender andidentity in the Irish Free State' in Journal of Women's History, vi-vii (1995), pp 117-36.
2. Recent work includes: Louise Ryan, 'Negotiating modernity and tradition:newspaper debates on the "modern girl" in the Irish Free State' in Journal of Gender Studies, vii (1998), pp 181-95;
3. eadem, '"Furies" and "die-hards": women and Irishrepublicanism in the early twentieth century' in Gender and History, xi (1999), pp 256-75;
4. Maryann Valiulis, 'Neither feminist nor flapper: the ecclesiasticalconstruction of the ideal Irish woman' in Mary O'Dowd and Sabine Wichert (eds), Chattel, servant or citizen: women's status in church, state and society:Historical Studies XIX (Belfast, 1995), pp 168-78.
5. For some general discussion see Philip Howell, 'Prostitution andracialised sexuality: the regulation of prostitution in Britain and the British Empire before the Contagious Diseases Acts' in Environment and Planning D:Society and Space, xviii (2000), pp 321-39.
6. Laurie Bernstein, Sonia's daughters: prostitutes and their regulation inimperial Russia (Berkeley, Calif., 1995), p. 9.
7. For a more subtle understanding of the Russian case, and the relationsbetween state and society, see Laura Engelstein, The keys to happiness: sex andthe search for modernity in fin-de-siècle Russia (Ithaca, N.Y., 1992).
8. Mary Gibson, Prostitution and the state in Italy, 1860-1915 (New Brunswick, N.J., 1986).
9. John M. Regan and Mike Cronin, 'Introduction: Ireland and the politics ofindependence, 1922-49: new perspectives and re-considerations' in Mike Croninand John M. Regan (eds), Ireland: the politics of independence, 1922-49(Basingstoke, 2000), p. 9.
10. For the Curragh see: Con Costello, A most delightful station: the Britisharmy and the Curragh of Kildare, Ireland, 1855-1922 (Cork, 1996), pp 139-74;
11. Maria Luddy, 'An outcast community: the "wrens" of the Curragh'in Women's History Review, i (1992), pp 341-55;
12. eadem, 'Women and the Contagious Diseases Acts, 1864-1886' in History Ireland, i (1993), pp 32-4;
13. eadem, '"Abandoned women and bad characters": prostitution innineteenth-century Ireland' in Women's History Review, vi (1997), pp 485-503.
14. For the 'Monto' see John Finegan, The story of Monto: an account of Dublin's notorious red light district (Cork, 1978);
15. Kevin C. Kearns, Dublin tenement life: an oral history (Dublin, 1994);
16. Joseph V. O'Brien, 'Dear, dirty Dublin': a city in distress, 1899-1916(Berkeley, 1982), pp 179-98;
17. Jacinta Prunty, Dublin slums, 1800-1925: á study in urbangeography (Dublin, 1999).
18. For a very useful discussion of Dublin and the place of prostitution seealso Clair Wills, 'Joyce, prostitution, and the colonial city' in John Paul Waters (ed.), Ireland and Irish cultural studies, special issue of the South Atlantic Quarterly, lxxxxv (1996), pp 79-95.
19. William Logan, The great social evil: its causes, extent, results, andremedies (London, 1871).
20. Sandra L. McAvoy, 'The regulation of sexuality in the Irish Free State, 1929-1935' in Greta Jones and Elizabeth Malcolm (eds), Medicine, disease and thestate in Ireland, 1650-1940 (Cork, 1999), pp 253-66.
21. Correspondent to the Irish Times, quoted in O'Brien, 'Dear, dirty Dublin', p. 194.
22. See Judith R. Walkowitz, Prostitution and Victorian society: women, classand the state (Cambridge, 1980), pp 79-85.
23. This is a matter of interpretation, regulationist policies existing in avariety of forms as part of a continuum of measures: see Howell, 'Prostitution& racialised sexuality', pp 321-4.
24. For neo-regulationism see in particular Alain Corbin, Women for hire:prostitution and sexuality in France after 1850 (London, 1990).
25. David Fitzpatrick, The two Irelands, 1912-1939 (Oxford, 1998), p. 117.
26. Allan M. Brandt, No magic bullet: a social history of venereal disease inthe United States since 1880 (Oxford, 1987), p. 92.
27. See also, for Britain: Lucy Bland, '"Guardians of the race", or"vampires upon the nation's health"? Female sexuality and itsregulation in early twentieth-century Britain' in Elizabeth Whitelegg et al.(eds), The changing experience of women (Oxford, 1982), pp 373-88;
28. eadem, 'In the name of protection: the policing of women in the First World War' in Julia Brophy and Carol Smart (eds), Women-in-law: explorations inlaw, family and sexuality (London, 1985), pp 23-49;
29. Philippa Levine, '"Walking the streets in a way no decent womanshould": women police in World War I' in Journal of Modern History, lxvi(1994), pp 34-78.
30. For another case of civil militarisation and sexual regulation in time ofwar see Judith Smart, 'Sex, the state and the "scarlet scourge":gender, citizenship and venereal diseases regulation in Australia during the Great War' in Women's History Review, vii (1998), pp 5-35.
