Sex, the state and the 'scarlet scourge': Gender, citizenship and venereal diseases regulation in Australia during the great war [1]

Women's History Review

Volumn 7, Issue 1, 1998, Pages 5-36

  Smart, Judith ^a  

^a RMIT UNIVERSITY   (Australia)

Author keywords

[No Author keywords available]

Indexed keywords

EID: 34247429085     PISSN: 09612025     EISSN: None     Source Type: Journal    
DOI: 10.1080/09612029800200166     Document Type: Review

References (134)

1. This article owes much to the research assistance of Cheryl Brandner, and to brief but important conversations at crucial moments with Philippa Levine and Marian Quartly. It first saw the light of day as a paper at the Canadian Historical Association Conference, Montreal, 1995.
2. This is not to deny the useful work from this perspective. See, for example, Diane Tibbits (1994) The medical, social and political response to venereal diseases in Victoria 1860-1980, PhD thesis, Monash University. Claude Quétel's (1990) indispensable History of Syphilis (Cambridge: Polity Press) is also written largely from this perspective.
3. For example, Allen M. Brandt (1985) No Magic Bullet: a social history of venereal disease in the United States since 1880 (New York: Oxford University Press);
4. Philip Fleming (1988) Fighting the 'red plague': observations on the response to venereal disease in New Zealand 1910-1945, New Zealand Journal of History, 22, pp. 56-64;
5. Frank Mort (1987) Dangerous Sexualities: medico-moral politics in England since 1830 (London: Routledge & Kegan Paul);
6. Lucy Bland & Frank Mort (1984) Look out for the 'good time' girl: dangerous sexualities as threat to national health, Formations of Nation and People (London: Routledge & Kegan Paul), pp. 131-151;
7. Margaret Arnot (1986) Prostitution and the state in Victoria, 1890-1914, MA thesis, University of Melbourne;
8. Judith Smart (1992) The Great War and the 'scarlet scourge': debates about venereal diseases in Melbourne during World War 1, in Judith Smart & Tony Wood (Eds) (1992) An Anzac Muster: war and society in Australia and New Zealand 1914-18 and 1939-45 (Clayton: Monash Publications in History, 14), pp. 58-85;
9. Suzanne Buckley & Janice Dicken McGinnis (1982) Venereal disease and public health reform in Canada, Canadian Historical Review, 63, pp. 337-354;
10. Jay Cassel (1987) The Secret Plague: venereal disease in Canada 1838-1939 (Toronto: University of Toronto Press).
11. Some of these examinations also acknowledge and incorporate the discursive as well as the social construction of knowledge and policy towards venereal diseases. See especially Bland & Mort, Look out for the 'good time' girl.
12. Judith Smart (1992) Feminists, labour women and venereal disease in early twentieth-century Melbourne, Australian Feminist Studies, 15, pp. 25-40.
13. Susan Sontag (1992) AIDS and its Metaphors (Harmondsworth: Penguin);
14. Ann Taylor Allen (1993) Feminism, venereal disease, and the state in Germany, 1890-1918, Journal of the History of Sexuality, 4, pp. 27-50.
15. Marina Jansen (1995) An iconography of suffering: VD in Australia 1914-1918, MA thesis, University of Melbourne, Introduction;
16. Julie Tisdale (1994) The future mothers of the race': venereal disease and the amateur in Melbourne during World War 1, BA Hons thesis, Monash University; Mort, Dangerous Sexualities;
17. Smart, The Great War and the 'scarlet scourge'.
18. See especially, Philippa Levine (1994) Venereal disease, prostitution, and the politics of empire: the case of British India, Journal of the History of Sexuality, 4, pp. 579-602, and her unpublished paper, Modernity, medicine and colonialism: the contagious diseases ordinances in Hong Kong and the Straits Settlements
19. F. B. Smith (1971) Ethics and disease in the later nineteenth century: the Contagious Diseases Act, Historical Studies, 15(57), pp. 119-120;
20. and F. B. Smith (1990) The Contagious Diseases Acts reconsidered, Society for the Social History of Medicine, 3, pp. 197-215.
21. Mary Murnane & Kay Daniels (1979) Prostitutes as 'purveyors of diseases': venereal disease legislation in Tasmania, 1868-1945, Hecate, 5, p. 5;
22. Kay Daniels (1984) Prostitution in Tasmania during the transition from penal settlement to 'civilised' society, in Kay Daniels (Ed.) So Much Hard Work: women and prostitution in Australian history (Sydney: Fontana/Collins), pp. 58-59.
23. There are, however, degrees of state regulation and the British system was seen as far less regimented than the 'continental system'. On the ambiguities and polarities in contemporary constructions of female sexuality, see Jill Julius Matthews (1984) Good and Mad Women: the historical construction of femininity in twentieth century Australia (Sydney: Allen & Unwin);
24. Deborah Tyler (1986) The case of Irene Tuckerman: understanding sexual violence and the protection of women and girls, Victoria 1890-1925, History of Education Review, 15(2), pp. 52-67;
25. Arnot, 'Prostitution and the state', pp. ix, 63-64.
26. E. Barclay (1981) Queensland's Contagious Diseases Act, 1868 - 'the act for the encouragement of vice' and some nineteenth century attempts to repeal it, Part 1, Queensland Heritage, 2, 10, pp. 28, 29.
27. An Act for the Conservation of Public Health, Victoria, Victoriae Reginae, No. DCXXXI, 2 December 1878.
28. An Act for the Conservation of Public Health, The first clause of the Act began: "Whereas the disease known as syphilis is productive of evil consequences not only to the persons affected therewith but also to the progeny of such persons.", Ibid.
29. Report from the Select Committee upon a Bill for the Prevention of Contagious Diseases; together with the Proceedings of the Committee and Minutes of Evidence, and Appendices, Votes & Proceedings of the Legislative Assembly, vol. 1, Victoria, 1878, pp. 773 ff.
30. For example, Sir Charles Sladen, Vic. Parl. Debates, 26 November 1878, vol. 29, pp. 2034-2035;
31. Hon. J. A Wallace, Vic. Parl, Debates, 26 November 1878, vol. 29, p. 2040;
32. Mr MacBain, Vic. Parl. Debates, 6 November 1878, vol. 29, pp. 1650-1651;
33. Evidence of policement (F. C. Standish, F. O'Mara, H. Pewtress) and Drs J. Ryan and F. W. Ford, Report from the Select Committee upon a Bill for the Prevention of Contagious Diseases.
34. Thomas Bent, Vic. Parl. Debates, 3 October 1877, vol. 27, pp. 962-963.
35. On this assumption about transmission, see also Levine, 'Venereal disease, prostitution and the politics of empire', p. 590.
36. Mort, Dangerous Sexualities, pp. 179-180;
37. Raelene Davidson (1984) Dealing with the 'social evil': prostitution and the police in Perth and on the Eastern Goldfields, 1895-1924, in Daniels (Ed.), So Much Hard Work, pp. 165-166, 173-176;
38. Judith Allen (1984) The making of a prostitute proletariat in early twentieth century New South Wales, in Daniels (Ed.) So Much Hard Work, p. 210;
39. The causative agent of syphilis, identified by the Germans, Fritz Schauddin and Eric Hoffmann in 1905, was a spiral micro-organism they called Spirochaeta Pallida. Advances in microscopic techniques made it possible to identify with greater certainty the presence in the bloodstream of the gonococcus causing gonorrhoea and to vastly improve diagnosis. The more certain diagnosis of syphilis was made possible by the Wassermann test (1906). Brandt, No Magic Bullet, p. 40.
40. Quincy Wright (1965 reprint edition) A Study of War (Chicago and London: University of Chicago Press; first published 1942, Chicago: University of Chicago Press), with Commentary on war since 1942, pp. 297-313.
41. Abraham Maslow. Cited by L. Bramson & G. W. Goethals (Eds) War: studies from psychology sociology anthropology (New York and London: Basic Books), p. 14.