31. Ben Novick, Conceiving revolution: Irish nationalist propaganda duringthe First World War (Dublin, 2001), p. 154.
32. Wills, 'Joyce, prostitution, & the colonial city', p. 90.
33. See also Ben Novick, 'Propaganda I: advanced nationalist propaganda andmoralistic revolution, 1914-18' in Joost Augusteijn (ed.), The Irish Revolution, 1913-1923 (Basingstoke, 2002), pp 34-52.
34. Initial draft report (N.A.I., S 4183), p. 44. It can be noted here that Murphy had experience in the British military as acting lieutenant-colonel ofthe South Staffordshire regiment of territorials (see Fitzpatrick, The two Irelands, p. 166).
35. Novick, 'Propaganda', p. 48.
36. Initial draft report, p. 40.
37. John M. Regan, The Irish counter-revolution, 1921-1936 (Dublin, 1999).Regan has commented on the prevalent 'martial machismo culture' (p. 37), although he also points out that this was far more than a straightforward civilversus military struggle.
38. See Tom Garvin, 1922: the birth of Irish democracy (Dublin, 1996). For adifferent view see Maryann Gialanella Valiulis, Almost a rebellion: the Irisharmy mutiny of 1924 (Cork, 1985);
39. eadem, Portrait of a revolutionary: General Richard Mulcahy and thefounding of the Irish Free State (Dublin, 1992).
40. Also useful here is Jeffrey Prager, Building democracy in Ireland:political order and cultural integration in a newly independent nation(Cambridge, 1986), pp 95-130.
41. Ronan Fanning, Independent Ireland (Dublin, 1983), p. 47.
42. For state-society relations more generally see Eunan O'Halpin, 'Army, politics and society in independent Ireland, 1923-1945' in T. G. Fraser and Keith Jeffery (eds), Men, women and war: Historical Studies XVIII (Dublin, 1993), pp 158-74;
43. idem, Defending Ireland: the Irish state and its enemies since 1922(Oxford, 1999).
44. Note that the anti-treaty I.R.A., at least in Cork, took exactly the sameview of the morality and indiscipline of the Free State army: see Peter Hart, The I.R.A. and its enemies: violence and community in Cork, 1916-1923 (Oxford, 1998), p. 148.
45. J. J. Lee, Ireland 1912-1985: politics and society (Cambridge, 1989), p.105;
46. Regan, Irish counter-revolution, p. 196.
47. Fanning, Independent Ireland, pp 51-2.
48. P. S. O'Hegarty, The victory of Sinn Féin: how it won it, and howit used it (Dublin, 1924), p. 179.
49. Dr T. F. O'Higgins was deputy director of the Army Medical Services andwas stationed at the old British regulationist centre, the Curragh. See thememoirs of his son: T. F. O'Higgins, A double life (Dublin, 1996), pp 19-20.
50. There are close parallels here with the fate of a later moral audit ofthe Free State: see Mark Finnane, 'The Carrigan Committee of 1930-31 and the"moral condition of the Saorstát"' in I.H.S., xxxii, no. 128(Nov. 2001), pp 519-36.
51. See Lee, Ireland 1912-1985;
52. Dermot Keogh, The Vatican, the bishops and Irish politics, 1919-39(Cambridge, 1986);
53. and, especially, Patrick Murray, Oracles of God: the Roman Catholicchurch and Irish politics, 1922-37 (Dublin, 2000).
54. See also Richard Dunphy, The making of Fianna Fáil power in Ireland, 1923-1948 (Oxford, 1995), p. 45;
55. Bill Kissane, Explaining Irish democracy (Dublin, 2002), pp 162-3.
56. F. S. L. Lyons, Ireland since the Famine (London, 1973 ed.), p. 486.
57. J. H. Whyte, Church and state in modern Ireland, 1923-1979 (2nd ed., Dublin, 1980), p. 36.
58. Murray, Oracles of God, p. 89;
59. Rosemary Cullen Owens, Smashing times: a history of the Irish women'ssuffrage movement, 1899-1922 (Dublin, 1984), pp 130-33.
60. Dunphy, Making of Fianna Fáil power, p. 45.
61. On this theme see also Sarah Benton, 'Women disarmed: the militarizationof politics in Ireland, 1913-23' in Feminist Review, i (1995), pp 148-72.
62. See McAvoy, 'Regulation of sexuality'.
63. see also Caitríona Beaumont, 'Women, citizenship and Catholicismin the Irish Free State, 1922-1948' in Women's History Review, vi (1997), pp563-84.
64. Keogh, Vatican, bishops & Irish politics, p. 220;
65. De Valera's enthusiasm for groups such as Catholic Action (see Lyons, Ireland since the Famine, p. 545;
66. should not be overstated: see Susannah Riordan, 'The unpopular front:Catholic revival and Irish cultural identity, 1932-48' in Cronin & Regan(eds), Ireland: the politics of independence, pp 98-120;
67. see also Leon Ó Broin, Frank Duff (Dublin, 1982) and the researchmaterial on Frank Duff in N.L.I., MSS 31670, 31673, 31676.