42. Stanley Cohen (1973) Folk Devils and Moral Panics: the creation of the mods and rockers (St Albans: Paladin, Granada Publishing), p. 9.
43. Stanley Cohen, Folk Devils and Moral Panics: the creation of the mods and rockers, Ibid., chs 2 and 3.
44. J. C. Flugel (1945) Man, Morals and Society (London: Duckworth), pp. 307-308.
45. G. W. Allport (1968) The role of expectancy, in Bramson & Goethals (Eds) War: studies from psychology sociology anthropology, p. 182.
46. Joseph Gusfield (1963) Symbolic Crusade: status politics and the American temperance movement (Urbana: University of Illinois).
47. Cited also in Cohen, Folk Devils and Moral Panics, p. 11.
48. Allport attributes submission to "unresolved aggression". Allport, The role of expectancy', p. 182.
49. Carol Pateman (1989) The Sexual Contract (Cambridge: Polity Press in association with Blackwell Publishers), p. 3. Examples of their civil and legal subordination included marriage and divorce, nationality and citizenship, wage levels, and custody of children.
50. C. Pateman, The Sexual Contract, Ibid., pp. 2,4.
51. Judith Allen (1979-80) Prostitution in New South Wales 1870-1932: re-structuring an industry, Refractory Girl, 18-19, pp. 17-24.
52. Bent, Vic. Parl. Debates, 24 October 1877, vol. 27, pp. 1206, 1207.
53. Truth, 27 February 1909, p. 6. Besides, Cr Wood argued, "the objection in regard to the immunity of males would be met by the automatic working of the system. The keepers of the houses and the public women who frequented them would exercise great vigilance in their own interests regarding the cleanliness of their male buyers, and, owing to the constant examination of the women, a contagious man would be quickly located and identified".
54. Captain F. C. Standish, Report from the Select Committee upon a Bill for the Prevention of Contagious Diseases, p. 4.
55. James Murray (1973) Larrikins: 19th century outrage (Melbourne: Lansdowne Press);
56. P. C. Francis O'Mara, Questions 334, 352
57. and George Brown Hill, Question 204, Report from the Select Committee upon a Bill for the Prevention of Contagious Diseases, pp. 13, 8.
58. Captain F. C. Standish, Chief Commissioner of Police, also remarked that prostitutes were recruited: "Principally from servant girls, from the Industrial schools, and the girls of poor men who are unable to support their families and look after them properly". He also agreed, after prompting, that "a great many" of the girls from the factories and workshops also went "astray". Report from the Select Committee upon a Bill for the Prevention of Contagious Diseases, pp. 2-4.
59. Report from the Select Committee upon a Bill for the Prevention of Contagious Diseases, P. C. Francis O'Mara, Question 370, ibid., p. 14.
60. Report from the Select Committee upon a Bill for the Prevention of Contagious Diseases, Standish, Question 45, ibid., p. 2.
61. Report from the Select Committee upon a Bill for the Prevention of Contagious Diseases, Hill, Question 2050, ibid., p. 8.
62. Chris McConville (1985) From 'criminal class' to "underworld', in Graeme Davison, David Dunstan & Chris McConville (Eds) The Outcasts of Melbourne: essays in social history (Sydney: Allen & Unwin), pp. 76-86.
63. Cited in Murray, Larrikins, p. 98.
64. Lynette Finch (1973) The Classing Gaze: sexuality, class and surveillance (Sydney: Allen & Unwin).
65. W. M Hughes, Commonwealth Parl. Debates, vol. XIV, 1903, pp. 3094-3095.
66. Cited in T. W. Tanner (1980) Compulsory Citizen Soldiers (Sydney: Alternative Publishing Co-operative Ltd), p. 59.
67. Report of the Minister of Public Instruction, 1913-14, Victorian Parliamentary Papers, 1915, vol. 11, Appendix L, Reports on Domestic Arts I - Cookery and Needlework (Flora Pell), pp. 80-81.
68. Royal Commission on the Housing Conditions of the People of the Metropolis and in the Populous Centres of the State, Victorian Parliamentary Papers, 1917, vol. II, Questions 2847, 2850, p. 65.
69. Of the older generation of women, she remarked, "You cannot teach some of the women - they are impossible. We try". Ibid., Question 4170, p. 144.
70. Tisdale, The future mothers of the race', p. 7.
71. Chris McConville (1980) The location of Melbourne's prostitutes, 1870-1920, Historical Studies, 19(74), pp. 86-97;
72. McConville, 'From "criminal class" to "underworld"', pp. 76-86;
73. Allen, The making of a prostitute proletariat', pp. 199-203, 206-215.
74. Chris McConville (1987) Rough women, respectable men and social reform: a response to Lake's 'masculinism', Historical Studies, 22(88), pp. 435-457.
75. For an extended analysis of these anxieties about girls in the city in the Canadian context, see Carolyn Strange (1995) Toronto's Girl Problem: the perils and pleasures of the city, 1890-1930 (Toronto: University of Toronto Press).
76. As Marilyn Lake has argued, it was also evident to women fighting for independent citizenship rights within marriage that acknowledgement of maternity as a criterion for citizenship was still a limited achievement. Marilyn Lake (1993) A revolution in the family: the challenge and contradictions of maternal citizenship in Australia, in Seth Koven & Sonya Michel (Eds) Mothers of a New World: maternalist politics and the origins of welfare states (London & New York: Routledge), pp. 382-384;
77. Marilyn Lake (1992) Mission impossible: how men gave birth to the Australian nation - nationalism, gender and other seminal acts, Gender & History, 4, pp. 305-322.
78. Woman Voter, 18 November 1913, p. 3.
79. Report of Constable E. W. Sharpe of Carlton Station, 11 November 1909, in file on juvenile immorality and youthful prostitution, Box 107, Chief Secretary's Supplementary Inward Registered Correspondence, Series 1226, Victorian Public Record Office.
80. On the moral responsibility intrinsic to the progressivist/ new liberal concept of citizenship and attempts to label the 'amateur' as disqualified from its rights, see Bland & Mort, 'Look out for the "good time" girl', p. 142.
81. Truth, 8 April 1916.
82. Contemporary links with 'feeble-mindedness' and 'imbecility' are also pointed out by Tibbits, The medical, social and political response'; see also evidence before Royal Commission on Housing.
83. Vic. Parl. Debates 1913-14, vol. 134, p. 2538.
84. Vic. Parl. Debates, Ibid., p. 2271.
85. See, for example, the outpourings of Member of the Legislative Council, Sir Walter Manifold. See also the detailed discussion of this subject by Tyler, The case of Irene Tuckerman', pp. 52-67.
86. First Annual Report, 1917, Travellers' Ad Society of Victoria Annual Reports, pp. 11-12.
87. Report of the Acting Honorary Secretary, Mrs E. M. McLeod. Third Annual Report 1919, Travellers' Ad Society of Victoria Annual Reports, p. 4.
88. See, for example, Woman Voter, 14 June 1917, p. 3, 19 July 1917, p. 1; Woman, IX, 7, 1 September 1916, p. 179.
89. Tim Prenzler (1994) Women in Australian policing: an historical overview, Journal of Australian Studies, 42, pp. 78-88.
90. Reported by Professor Sir Harry Allen, Cited in Department of Trade and Customs, Committee Concerning Causes of Death and Invalidity in the Commonwealth, Report on Venereal Diseases, Commonwealth of Australia Parliamentary Papers, 1914-15-16, vol. 5, p. 114 (report pagination, p. 4).
91. Australasian Medical Congress Transactions, 1908.
92. Truth, 8 July 1911, p. 6; 5 August 1911, p. 3, gives the figure as 3169. 1900 of those tested were positive.
93. See also Truth, 1 June 1912, p. 3.
94. Truth, 24 January 1914, p. 6.
95. Mr Rogers, "Vicar of St Michael's Church, North Carlton, referred to "gross immorality" there and the need for the church to take the matter up in view of the Commonwealth statistics on the "great increase of the 'Red Plague'". Woman Voter, 8 December 1914, p. 1.
96. The evidence of an unnamed medical man was also cited in Woman Voter, 26 January 1915, p. 1.
97. Argus, 23 February 1915, p. 6. The assertion was made at a meeting at the Melbourne Town Hall convened especially to "safeguard the morals and habits of the Australian troops".
98. A G. H. Butler (1943) The Australian Army Services in the War of 1914-18, vol. III (Canberra: Australian War Memorial), p. 175. Butler's figures (p. 177) show that the numbers who went absent without leave or deserted from Langwarrin declined from 1014 in 1916 to 221 in 1917. The alarm was accentuated by the conviction that the form of venereal disease contracted in Egypt was particularly virulent. Philippa Levine has also observed that venereal disease contracted in the topics was commonly "represented as a worse and more savage entity, affecting the refined white constitution with greater severity"
99. Levine, 'Venereal disease, prostitution, and the politics of empire', p. 591.
100. See Sontag, AIDS and its Metaphors, on the semiotic significance of illness.
101. In state Parliament the number of escapers mentioned was 60 and those still not recaptured, 19. Vic. Parl. Debates., vol. 141, 26 October 1915, p. 2967.
102. Hon. H. F. Richardson, Vic. Parl. Debates., vol. 141, 26 October 1915, p. 2968.
103. Hon. J. Drysdale Brown, Minister for Health in the Peacock government, Vic. Parl. Debates., vol. 141, 26 October 1915, p. 2969.
104. Department of Trade and Customs, Report on Venereal Diseases. Although the British Royal Commission's recommendations were voluntarist, the president of the Local Government Board overcame the problem of being unable to force Local Government Boards to take action by declaring venereal disease a national emergency under the Defence of the Realm provision. See David Evans (1992) Tackling the 'hideous scourge': the creation of the venereal disease treatment centres in early twentieth-century Britain, Society for the Social History of Medicine, pp.413-433.
105. Dr E. H. Molesworth, who was in charge of the clinic at the Royal Prince Albert Hospital, Sydney, reported in Truth, 11 November 1916, p. 6.
106. J. King Patrick, Venereal disease: the menace in our midst, p. 7.
107. Cited in Jansen, 'An iconography of suffering', p. 78.
108. See Dennis Shoesmith (1972) 'Nature's law': the venereal diseases debate, Melbourne 1918-19, ANU Historical Journal, 9, p. 21.
109. Asimilar act was passed in queensland in 1911. Raymond Evans (1984) 'Soiled doves': prostitution in colonial Queensland, in Kay Daniels (Ed.) So Much Hard Work, pp. 127-191. Between 1916 and 1920, all the other states followed suit in putting such legislation on the books, though New South Wales and South Australia were more reluctant than the others to take punitive measures; in fact, the South Australian legislation was not proclaimed.
110. Vic. Parl. Debates, vol. 144, 14 September 1916, pp. 1435-1437;
111. This was true even of Labor Party women. See Smart, 'Feminists, labour women and venereal disease'.
112. See: Raymond Evans (1987) Loyalty and Disloyalty: social conflict on the Queensland homefront, 1914-18 (Sydney: Allen & Unwin);
113. Marilyn Lake (1975) A Divided Society: Tasmania during World War I (Melbourne: Melbourne University Press);
114. Dan Coward (1973) Crime and punishment: the great strike in New South Wales, August to October 1917, in John Iremonger, John Merritt & Graeme Osborne (Eds), Strikes: studies in twentieth century Australian social history (Sydney: Angus & Robertson), pp. 51-80;
115. Judith Smart (1986) Feminists, food and the fair price: the cost of living demonstrations in Melbourne, August-September, 1917, Labour History, 50, May, pp. 113-131.
116. Vic. Parl. Debates, vol. 151, 10 December 1918, p. 2840.
117. Vic. Parl. Debates, Ibid., 10 December 1918, pp. 2840-2843; 20 December 1918, p. 3449;
118. The decision was made, on what Butler judges to be purely pragmatic and objective grounds, to put the operating efficiency of the army above moral considerations and to add a system of personal prophylaxis to the education campaign and the lectures on continence that had proved so ineffectual. A prophylactic kit was offered free to any soldier going on leave and condoms were available for purchase. Further, abortive treatment at 'blue light depots' was also available for soldiers who reported within 12 hours of the first symptoms. Butler, The Australian Army Services, pp. 153-159.
119. Hon. A A Robinson, Vic. Parl. Debates, Vol. 144,10 October 1916, p. 1860.
120. Melbourne Church of England Social Questions Committee (1915) Open Letter to the Australian Soldiers who have joined the Forces of the Empire (Melbourne: Melbourne Church of England Social Questions Committee), p. 15.
121. Argus, 5 October 1917, p. 9.
122. For British examples of what she terms "khaki fever", see Angela Woollacott (1994) 'Khaki fever' and its control: gender, class, age and sexual morality on the British homefront in the first world war, Journal of Contemporary History, 29(2), pp. 325-347.
123. Hon. A A Robinson, Vic. Parl. Debates, vol. 144, 10 October 1916, p. 1860.
124. This does not mean the 'clandestine' was no longer of concern. There was still plenty of evidence in the pages of Truth and in parliamentary references that open soliciting in the streets and parks was occurring. The demarcation process was a gradual one and not always clear. An additional problem more specific to 'amateurs', according to one witness before the New South Wales Select Committee, was that: "Generally, the girl who lives at home with her parents has no facilities for taking immediate cleansing measures to prevent herself from becoming infected". Dr L. P. Johnstone, quoted in Truth, 26 August 1916, p. 7.
125. Dr F. H. Molesworth, Truth, 4 November 1916, p. 5. Emphasis in original.
126. The same point has been made about the claims by women in the political sphere for access to public space, which, as Joy Damousi has shown, were sharply contested. Joy Damousi (1991) Socialist women and gendered space: the anti-conscription and and antl war campaigns of 1914-18, Labour History, 60, May, pp. 1-15.
127. The point that working-class norms influenced middle-class courtship practices is made by Gail Reekie (1993) Temptations: sex, selling and the department store (Sydney: Allen & Unwin), pp. xv-xvi.
128. 1922 draft report, pp. 24,40. Soldiers, because the state took direct responsibility for their health, were detained at Langwarrin till cured, though their numbers had declined because most serving soldiers were treated overseas after 1915.
129. and Julie Tisdale (1996) Venereal disease and the policing of the amateur in Melbourne during World War I, Lilith: a feminist journal, 9, pp. 33-52.
130. On the greater opportunities for young middle-class women in white collar work and their continuation into the 1920s, see Anne Cahir (1980) Women and work in World War One, BA Hons thesis, Monash University).
131. On World War II, see, for example, Marilyn Lake (1990) Female desires: the meaning of World War II, Australian Historical Studies, 24(95), pp. 267-284;
132. Kay Saunders & Helen Taylor (1988) To combat the plague: the construction of moral alarm and the role of state intervention in Queensland during World War II, Hecate, 14, pp. 5-30;
133. Michael Sturma (1988) Public health and sexual morality: venereal disease in World War II Australia, Signs: Journal of Women in Culture and Society, 13, pp. 725-740;
134. Kate Darian-Smifh (1990) On the Home Front: Melbourne in wartime 1939-1945 (Melbourne: Oxford University Press). JUDITH SMART is a senior lecturer in history in the Department of Communication Studies, Royal Melbourne Institute of Technology, 124 La Trobe Street, Melbourne, Victoria 3000, Australia (judy.smart@rmit.edu.au). She has published works on working-class women and political protest during World War I, on feminist Christian citizenship and the Housewives Associations in the first half of this century, and on feminist responses to venereal diseases legislation, 1915-1920. She is currently the editor of Australian Historical Studies and is working on a book on Melbourne during the Great War.